Well, as anticipated, the start of school threw me for a loop. Y’all. Kids are a lot. And add to it that I had to checkout a chromebook to every single student in three days? I’m exhausted. Or, at least, I was by Friday. Luckily, this weekend was very relaxing and I’m feeling fairly high energy as I write this. I promise that isn’t just the Cold Brew talking.
Let’s take a look at what happened last week:
Last Week
- Victoria Query Package Rough Draft
- Read 20 minutes/day
- Write some fanfic?
How'd I Do?
- Victoria Query Package Rough Draft
- Nope. One might even argue that I actively avoided this.
- Read 20 minutes/day
- YES! And yes, I’m counting fanfic. If I tell students it counts as reading, then it counts for me too. I read A LOT of fanfic this past week (was it mine? Maybe….)
- Write some fanfic?
- Yes! I FINALLY returned to my giant Mass Effect Andromeda series. It’s been one of my yearly goals for, oh, five fucking years now to complete this series and I only have one fic left. I’m thinking that this might be my Nanowrimo project this year, but more on that in a minute.
Weekly Word Count: 1,530
For the folks who haven’t been following along all these years, here’s the gist of this fanfic series:
Way back in 2017 Mass Effect Andromeda released and I INHALED it. I know this game has a bad reputation but I honestly don’t understand why. I loved it. And by the time I had voraciously consumed it, there was almost no fanfic for my preferred romantic pairing. Which meant I was duty bound to write it. Which led to me being on the forefront of a fandom as far as fanfic was concerned.
My planned oneshot turned into an epic six-part series (not counting a Mistborn crossover fic I wrote for Nanowrimo in 2017) that had thousands of hits and hundreds of comments. My series was, at the time, one of the top three long works for this pairing. People made fanart of my fic. I made friends with whom I STILL keep in touch because of this fic series.
But when I came to the “final” story something wasn’t right. I couldn’t seem to make it work. I felt disconnected from it in a way I didn’t know how to fix. So I took a break and always planned to finish it. I revisited it a couple of times, added some words and stewed on it, but nothing ever seemed to stick.
Flash forward to Fall 2021 and I figured it out! I left a note on the fic and made notes to myself because I knew the answer, but didn’t have time to actually FIX it. I was knee deep in Something Sulfurous revisions and just starting to draft Victoria (plus a myriad of short stories in various states of completion). There was no time.
And there continued to be no time. Until now.
This past week I reread the entire series from beginning to its current state (that’s 231,572 words y’all, which translates to roughly 927 PAGES (fuck, this is embarrassing)). I listened to the 11+ hour long playlist all week. And finally, last night, I sat down and wrote on this fic for the first time in years.
It feels so so good. It feels like coming home. I have a big grin on my face as I write this. I’m finally at a point where my original fiction projects don’t require all my creative energy. I have no looming (self-imposed) deadlines. I just have freedom to write whatever the hell I want.
Which has also led to me playing piano again. That’s a weird side effect of drafting. I don’t tend to play piano when I’m creating something intensely. I don’t have the bandwidth for it. This week I started playing again and I can feel the effect it has on my brain. It feels like scrubbing the inside of my skull clean.
It feels like opening up and airing out. Like spring cleaning for my brain.
So, What's Next?
- Victoria Query package Rough Draft
- Read 20 minutes a day
- Write 1,500 words
- Writing Admin
I have a bit of writing work I fell behind on last week. I need to submit some stories that were rejected and send out another query, all of which is time consuming and can be a bit tedious. I did not have the mental energy to do any of it this week after work, and Saturday was for recovery. So, if I get caught up and handle my shit, I can cross “writing Admin” off the list.
I think it’s safe to say that I am dreading writing the query letter for Victoria. The book is just… so strange that I don’t even know how to begin?! How do I make all its intricacies clear in an interesting way, but in only about 250 words? But also entice the reader with the plot and… it’s the same quandary as every other query letter or twitter pitch I suppose.
I just extra don’t wanna do this one. Because it’s Victoria and everything about it has been difficult. But, October is going to be here before I know it, and I need the book AND the query package to be done by then…
Again this week, I don’t have any plans for a second blog post. It’s going to be another busy work week (chromebooks may be done, but textbook checkout is just beginning) so we’ll see how I feel and if any topic comes to mind.
Until later Bloggos!
BZ
