<–The State of the Writer: 11/27/22 The State of the Writer: 12/25/22–>
A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.
Finished Projects: 0
Project: Story/Series
Working Title: The High Archon (The Truth Seeker Chronicles)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Current Word Count: 11,282
Status: Reorganizing & Worldbuilding
Progress: Working on surname details
I really hope I have the name of the piece and artist correct. I checked some images with the titles and artists in English to match up where this information was. I’m fairly certain the characters are Chinese (I went to Google translate and I put them into Traditional Chinese and I think I might be right), but it’s one of those situations where I recognize the language but don’t know it.
This is another great image find for an established character Queen Arantes, one of two of the Kingdom of Ave-Bray. She has darker skin than the artwork, but the features are similar and I love the dress. How much fun would that be to describe?
I’m still plugging away at surname stuff lol. I shouldn’t be in the weeds for too much longer. I’m going to hop to another marsh soon.
Project: Research & Essay Organization
Status: Organizing Reference Material
Progress: Focus on picking one essay to concentrate on
Guess what? I decided to reorganize my notes again. Not only that I split up the research and essay sections after previously putting them together. I didn’t like the fact I’d have notes for the same thing in different places e.g. the text for Paradise Lost in the book section but video analyses of it in the video section. That just didn’t make sense to me. They should all be together so now I have to do yet another reorg, but I actually feel good about this. ASOIAF and Final Fantasy (VII) will probably get their own tabs since there are too many notes for those to just do pages and subpages. While you can do multiple layers of subpages, they only fold in on one layer (if that makes any sense).
If anyone out there has written a dissertation, thesis, or something else that required years of reading/research from numerous sources, please feel free to leave any tips in the comments. I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask for advice, but I honestly don’t know how to do so in a generalized manner.
In Progress
- Book Reviews: Blister by Jeff Strand – I think I might actually be done with the main review. What needs to happen next is more complicated, because I need to talk about how disfigurement operates into the zeitgeist at large. I have some great sources for that, but since I’m not disfigured it’s something I want to be careful talking about.
- Game Reviews: Bear With Me: The Lost Robots – I think I’m pretty much done with this, too, though I’m not sure if I followed my own guidelines for the order of things lol. I need to proofread/edit so I’m sure I’ll iron out any kinks with that.
So settlement on our house is this Friday and I’m having so many fun anxiety based intrusive thoughts let me tell you lol like losing the cashiers check we need to get for the most money I’ve spent in my life hahahaha. I googled if you could get a cashiers check replaced, which you can, but it can take up to 90 days to recoup the funds, and of course that’s way past settlement time so we wouldn’t get the house. I took off the Thursday before and of course the Friday. I think I finally finished cleaning my closet and (partially) organizing my shoes. I have more in a hanging thing on the wall I need to figure out, and I think my next big thing will be my bookshelves because omg I have so many goddamn books lol.
Also I have never cared less about Christmas than I do this year, which I say while listening to a song that could’ve been written/sung by the happy little elves lol. I also say this every year, but this year is peak. I even forgot to post about how December 9 was the day FFVII starts in the game’s story universe, and I’m always on that. Oh well.
<–The State of the Writer: 11/27/22 The State of the Writer: 12/25/22–>
The Shameful Narcissist Speaks 
Pingback: The State of the Writer: 11/27/22 | The Shameful Narcissist Speaks
A home is the biggest most important investment ever so I can definitely understand the anxiety! And I definitely share the bah humbug vibes 😆
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah well it’s done for better or worse lol. Now I get to work on packing D:
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good luck with getting your house settled! What a huge and exciting thing! 🙂
Unrelated to houses, but related to your post, I have written a thesis, and am happy to dump any info I might have. Was your question in relation to any general area (organizing notes, delineating chapters and sections, something else)?
LikeLiked by 1 person
There were SO many things to sign lol but it’s done. Now we just need to pack D:
Organizing! So…right now I’m in the information gathering/organization stage. The thing with this is there’s just SO MUCH I need to research, and I just kind of want to know what other peoples’ processes were. There are actually several essays I have in mine but I decided to just focus on one because I was getting too overwhelmed. I *may* have found a better system of organization but it’s really just I want to know what other people who have written them have done. It gets more ridiculous because for some aspects I’m still adding information for others I’m “complete” but I’ll need to go back and curate it once everything is said and done.
I know that wasn’t very coherent but I think I’m just looking for some ideas of how others have organized their notes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Packing
Good luck with that, too. Yikes haha
Regarding notes… I’m not sure if this is helpful, but after I had my central hypothesis solidified in my mind, I identified questions that needed to be answered in order to support why I was asking the research questions I was asking and, in my case, the research I was going to be doing. So, for example, I was examining the ability of individuals with autism to identify emotions in tone of voice vs. music, so I outlined the diagnostic criteria/need areas for ASD, then talked about existing research on communication development in people with and without ASD, and continued to build from there through neutral structures activated when identifying emotions in tone of voice, then for ID’ing emotions in music… and so on and so forth. I thought of it as I had to hold the reader’s hand through the information, building a foundation for them and slowly leading them through the logic toward the point I was trying to make. I don’t know if that’s helpful, like I said, but hopefully something in there is!
I always like talking about research and games and literature, so feel free to drop me a line any time if you think it would be helpful for you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think mine is more of a “how do I best organize the notes so I’m being as efficient as possible,” and I *think* I may be okay in this department. I wound up making a separate notebook for research resources on OneNote and consolidating things in terms of topic instead of media. Since this is a comparative project I have a lot of other works to look at as well as analyses of said works since I plan to use a LOT of resources and need to credit a lot of people.
I am 90% certain I’m on the autism spectrum so that kind of research is fascinating to me, as well as others since hyperfixation is a big thing with autistics hehe (this is why the question about research methods above :p lol). I haven’t had a formal diagnosis, but it’s not that easy to get those as an adult and sadly lots of female (or female presenting) people epsecially non-white ones tend to fall through the cracks as they don’t present the way white autistic boys do and that’s the demographic that was most studied. I’m glad things are changing now. I’ll say I leanred how to mask at a really early age as I was able to do so, but I definitely struggled with social stuff and being “diffeerent/weird,” until I was able to mimic how “humans” act. It’s a weird headspace now because I often feel like a poorly built robot and it’s very tiring since you constantly feel like you’re putting on a show and that takes a ton of mental energy. I’m actually pretty good at identifying emotions in tone of voice but this is more than likely due to trauma because I HAD to learn otherwise the consequences were dire, but I know that I’ll often have a flat effect especially if I’m tired and just can’t do the masking thing anymore. I can make eye contact unless I’m under duress, too, but I HATED when someone in authority would demand “Look at me!” Ugh. Music is one my respites though. I’m actually quite curious about the how other autistics feel about it. If there’s a correlation. I’d love to see some research on that.
Packing/Moving. Is. The. WOOOOORST. Lol. LIke I said how are we (almost) in 2023 and we still don’t have a better way to do this??
LikeLike
Pingback: The State of the Writer: 12/25/22 | The Shameful Narcissist Speaks
Pingback: The State of the Writer: 3/5/23 | The Shameful Narcissist Speaks