#camp nanowrimo 2019

[duckprintspress]

I know almost nothing about NaNoWriMo but I would love to hear what you mean about "the last five years". What have they don't in the last years (before this current bullshit) to make the experience worse than before?

Hey!

So, I first heard about NaNoWriMo in like...2005? 2006?...and made my own first attempt in 2012, so I've been around for a while.

For me personally, three major things stand out as being issues:

In 2019, NaNo rolled out a new webpage, consolidating what had once been two different webpages - the main NaNo page and the Camp NaNo page. This roll out was, to put it gently, a fucking disaster, and broke much of the website, and at least for me made it nigh-unusable. It also nerfed the forums.

Late last year, grooming allegations came out against moderators and staff. You can read more about it here. I never looked into it much, and it was very difficult to tell what actually happened with the backlash - what was proven, etc. - and I just don't know much about it, but it certainly made me extremely wary.

And the current nonsense, which it sounds like you're aware of.

I've also known multiple regional coordinators (ML = Municipal Liaisons) and while they've not shared specifics and even if they had, I wouldn't feel at liberty to share what was shared with me, the general consensus is that the treatment of the volunteer MLs has gotten progressively worse, and the forums and boards increasingly unusable, to the extent that a lot of people I know have "broken off" their regions - my home region, for example, operates a writer group, founded originally through NaNo, now completely separate from NaNo because NaNo fucked up just that bad. Like I said, I don't know the details, but I trust my friends that if they say it was untenable, it was untenable.

All in all, since the website merge, they've made it clear they don't care about the feedback they receive, seemed to almost be going out of their way to damage the community-building aspects of the webpage that were always one of the most valuable parts of the experience, and just generally haven't managed things like the scandal in #2 well.

Honestly, I basically stopped using NaNo after the merge. I managed, I think, two more years after that (not winning NaNo, but I won a couple Camp NaNos with my own word count goal in, like, 2019 and 2020).

The reason the current issues have prompted me to delete is that, once upon a time, it was required to enter typed text to "validate" a word count. I have no idea if NaNo retained that text in anyway, nor do I have any idea what the terms of NaNo's agreement with ProWritingAid is. All I know that even the possibility that they've got my data stored, even the chance that they might use my words to train PWA's LLM, is enough for me to go from "I no longer use this or wish to us this" to "I am immediately deleting."

Hopefully, deleting actually removes my data. I wasn't able to take the time to read their updated ToS enough to actually be sure. But it's the one thing in my power to do, so I did it.

Sorry I don't have more detail to make rubbernecking the drama more fun, lol. :D

-unforth

[prettylittlelyres]

Violins and Violets - Series - WIP page

1784: Katharina Schmidt and her brother Hans grew up composing and performing music for royalty all over Europe. Now they are adults, only Hans is allowed to pursue his music, while Katharina's father tells her it's time to find a husband and settle down. Katharina's attempts to do as she's told only convince her that it's not what she wants to do, and she must decide how far she's willing to go to keep making music.

Hello, friends! It's been a minute since I updated the links on my blog, and I have just seen that I still have the "Beta Readers Wanted" post linked to the "Violins and Violets (WIP)" button... from the draft I finished and started querying in 2019 / 2020!

Things have... changed somewhat since then...

"Violins and Violets" is now a series, of (I expect) five books. None of them have titles yet, so I'm just referring to them as "Violins and Violets 1," etc. I thought it was time to make a new WIP page.

Book 1 tag - WIP page - first draft completed in December 2023, second draft in May 2024. (Earlier titled "Ladies Don't Write Music" - but this may be a better name for Book 2.)

Book 2 tag - WIP page - first draft completed in January 2024, now writing second draft in June and July 2024.

Book 3 tag - early planning stages, hoping to create outline in October 2024, with a view to writing the first draft in November and December 2024. Hoping to redraft in 2025.

Book 4 tag - hoping to plan and draft in 2025.

Book 5 tag - hoping to plan and draft in 2025 or 2026.

Series tag - all posts made about "Violins and Violets" since I realised it needed to be a series, no matter what book I'm talking about.

Everything "Violins and Violets" - the whole story, right from the beginning, when I started writing the first draft of a single book for Camp NaNoWriMo in April 2018.

One-Shots - short stories that I've written for the "Violins and Violets" world.

"Vogeltje" - another novel that takes place in the same world, and features some of the same characters.

I'm trying to bring each book in somewhere around 75,000 words, taking three months to write a first draft, and two months for each subsequent draft. I find it easier to focus on the story proper when I write quickly and regularly, so when I have a draft on the go, I try to write every day. Between drafts, I am trying to take whole months off writing, so that I can rest my creative muscles, as it were.

You can follow my progress here on my writeblr, and on the NaNoWriMo website.

Characters:

Katharina Schmidt - musical prodigy and composer who performed for royalty as a child, but is no longer allowed, because she's a woman. Disguises herself as "Sebastien", and flees Salzburg to start a composing career in Prague

Hans Schmidt - brother of Katharina, who is also a musical prodigy and composer, but is allowed to pursue his music as an adult.

Franz Schmidt - solicitor; father of Katharina and Hans, who wants to see his daughter married well enough to put silly ideas of music out of her head.

Julia Schmidt - lady of leisure; mother of Katharina and Hans; wife of Franz, who loves to make tapestries and knitted garments; wants the best for her children and is willing to let Franz decide what this is.

Barbara Kirkmann - housemaid to the Schmidts, Katharina's closest friend and confidante.

Elisabeth Meyer - daughter of Franz' boss, Katharina's first "acceptable" friend, and the oldest sister of many siblings; keen to get married and start a life of her own.

Miléna von Tritten - Elisabeth's best friend, and daughter of one of the Meyer firm's wealthiest clients, Baron von Tritten; expected to marry a noble, but totally absorbed in Johann Schneider.

Johann Schneider - training to be a magistrate, under pressure to get married, but totally uninterested in... anyone? All the ladies want him; none of them can catch him. Absolutely tone-deaf, but loves to watch musicians play; friends with Katharina.

Louisa Schneider - Johann's younger sister, also tone-deaf, but keen to become a musician under Katharina's tutelage.

Magdalena Fialová - an opera singer who wants to get more young women into music; one of "Sebastien's" first and best friends in Prague.

Miklós Kovács - a fellow violinist who persuades the management of the Malá Strana Opera House to give "Sebastien" an audition. Best friend of Magdalena, and very close with "Sebastien".

Background:

Yes, Katharina Schmidt is based on Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart, who deserved a much better life than she got. I have always wondered what would have happened if she had defied her father when he told her to stop composing. Would she have known as much fame as her brother?

Yes, Katharina Schmidt is a lesbian. That's because she's only based on a real person; she isn't actually Nannerl Mozart. I have no idea what Nannerl Mozart would have called herself, or how she felt, and I think it would be rude for me to try to guess. This part of Katharina's character is inspired less by history than by my own experiences and desire to see more representation of Queer people in historical fiction. (She's not the only person in the series who isn't straight! Who are the others? You'll have to read the books to find out... or just follow here; I'm yappy about it.)

[novlr]

Gearing Up for NaNoWriMo with Novlr

Hi everyone 👋 I’m Pamela, Writer Development and Community Lead at Novlr!

October is coming to an end, and so is the time to prepare for NaNoWriMo (a time we affectionately call Preptober).

I hit my head, what is NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is an annual event where writers from all over the world work toward the same goal - writing 50,000 words - while offering and receiving support from other writers.  

Throughout the year, NaNoWriMo also provides resources and support for writers, as well as events like Camp NaNoWrimo. 

Okay, and who are you?

We’re Novlr, and we’ve got a long history with NaNoWriMo. Our co-founders, Kim and Thomas, and myself are all NaNoWriMo vets, and Novlr has sponsored NaNoWriMo since 2019 because we share their aims of supporting writers and uplifting the writing community. 

Novlr is a writing workspace designed to get you from the spark of an idea to a completed first draft without any distractions.  We’re completely free to use for up to five projects, and we are the first creative writing platform to be writer-owned.* 

We put writers at the centre of everything we do, and we work with our community to build the tools that writers need. We care about allowing every writer to focus on what’s most important — your words. And we are all about empowering  writers to achieve their writing goals, no matter what they look like. 

Why use Novlr this NaNoWriMo?

With Novlr, you can fully integrate your project with NaNoWriMo without having to manually keep track of your word counts. 

We keep track of all your words automatically, from words written, deleted, to total word count. Our integration sends that data directly to NaNoWriMo, keeping your project updated on the NaNoWriMo site as you write. 

We’ve also put goals front and centre in your writing workspace, which will keep you on track to reach your NaNoWriMo goals, as well as let you keep up your writing practice even after NaNoWriMo has finished.

Lastly, we’ve got advanced writing analytics that will help you learn all about your writing habits, like when you’re most productive, and help you get the most out of your writing time.

In addition to the platform itself, I’m also going to be writing with you all this year! 

Novlr will be hosting a NaNoWriMo kickoff event on November 1st at at 23:00 - 01:00 GMT / 18:00 - 20:00 CT. 

Throughout the month, I’ll also be running regular writing sprints in our Discord and sharing lots of posts with inspiration, encouragement, and resources, as well as chat through our projects.

Join me and my writing buddy, Molly, for lots of creativity 😍

No matter where you write your words, NaNoWriMo is the perfect time to build a writing community. I’ve made lifelong friends through my participation, and have got so many words written. Whether you use Novlr or not, participation is the key. And our community, and the NaNo community at large, are here to support you as you reach for the lofty goal of 50,000 words in 30 days.

I can’t wait to read all the amazing things you write!

*P.S. While our Standard plan is completely free, we do offer some extras for those who want the extra push. As sponsors of NaNoWriMo, we’re offering all participants this year 40% off Novlr Pro for 12 months, and winners, 60%! Just visit the offers page in your NaNoWriMo dashboard.

Novlr Pro gets you unlimited projects, unlimited version history to restore older versions of your work, a ProWritingAid integrated proofreader for when you’re ready to edit, as well as access to our advanced analytics. Create your free account at Novlr.org.

[radiowrites]

2023 Writer Year-In-Review

Hi, I’m RaisedonRadio & FortressofmyPast on AO3 and FF.net. This is an on-going tradition since 2015. Check out my past year-end posts: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

Tagging a few, but if you come across this, consider it an open tag! You’re welcome to tag me back, I’d love to read it!

@writercorianarose @shesailsships @talesofsorrowandofruin @azdesertwillow @goneahead @littlemissfandomworld @dreams-of-kalopsia @halleyuhm

Big change for me compared to last year—in addition to NaNoWriMo, I actually posted fanfics! I tried to add some new questions to this year’s edition, I hope they might even move out of my tiny circle.

Total Word Counts: 51,920 for 2023 NaNoWriMo 15,570 on 2022 NaNoWriMo project 19,193 for July 2023 Camp NaNoWriMo (mostly fanfics) 28,310 in published fanfics (this number is overlapping with camp nano, I wasn’t paying attention, so I’m not going to add everything together)

Total Number Of Completed Works: 10 Total Number of WIPS worked on this year: 10 or so How Many WIPs do you still have: 23

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I wrote way more than expected! I seriously didn’t think I would do NaNoWriMo again. And I published ten fics! That’s ten more than last year!

Did you take any writing risks this year? The NaNoWriMo project was definitely a risk for me. I basically had an idea and no outline. It was quite a challenge to my perfectionism issues—I had to basically never reread anything and just keep going, fully aware that I can better foreshadow the ideas that came up halfway through in the next rewrite.

Biggest Surprise: I wrote for NaNoWriMo again, which I was pretty sure wouldn't happen lol, and hit the word count, all through discovery writing, and having very little idea where I was going with it.

Biggest Disappointment: I dropped that above mentioned project the moment November ended! I can tell it has potential, hidden in there. I will definitely return to it.

Do you have any writing goals for the new year? I’d love to at least finish the first draft of the 2023 NaNoWriMo project, bringing it to a tentative end so I can actually reread it and go from there. And keep writing fanfic, and maybe even work on the 2022 nanowrimo project…

Fanfiction Questions Below! (if you don’t write fanfiction feel free to skip or rework the questions for your original works.)

Fandoms I’ve written in this year: I wrote fics for 7 different fandoms! For the following kdramas: Island, Tale of the Nine Tailed, Memorist, Royal Secret Agent, W: Two Worlds, May I Help You?, and a little Korean Web drama called Handmade Love.

Your most popular story of the year? That would be Besides You with 327 hits and 47 kudos. However Superhero got the most comment interaction with 4!

The story that was easiest/or most fun to write: I Think He Knows was fun to write! I do just love brooding with a heart of gold formerly immortal male leads.

Hardest story to write: Rescue Me, Superhero, Restore, and Prayers & Promises were four works that I had left for dead, and came back and found them to be basically finished and just needed proofreading. (So just in case anyone wondered how I turned out three of those in like two days: they were actually done and I was hellbent on getting them out of my WIPs list)

Your sweetest story: That would definitely be Superhero. I altered my normal narrative style to better fit the child’s character, and I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Your saddest scene: I feel like I hit a lot of angst this year, but nothing really sad?

The sexiest moment you’ve written this year? *coughs* I wrote five pieces of smut. (Half of my fanfics were smut this year?!) Umm, I’m torn between Beside You and Don’t Blame Me? But also Never Be the Same and Take On Me???

Your favorite tag: (whether you use it the most or just something witty/perfect for the story) My brother announced to me that he reads all my tags (he was trying to embarrass me about one of my smut pieces) so I did a shout out to him in the next fic. He saw it within the day, I was actually impressed.

Most unintentionally telling story: (have you accidentally or purposefully exposed a detail about yourself?) Religious guilt seems to be a reoccurring tag this year. In all seriousness, not quite sure why, but yet it kinda makes sense? (its complicated lmao) And for some reason not one, but two fics ended with marriage proposals?! (I’m so single.)

Are any of your fics named after/heavily inspired by music? I’m RaisedonRadio and it would be concerning if—checks list—less than 8 of the 10 fics weren’t named after songs, haha! (I’m actually just really bad at naming fics…)

Good To You and Besides You are both songs by the band Marianas Trench, and are heavily inspired by the songs. Rescue Me is by OneRepublic, one of those more vibes than lyrics inspired. I Think He Knows by Taylor Swift was definitely on repeat for that fic, as well as Don't Blame Me. (Poems), Prayers, and Promises was more a steal the name of the song by John Denver, for some reason I think Cold by Corbyn was on repeat when writing that one. Take On Me was named more for the similarities between the MV and the series! Never Be The Same was for the vibes of the song by Camila Cabello but not really the lyrics.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Maybe it’s cheating but I’m not sure if I can really choose? I know it’s not a common writer sentiment but I really do like them all for different reasons.

Like I churned out Good To You and Besides You within ten days of each other in July, after not writing any fanfic basically for a year and a half.

And then I pulled Rescue Me out of the dead drafts pile and made myself work on more description.

I Think He Knows was my first foray into a brand new fandom.

Don’t Blame Me is one of my rare canon divergence fics.

Restore was another dead draft that I found to be mostly complete, and decide to release into the world even if I knew there was so much more I could have done with it.

Prayers and Promises was not only another new fandom, but for some reason, I decided to write for a side character. It’s still sitting on just 1 hit and that makes it all the better that I really wrote it for myself.

Superhero was out of my comfort zone of writing for a kid’s perspective and I was so happy with how it turned out.

Take On Me was a draft sitting at less than 1k words and I challenged myself to finish it before the new year, and got it done in two days.

And then, to finish it all off with the intense desire to have ten fics under the belt for 2023, I wrote Never Be The Same in less than two days for the last drama I had watched, and the speed that the last two fics were actually finished was a huge change for me.

Fanfiction risks you took this year? I wrote fanfic for not one, but two fandoms that I had to create the first tags for on AO3! Also, as I started to slip into just writing for kdramas this year, I’ve basically become my own proofreader and editor at this point. Any mistakes are my own, lol.

My favorite part of fandom this year: That would be getting two kudos and a comment on I Think He Knows, one of the fics that is the first in its fandom tag. To actually connect with more fans of such a tiny project was so cool!

Thanks for reading and here’s to next year!

[randomstupidchaos]

WIP Title Ask Game

I was tagged by @rms-writes

Rules: reveal the titles of the documents in your wip folder and tag as many people as there are documents. Let others ask questions about the ones that interest them and post snippets or explain the contents as you see fit!

All of these are folders rather than files 'cause all of my files are nondescript within the folders, haha.

Birthright

Bloodline

Chokehold

Daybreak

Deadhouse

Endgame

Frostbite

Ghostland

Headcase

Madtown

Mountain Dawn

NaNoWriMo 2012

Outcast

Sickday

Turncoat

I also had to open a folder 'cause most of the above are from my series. The folder is literally just 'Other Novels' haha.

16. Charybdis Rising 17. Crossing the Storm 18. Fractured Starlight 19. July Camp 2018 20. NaNoWriMo 2018 21. NaNoWriMo 2019

Ummmmm I don't know if I even know 21 writers, my gosh.

Tagging: @daisyneptune @doublegoblin @evilwriter-originals @ettawritesnstudies @erdarielthewhumper @gigglebug @inky-duchess @jealous-rage @kjscottwrites @lettersandinkstains @mariahwritesstuff @notalazysod @pens-swords-stuff @perringwrites @rexxles @sleepyowlwrites @skalidra @talesofsorrowandofruin @theboarsbride @zmwrites @abalonetea

Holy shit I do.

[courtleymanor]

hey everybody i'm doing camp nanowrimo because i failed to finish the novelization of courtley manor i started back in 2019

[ageless-aislynn]

It’s going to be November before we know it and you know what THAT means, right?

It’s NaNoWriMo time! 🥳🎉

Where I will be writing the scintillating novel of a fangirl who’s trying desperately to finish all of these darn works-in-progress. Can she do it? Will she find love along the way? Probably only the fictional kind but that’s still TOTALLY VALID. Stay tuned for the NaNo novel that will have you on your feet, cheering for the plucky protagonist to make her word count and to finally, at long last, give her blorbos the happy ending* they deserve!

*And sometimes they even get a *cough cough happy ending cough cough* because there are a couple of smut fics in there, lol.

So, prepare yourself for the adventure of a lifetime with...

...coming soon* to a Tumblr blog/AO3 account near you!

*No pun intended after that whole, you know, smut fic mention. Ahem.

 Anybody out there planning to do this next NaNo? 😎👍 This will be my 15th NaNo proper (I’ve done every November NaNo since 2008) and my 36th (!!!) NaNo event counting the Camp NaNos along the way (the twice yearly Camps started in 2011, I missed the very first one, one in 2018 and 2019).

Wish me luck and best of luck to anybody out there who’s going to be NaNo-ing right along side of me and mah blorbos!

⭐💖⭐

[pluttskutt]

Who's doing camp in April?

I'll be working on an old NaNoWriMo project from 2019. It's been stuck in the first draft stage since, so it's time to change that.

Tags I'll be using:

#camp nanowrimo 2023 #plus april project #ts draft two

[druidx]

The Ruby Falls - NaNoWriMo 2022 Debrief

What was I aiming for?

To finish the first draft of this story.

So how did I do?

I did it! I finished the first draft of The Ruby Falls on day 21, which coincidentally was the same day I "won" Nano. I even had some time to do a bit of rewriting... However I may have to revisit that because I'm not sure of it's quality.

Stats!

Total writing time (h): 53:38:30 Total writing time (D): 2.24 Average writing time per day (h): 01:46:47 Wordiest day: 2nd, 9520 w/c Words per hour (avg): 1,042 Average Session Duration: 00:19:38 Final word count for NaNoWriMo: 53,473 Current word count for the Document: 181,884

How does this compare to previous years?

About average I think. It wasn't terrible, and it wasn't great. The words came in a consistent trickle, and I felt okay most of the month with this.

I only started recording timed stats for 2019, so I don't have enough data to say for sure, but I think 1,042w/h is a little lower than my mean. I know getting ill and then the subsequent exhaustion that followed was not great for my words/hour rate, and in the latter part of the month I rarely went over 700w/h.

I'm not terribly upset about this years performance - it was more important to me that I finish the story than I beat my 4-day record. So while this year was mediocre, I'm okay with that.

What’s Next?

Rewrite and editing (my detested); then beta-read (my never-done-before); final edit pass and posted.

Last year I rather naively said that I would have The Ruby Falls posted by the end of Oct this year, because I was assuming I'd do Camp Nano and finish it then. I'm now considering if the same timeframe would be enough for the rewrite etc in 2023. IDK, we'll see.

At this point I'm just "We'll get there when we get there" 😆

[katrinafaire]

A little in awe right now (RE: The Cure)

I'm sitting here at this very moment, in a pause from my writing, with 53K and some change for my wordcount on The Cure.

Guys, I started May 14th of this year, at the encouragement of a dear friend. She and another have been instrumental in me having the encouragement to continue to write at frankly an absurd pace (for me). If I maintain it, if I do also get 20K - and likely more - next month for Camp NaNo, I will finish my first draft by or during August.

I will then likely finish my second draft / first edits before November, and if I want a last pass I can do it for NaNoWriMo and finish in December - what I'm saying is I could conceivably have this book done and ready to start posting on Royal Road by New Years -- and maybe, by then, start working on Book2.

I am in awe. Never have I had a full story come at me so fast, so desperate to be told. Granted, I've been sitting on it / letting it percolate since 2019 (And we all know what life changing events happened then.) But my point was that this was not entirely done overnight; it never is.

And yet, now that I'm doing it, I'm reeling from how fast it feels. It's twisted and changed over the years; I can still easily recognize it but the cast and such has developed. And still needs to develop more! There's a ton of diversity I need to weave in more deliberately, more culture building and examination even though the world as a whole has changed drastically in however many (I'm not telling, the Rule of Numbers forbids it) millennia it's been since our time.

Long stories (50K+) are my sweet spot, which helps, too. I'm used to plotting for those, and I have experience writing for stories upwards of 100K. It's funny, I had no idea how fanfiction would prepare me to bring my original works to life, yet here we are.

I guess if there's a point of this, it's laying out the timeline of progression and also exploring how quickly something can go, when you have both - BOTH - time and inspiration on your side along with the determination to put the perspiration into it. I'm really amazed and proud of my progress and I wanted to share it with anyone that comes across it.

Because if I can do the thing, I have faith that you can do the thing. It might take longer! I have a ton of advantages in finding time for it. But you can do the thing, if you stick it out. I have faith.

[nanowrimo]

Camp NaNoWriMo Has Begun!

Happy July! We're so excited to be writing with you at Camp NaNoWriMo this month... and especially intrigued to see what you'll do with that extra 31st day. Have you started your project already?

Here's our pro tip for getting started: Give yourself a hundred words, maybe two, to write without any creative pressure or expectation. Consider it a way of breaking in that blank page, and limbering up your creative expression.

If you want, you can even take on a prompt from the @NaNoWordSprints crew on Twitter, check in with our Camp Counselors during their tweet chat next Monday, or join a Virtual Write-In for some real-time writing camaraderie! 

And when you start writing, don’t forget to update your progress so you can track it throughout the month (and get those sweet, sweet writing badges on your Camp NaNoWriMo profile).

Start your writing project with Camp NaNoWriMo today!

[amochi]

 Day 50

HOLY BALLS TO THE WALLS I FUCKING FINISHED IT IT IS DONE I FINISHED MY FIRST DRAFT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I’m gonna scream I’m so happy. It is done, 107878 words and exactly 227 google doc pages and I am printing that sucker out holy shit

[typewriterwitch]

Crushed it today! 5K+ is my best daily word count this month. Here’s hoping I can hit 50K in the next couple of days. After that, I’ll have a lot to wade through to get my story straight, pun intended. 

[the-mermaid-typist]

I DID IT 

20,000 WORDS! 20K!!!!!!!!!!

I DID IT

I WON CAMP NANOWRIMO!!!!!!!

I’m so ... pleasantly exhausted and overwhelmed and surprised with myself. This is the largest nanowrimo goal I’ve ever set for myself - screw it, the biggest writing goal I’ve EVER set for myself. Oh my god I ... I thought I was crazy to even think I could ever meet that kind of goal. I’ve only ever gotten to 10k in the past, and thought 20k was just too much. But there was a part of me that believed I could do it and ... and I did. 

I did. 

I’m so happy right now. I’ll ... I’ll talk more in the morning. 

Wow.

[lizhly-writes]

just your kind of dream

1/2 the first chapter of one of my main three WIPs, thousand year vow. You can see a little more information on this here.  

Dessi runs her fingers over the embroidery with a frown.

The images sewn into the fabric are terribly familiar.  Cypress for despair, the sword and flames for massacre, the wheel for the cycle of suffering, the border of chains for the pact unbroken.

This is the story of the Bane and the Traitor-Children. It’s the first story every child of Scrit hears, a history elaborated and enforced at least once a week at the creaking schoolhouse a stone’s throw away from her home.  The teacher, grim-faced as she told them how the Bane turned the children who would become His champions, coaxed them to view Him as someone dearly beloved instead of a soulless abomination, until They willingly knelt and pledged Him Their loyalty.

“And on the summer solstice, the Bane sent the Children to the destiny He had decided for Them. On that day, He declared…?”

Dessi remembers shivering in the cold, standing with her back ramrod-straight, chin raised high, and her voice mixed with all the other children as they chorused, “The greatest invention of mankind is unquestioning faith.”

“Very good.”

“Never forget,” warned the elders.  “Never forget,” snapped the teachers. “Never forget,” whispered the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and near-every face in the village.

And so the children of Scrit never do.  The story is ground so deeply into their bones that even beaten, bruised, half-dead, they’d be able to tell it without even the slightest hitch in memory.  

Dessi straightens and sets the finely-stitched blanket to the side.  It’s beautifully done, every detail carefully rendered in vibrant colors. Here lies the problem: it shouldn’t exist.  None of this should.

All around her are familiar walls, familiar pictures, her ma’s pottery neatly shelved away, a sprig of her da’s favorite flowers sitting in a bowl of water, herbs hanging from the rafters.  There’s a particularly crooked bundle of boneset hanging above her, just where she left it, and none of this can possibly be real.

This is her old home.  That’s unmistakable. But it went up in flames with the rest of Scrit seven years ago.   She’d watched it burn down to the ground herself.

Now it’s here and whole and decidedly not covered in soot or blood. She’s dreamt of the way things used to be, but this is like a suspiciously tame fever-dream.  All is silent and calm and utterly unnatural.  She’d had a big family, each room warmed with the heat of each breath and the sound of gossip and chatter.  The house had never gone quiet, not really.  No matter how late it got, there’d always be at least one person up - her da, picking out herbs by the light of the moon, or Aedda checking the hearthfire, or Rilli fiddling with some private project.  Sometimes even Dessi herself, staring at the ceiling until lulled to sleep by the whispers of her older siblings.

Now it’s so quiet that a single footstep practically echo through the air.  Even her head is silent.  Dessi hasn’t had that kind of peace since —

She stops, stands perfectly still.

She has had a dead god’s whispers and screams and thoughts flashing through her mind ever since she was ten years old.  He’s never left her.  Especially not in these dreams, the ones that show how things used to be.  He’s drawn to the slow burn of anger at the injustice of life.  Whenever he catches even the slightest hint of her own bitterness, he whispers about how things should be made right.

And he’s not here.

A sharp gesture, and her knives freeze into being in her hands.  Lord Takastos might be as good as dead, but he is still a god.  There is no natural phenomenon or mortal being that can keep him so quietly out of her mind.  The only entity that can do such a thing is another god, and there is only one god she knows that would lock her head down like this.

This is not just a dream.

“Desima.”

Dessi spins violently on her heel.  It’s a reflex to send her knives flying toward the intruder, and she’s got another set lined up against her fingers before she realizes exactly who she’s looking at.

She swallows dryly.  “Da.”

Her aim will never be good as Willa’s, but that doesn’t stop it from being good.  The proof of it is staring at her right between her father’s bright blue eyes.

The tilt of head is a little wrong, the curve of his mouth sharper than she remembers, but who exactly this is supposed to be is unmistakable. “Da,” Dessi repeats.

She can almost feel the temperature drop.

There’s a faint frown on his face.  He looks vaguely disappointed, like all she’d done was brought home substandard markings in calligraphy.  “Well, that’s not polite, is it?” Da says, his voice perfectly calm, as if he didn’t have a frozen knife dug deep in his brow and buried in his torso.  He nonchalantly yanks the ice out of his ribs, and Dessi gets the pleasure of watching blood dribble down his side.

Not again.  Not again, no never again not again not again not again -

She and her brothers and sisters had tripped over their da when they’d stumbled out of their burning house, all blistered skin and bones.  He’d been face-down in the dirt, and they’d been able to see the hole that’d been torn through his back to the ground below.

Dessi clamps a hand over her mouth.  There’s a soft part of her she’d long thought she’d excised whispering that she’s a traitor, a kinslayer, nothing more than shit smeared on the ground.  It’s making something sour and cold well up in her stomach, claw its way up her throat.  Half-melted snow mixed with tiny icicles mixed with bile, prickling and bloody and foul on her tongue.

This isn’t real.  She knows that, but if it was — if it was —

Her da would’ve died again, and it would’ve been all her fault.  

Da clicks his tongue.  “What would your ma say, ah? I bet Lilli wouldn’t’ve been too pleased.”

No, Lilaea of Niwe wouldn’t have appreciated one of her children greeting their father with a knife to the head, and she wouldn’t have liked blood on the floorboards.  Too much of a pain to scrub out, she said. Dessi remembers her ma good-naturedly scolding one of her older sisters when she came back from a hunt.  Rilli hadn’t drained her quarry properly, and she’d left faint tracks when she made her way through the door.  She’d needed more practice to learn not to make a mess, her ma had said.

But, see, Dessi remembers her mother screaming, gutteral with rage and pain and fear.  She remembers the temperature dropping and spears of ice following her mother’s sharp, violent gestures, rushing towards her unexpected guests to make them bleed.  Her ma had fought before They made her a corpse on her own clean floors.  She would’ve done the same when dealing with imposters like this.

Dessi straightens her spine.  “You don’t get to say her name like that,” Dessi hisses, lifting her chin high.

Lilli instead of Lilaea, a shortened form that says I care, I love, you are beloved, I am yours and you are mine.  It shouldn’t be said so nice and easy like it belongs by the mouth of the thing wearing her da’s face.

“Dessi?” says her da’s voice, sounding lost and hurt. “What d’you mean?”

That’s not her da.  This isn’t a dream.  This is not how things are.

There is a god here that finds suffering funny.

Dessi remembers standing in the clear early morning, listening to the teacher reciting their history. “Our people cried out: why? Who?  What god have we offended? What god has wrought destruction on us all?”

And He, the great and terrible divine appeared, shining before them, and He said: I have ten thousand names, and before this world ends, I will claim thousands more. But you may call me —

She balls her hands into fists, feels the thin skin of ice forming over them crack.  “Lord Tessera,” she says tightly.

There is a singular, shining moment where she could be wrong.  All is silent, and it’s her da standing there, his brows furrowed in confusion and blood trickling from the knife in his forehead, and this could all just be a figment of her own imagination.

Then his face stretches into a grin. It’s one she sees in her nightmares.  Too wide to be human, jaw unhinged to accommodate too many, too sharp teeth. “Well met,” the Bane says, and the sound of it almost makes her step back.  She can still hear her da’s voice, but it’s muffled and reverberating, thousands of echoes layered over each other and ringing in her head.  “Greetings, Desima of Niwe.”

He shifts, ever so slightly, in her vision, into something more insubstantial, something a little less real.  Is He a little more bright?  Is He a little less memorable? Does His image burn and melt in her mind?

It doesn’t matter.  All that matters is that she’s right and by the Three, she wishes she wasn’t.

[bluejaybabbles-archive]

WIP (Re)Introduction and Camp NaNo Announcement!

When the Waves Kiss the Trees (previously Iron-Bred, Violet-Born)

Oliver Ferrao is the crown prince of northern Lumistrand. The weight of his father’s expectations and the growing distance between himself and the rest of his family often drive him to find refuge in his extravagant library. There, he loses himself in legends of absent gods and strange creatures.

Rute Quevedo is a changeling stranded in the Pale King’s court. He dreams of flying above the treetops, of seeing the lights of the city up close, of being anything and anyone other than the Pale King’s plaything.

Their meeting is purely chance. What happens next is anything but.

Rute and Oliver find the strength and purpose to escape their bad situations in each other, and before long, they’re on a grand adventure together. Their destination: Glenna, an abandoned city that may or may not exist. But along the way, they awaken something ancient and vengeful, and finding sanctuary in Glenna may be their only chance at survival.

GENRE: New Adult Fantasy, Adventure, LGBTQ+ Romance

CURRENT WORD COUNT: 16,446

POV: 3rd Person

Setting: The fictional island continent of Lumistrand

WIP Page: Here!

Camp NaNo Goal: 20,000 more words

I’m going to keep any old posts tagged “iron-bred, violet-born” and hopefully add the tag “wtwktt” to them, and for a while, any new posts will have both tags! I’m thinking I’ll use both tags for at least a couple weeks before fully transitioning to wtwktt. 

WTWKTT tag list below the cut! Let me know if you want to be added or removed!

@goosemixtapes

@beef-wellingay

@conjurer-of-stars

@crystallinecrow

@kc-llewen

@idreamtofreality

@i-cant-carry-it-for-you

@starlightkell

@maximillianvalentine

@diseonfire