#nanowrimo 2020 progress

[maybankiara]

okay but i'm working on phone swap again and i had to read the full thing to remember all the details and man. the way i was squealing like i was 14 again, reading some cute shit. the way i woke up in the morning and my boyfriend was trying to get me out of bed but i was just like 'no i can't i have to keep reading it's so tense these characters just broke up' and he was like. okay. aren't you reading your own story. and i was like yes i am sir and that is precisely why i need to get back into it because holy shit phone swap is so good in some aspects and i just. i can't wait to start sharing it with the world again, whenever that may be

[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.)

[talysalankil]

so yesterday with everything going down at nanowrimo i've decided to move my logging of writing sessions to a local spreadsheet (which, honestly, don't know why i wasn't doing that long ago, it's not like i used nanowrimo for anything else and on top of that it doesn't let you browse all the data you give it…anyway)

but then i decided, what the hell, let's try to log all the writings i didn't log on the nanowrimo website.

just to be clear: outside of nanowrimo events i only started logging everything else in 2020. basically during lockdown. and of course i don't have any way to knowing exactly what was written when. so it's a lot of estimates

BUT i'm almost done now. honestly if i didn't have an early start tomorrow i would stay up and try to do as much of what remains as possible. all that's left (as far as I can tell, anyway) is to see if i can get the FTEITS progress between nanowrimo events, since i think it's the only novel project i worked on the regular during those years, and also, my old childhood project, which sadly is a mess of literally hundreds of small files.

[sinsisters]

Postmortem: Launching a Kickstarter (or two) as a first-time dev

Also available to read on Itch.io

Hi everyone,

 This is going to be a very informal postmortem from me (Natty, writer/programmer/game director) about the development of The Spanish Privateer from conception to the release. This read is really for anyone who wants to run a campaign or be a first-time dev and hear from someone who has met their goals but not had any outstanding success. I’m also always happy to chat one-on-one with someone who might have specific questions about the process, especially for Canadians wondering about the technicalities of running a small business & shipping.

Conception

The Spanish Privateer was a collection of five pirate characters that sat on a Google Doc until 2018, when the otome game jam rolled around and I, working a 9:30-4 (dream hours!) co-op position in Vancouver, decided to join up and turn those five characters (now four) into the main characters for my very own visual novel. As a lead, I struggled with trying to delegate and felt that I hadn’t completed enough of the script to know what artwork needed to be done. I think we managed to pull it off well, though, and I was happy to hear people’s feedback to the prologue.

Ultimately, the project fell under the radar as I continued to work on it on my own time, not wanting to ask those who had worked on the game jam for additional commitment, and not knowing whether the finished project would be commercial or not.

In the future, I’m still interested in working on game jams, but only for game jams that are meant to be short, complete games. We’ll see if it happens!

Script Writing

The bulk of the script writing for The Spanish Privateer happened while I was living in Japan on co-op, from the summer of 2019 to the late winter of 2020. I had created a detailed outline for Flint’s route, a less detailed one for Lark, and a very sketchy one for Rico. I tend not to face writer’s block, and writing dialogue especially feels like it comes easily to me, so it was more about scheduling time each day to write. I decided to participate in the NaNoWriMo of 2019 to monitor my progress, ending with 51 547 words written! My goal at this point was to just complete the scripts, and focus on everything else once I knew what CGs I would need to flesh out scenes.

The First Kickstarter

It became clear to me that I would need to fund, at the very least, the CGs in the game. But The Spanish Privateer was ‘the otome I always wanted to play’, and I wanted the game to reflect that. Oftentimes, indie VN devs will buy their background images from stock creators (such as Minikle), paying a one-time fee for licensed use of the images. In fact, a few of the backgrounds in The Spanish Privateer are from these packs. But a pirate ship is a niche category, and I knew I would need to commission original backgrounds for the game.

I was willing to put down around $1000 of my own money towards the game. Keep in mind, I was a university student, and I figured I wouldn’t make any returns on the project. I commissioned three CGs, but all the other assets were from the original game jam.

The Kickstarter of October 2020 failed, but with 128 backers, suddenly this project that no one had heard about had come to life. Something that I didn’t know about Kickstarter is that… most Kickstarter backers are Kickstarter backers. That’s to say, 82% of my backers have backed over 20 projects, and 40% have backed over 100 projects! Only 11% of my backers have backed 10 or fewer projects, and I personally knew half of those people. Here’s a little histogram showing the data specific to my Kickstarter (the second one).

Figure 1: Number of backers sorted by the number of projects they have backed on Kickstarter. Data taken from The Spanish Privateer 2021 Kickstarter on January 11th, 2023

The people who pledged the higher tiers ($60+) varied between those who backed few projects and those who backed many.

My takeaway from this revelation was that Kickstarter itself has an audience that is worth tapping into. That’s part of the reason we see visual novel developers who have had financial success off their games and who have been making games for a while, such as Hanako Games and Winterwolves, start using Kickstarter in the recent years (and likely because the market has grown considerably).

The Bane of Kickstarter: Cancelled Projects

I spent a lot of time looking at visual novels (particularly otoges) that had done well on Kickstarter. Some of them succeeded because they had people pledge those platinum $1000 tiers, some succeeded because they had >500 backers, some succeeded because they had low goals. But amongst these, an unfortunately large number of successful projects got cancelled later on. For that reason, developers who follow through with their projects, communicate with their player base, and meet or exceed expectations, such as GB Patch Games, do well with repeated projects on Kickstarter. They have a dedicated fanbase who are happy to support their work, largely because they know the developers will make good use of it. As a first-time dev, I didn’t have that background. I also had a small number of romanceable love interests (but I still think three is the perfect number for a first-time dev and would recommend that to other first-time devs), the art wasn’t the jaw-dropping highly detailed anime style we see with companies like Great Gretuski Studios or Nifty Visuals, and aside from ‘PIRATES’, it didn’t have much of a grab.

The Next Steps

I released a survey that got quite a few responses, thankfully. Then, I knew I needed to use the last of my cash reserves to commission a few more CGs, and most importantly, commission new sprites. That was the big risk for me. It was a huge art style change, and the CGs clashed with the sprites much more strongly. But it needed to be done since I hadn’t heard from the sprite artist who had collaborated with me during the otome game jam, and in addition to needing more sprites completed, I didn’t want to use the work of someone in a commercial product without their permission or without being able to repay them.

I really love the new sprites and the art style of my sprite artist. It was also a good decision for me to request separate eyebrow, eye, and mouth expressions rather than set expressions. It allowed me to have much more variety with character expressions. I learned a lot during this process, and because of that, I think the final few characters I commissioned (Catalina and Vasco) ended up being the strongest because of that (in addition to the sprite artist’s personal improvements, of course!).

But the game changer for the next Kickstarter was the new key art and logo. The key art is what draws people in, and it was truly stunning.

I have mixed feelings regarding the physical items. The survey showed some people were interested while others weren’t, so I wanted very cheap physical items (compared to charms, for example). I’m not sure if I would do physical items again (I really dislike the process of packaging and shipping), but on the other hand, I’m delighted to have stickers and an art book of characters I made!!! From a game I made!! Isn’t that cool!! (psst you can still buy the artbook and get stickers btw)

The People Who Made The Difference

I did reach out to some people to review the demo, and Blerdy Otome and Sonic Nancy Fan both came through! Additionally, when you’re running a Kickstarter, you tend to check obsessively… and check out the other visual novels that are running at the same time. Off the top of my head, Henchman Story, Silver Blue, Somnium Eleven, Perfect Gold, and Heroine for Hire were running the same time, and some of us gave shout outs to each other, which was nice (especially considering I had a following of about 40 people on Twitter). Chouette, Akua, Naja, Ayael, and Neeka, in particular liked and shared many of my posts, which makes a difference not only for reaching a new otome audience, but for me to slowly get to know other devs and the indie otoge community! I’m thankful to them for that, and for the devs I interact with now as well.

Additionally, VN Game Dev, Sweet & Spicy, and the Otome Lovers curator group all reviewed my game at various stages, which I appreciated as well. In addition, I reached out to a few other groups, some which responded agreeing to review (but with long backlogs) and others who I did not receive a reply from. The otome community is small, so if a visual novel doesn’t have some stand out quality that appeals to the non-visual novel community, such as innovative gameplay or a connection to a larger franchise, it might not be worth reaching out to people who don’t typically cover visual novels. Personally, I actively sought out those who reviewed visual novels, particularly otome games.

The Second Kickstarter

The general rule of a Kickstarter campaign is that if a project can make one third of their goal after 48 hours, they’re likely to reach their goal (with the second third happening throughout the campaign and the final third during the last three days). Because of the previous Kickstarter, I already had a number of backers who were ready to back again, which helped a lot with that big first day boost. I wouldn’t say the campaign was a raging success—the total amount transferred from Kickstarter was 5206.49 CAD (this was transferred at the end of May, 2021) across 169 backers (6 backers dropped), which is less than 4000 USD today. This is a really, really small amount of money to make a game, but it was what I needed to make the game, which is all I cared about.

Here's how it all came together:

Writing & Programming: The writing was done, although I continued to edit and revise. Ren’Py is very easy to work with and the programming is minimal. My labour is all at zero cost, and I frankly don’t expect I’ll ever make a penny from my games (but wouldn’t that be nice?)

BGs: I worked with two different artists for the backgrounds, and supplemented them with stock backgrounds I paid a flat fee for, such as the shore, church, fancy bedroom, bedroom with two beds, lagoon, and tavern with the bear skin on the wall. Sometimes I realized retroactively that I needed a night version of a background and did this myself. The result wasn’t… great, but thankfully the scenes that needed these changes were minimal, and the ones with long scenes were properly done by the artist. I also did the ocean background because I realized belatedly I needed one and couldn’t find one I liked online. All part of learning more about the planning process…

CGs: I continued working with my main artist, Tsunya (Tsuume) on the CGs. Commissioning CGs was the most challenging part of the process. I learned a lot about how to better communicate certain things I wanted in a scene, as well as which ideas I had didn’t translate as well to a CG. For example, for Flint’s kissing CGs, I struggled with the best way to get two vertical people embracing to look good on a horizontal screen. The final CG ended up being them laying horizontally across the screen. As a result, the overall image is really intimate and pleasing to the eye. I carried this on with Lark’s route, which features Carlota’s hair blowing in one kiss scene to compensate for the space, and her dress blowing in another. I also learned that a close-up of a love interest can be simple but beautiful. In the future, I would probably like to incorporate more close-ups of the love interests rather than focussing on having so many couple CGs. With Rico’s route, I wanted some more action shots, such as the horse and Rico as a kid. I particularly liked the angle of Rico’s CG as a child, and I would use more of those sharp angles in the future.

Sprites: When you have a limited budget and you’re commissioning artists, rather than paying artists a monthly salary like regular studios do, you have to be very respectful of their time. My sprite artist was in school, so of course it was difficult for her to predict when she would be available or for how long (which I could relate to as a student as well). I probably would have commissioned a few more sprites from her, such as the grandee and the governor, but we ended up being limited on time and I figured that I would probably keep on adding more and more sprites if I didn’t end somewhere. I was just incredibly in love with her designs and work. She really brought the characters of The Spanish Privateer to life. Personally, I love non-anime style art such as Made Marion, Andromeda Six, Imperial Grace, ValiDate, Cinders, The Radiants, Angela He, Arcade Spirits, and Under Pretense of Death. But anime art’s biggest advantage is how incredibly emotive it looks. When art is less realistic, expressions can be exaggerated without looking disturbing to the viewer. Going forward, I’m still not sure which style I would prefer. It will probably depend on the game I produce—for example, if I make a game where the protagonist is customizable, then the art style will likely be anime.

Chibi CGs: I had worked with an artist to do some quick chibi designs of the characters, and I decided to work with her again for the chibi CGs. By this point, I had already commissioned many CGs from my CG artist, so communication was much better for these CGs. It was a great way to show off many characters in a scene (such as in Lark’s route) or characters who don’t have sprites (such as a certain man that we see in Rico’s route).

GUI: Graphic design and user interface design is really its own thing. I trusted the GUI to someone who had lots of experience doing visual novel GUIs and told her my vague ideas of what I was looking for, and she managed to turn it into something gorgeous! The important takeaway is that the less you know about something, the more important it is that you’re hiring someone with experience in that department. Since the visual novel realm is so niche, this can be challenging at times.

Logo: Pretty much the same as above! The logo is beautiful and tells a story all on its own, which I love. The artist also provided the base file, so I was able to add and remove different elements from the design, which was incredibly helpful for me as I simplified it for smaller images or darkened areas for better contrast. I would recommend anyone getting a logo done to request the illustrator or equivalent working file.

Music: The only music I paid for was a commercial license of a few songs. The other songs are all in the creative commons. Even if I had been able to commission an original soundtrack for The Spanish Privateer, frankly, I love the songs in the game so much that I wouldn’t change them for the world. I chose peaceful piano pieces for Flint, harpsichord and whimsical tracks for Lark, and grand, adventurous orchestral music for Rico. Some people pooh-pooh the importance of music in a visual novel, but I think the tracks make a huge difference in creating the tone of a scene. My favourite part was selecting tracks for the good endings and other endings.

Kickstarter Rewards: I worked with the same artist who did the two key arts for the wallpapers, and ended up with stunning results. Carlota’s in particular is breathtaking. I commissioned high-quality chibis for the stickers, and my big takeaway is to NOT have limbs jutting out the way Flint’s arm is. The spacing is awkward and makes the pricing of the stickers more expensive than they need to be. Additionally, it won’t work well for charms if that’s something you plan on doing. But other than the rogue limb I failed to account for, the process was smooth. The big challenge is not knowing how different the colours will look once printed. Even test prints aren’t foolproof because each printing company may have different methods of printing. I used StickerApp for the stickers, but Luna Chai has some great and relevant blog posts (current blog and archived post). I used Mixam in Canada to print the art books and they get shipped as oversized lettermail. Since I don’t get anywhere CLOSE to the small business cutoffs, I don’t have to worry about collecting GST. I ordered my mailers and labels from Amazon (like the common by-product of our capitalistic world that I am), and the nice ladies at the post office just let me plunk the addressed mailers down, pay the total, and be off on my way. If you’re Canadian and sending something that doesn’t qualify as lettermail, then don’t. I mean, try really really hard not to, because it gets very expensive quickly. But I won’t get in the way of your dakimakura dreams, either (I wouldn’t say no to a Harry or Luciel Choi body pillow. Or maybe I would. How could I even begin to explain that to my family.)

Sound: Shoutout to my brother for telling me about the massive royalty-free audio bundle Sonniss offers each year for free. Their work is awesome and greatly appreciated for small devs. The rest of the sounds were sourced from various online resources. Again, related to music, sound effects are greatly underappreciated. A great visual novel should use both of your available senses, not just sight (and they can use other senses if they’re extra creative).

And All of the Other Little Things That Add Up:

Registering as a business which included going down to the bank and saying yes, this is my company called ‘SinSisters Studios’, yes, I make games about romancing men (and hopefully others), please give me a business account and card to use (I did phrase it better because I’m an adult but that is surely what we were both thinking). The business account is an online-only no-fee one which is great, and I use the debit card for all business-related expenses. You know, in case I ever get audited in the future. I also had to pay a small fee to register my business name with the government, which has to be renewed every five years, and I might buy a website domain soon for the site. SinSisters Studios is a sole proprietorship business, which is what most small Etsy businesses might be, for instance. That means I get fewer benefits and legal issues would be under my name, but it’s easy to file taxes and the fee is small. Most indie VN developers don’t have any need to incorporate. If you’re a Canadian, incorporating is really something you do for liability insurance and would be recommended if you run a Kickstarter for $100K, for example.

On the game dev side, I had to do art touch-ups such as colour correction, making sure Carlota’s mole wasn’t all over the place, and some backgrounds for CGs and chibi CGs. I wouldn’t have been able to do this all with Gimp, so I got CSP. But I can’t recommend them as strongly now that they’re changing their payment program.

Things that I found tedious and that I was not good at and would have preferred to hire someone: creating the art book and guide, doing the graphics for the Kickstarter, doing the graphics, formatting, and ten million blurbs for the websites and social media pages and presskit (actually, the presskit was kind of fun because it looks professional).

Creating and uploading the game on Itch.io using Butler is very simple. Steam was a whole ‘nother ballpark. On top of having fifty billion different asset resizing requirements, they have their own method of uploading builds that I had trouble wrapping my head around (but now, I actually prefer Steam’s build updating method to Itch.io’s. Sorry! It’s just better at merging builds and making sure you’re using the right build).

Setting up accounts, such as PayPal, a mailing newsletter, Discord, and Stripe are all in the unknowns. Just finding people to work with is a skill in its own (if you find an artist you like online, save them somewhere. I’ve found artists from Lemmasoft, Twitter, from finding images on Pinterest and then following the credit or signature ((dear artists, PLEASE make your signature something that allows us to find you!!!)), DeviantArt, even from searching foreign websites. The one thing I haven’t used is Fiverr, although I have no doubt that you can find lots of talent there as well.

But by far, the worst thing about being a game dev is…

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING

AAAAAAAAHHHHHH

The bane of most devs' existence. How I wish I could just hire someone for this role. I don’t like TikTok. I haven’t uploaded a video on there in forever, but I have this constant nagging that I need to. The only social media I like is Twitter, and that’s because that’s where all the game devs hang out. To be fair, I do think my largest audience is on Twitter as well. The company’s following has grown to over 680, which is crazy. Although a certain individual caused a mass exodus and generally Worse Time on Twitter, so who knows what the future holds. I like interacting with others on social media, but I never feel inspired to post or even comment on others’ posts. I did want to do an art book giveaway with fanart as entries, but I frankly don’t feel like I have the audience for that. Would I even get an entry? I don’t know. I would rather see people creating fanart for the game because they feel inspired to. Personally, if I could Art, I would draw several modern AUs. Maybe I will and just look at it in private, who knows. The point is, I am Bad at The Social Media and that is simply because I Do Not Try Hard Enough. It is very time consuming and mentally draining. If you’re looking for marketing tips, read Arimia’s blog, and support her games while you’re at it. She has so much awesome advice. All I have for you are tears.

I entered The Spanish Privateer in the June 2022 SteamNextFest, recorded me playing the prologue, used OBS Studio to loop it (of course, everything you do involves learning to use something new) and streamed that over SteamNextFest. The result? Not too shabby. Our wishlist balance had a spike even bigger than the release spike, so I would recommend doing it! I had no interest in talking or filming myself, so it was a low effort high reward event!

The Result (And The Numbers)

So, what was the fruition of all these efforts?

First, let’s look at Steam wishlists. If a game gets to around 8000-12000 wishlists on Steam, depending on the genre, it starts to get ‘noticed’ by Steam. That means it’ll likely appear on the upcoming list and in recommended sections. The Spanish Privateer didn’t get anywhere CLOSE to that. We were getting an average of 6 daily wishlist additions, with just under 1000 wishlists upon release. Today, we have 1553 wishlists and a conversion rate or 7.1% (meaning 7.1% of people who wishlisted it have bought the game). This is below average for games on Steam. I expected this, considering how things were going leading up to this. My goal has always been to break even. As of the day I’m writing this (Jan 11, 2023), we have sold 162 copies of The Spanish Privateer on Steam and 81 copies of the digital bundle, with 33 copies sold on Itch.io and 21 of the guide. The final amount that arrived in the bank at the end of 2022 is about 1800 CAD. It’s a low amount, but I’m not complaining, either. I’ve made back my $1000 investment!!!!!!!!!! YAY!  

That’s not to say you can’t make a living making visual novels. Just that I can’t. Maybe I will one day. But my best decision throughout this process was not investing too much money, only having three love interests, not getting feature-happy, and being careful with how I spent the money. Frankly, when I play The Spanish Privateer, sometimes I think to myself, ‘This is a $6000 game??? That’s it???’ I made the game I always wanted to play growing up, and for that, I’m proud of myself.

On a Personal Note

If you’ve read up until now, you’ve read all the game dev stuff! Hopefully this gives you a little perspective from someone who successfully published a game but has not made any income from it. You’re good to go, class dismissed.

In general, in online spaces, I prefer to be fairly private, especially when managing a company account. But I feel like I have had a number of transitions as The Spanish Privateer developed worth mentioning.

I started The Spanish Privateer following my second year of university, during my first co-op term (2018). I attended the winter semester of my third year, then moved to Tokyo for my second co-op term from summer of 2019 to March 2020. I took the summer off, then did the fall semester of my third year online (first Kickstarter launched). I then worked my third co-op term from the beginning of 2021 (second Kickstarter launched) to the end of the summer. After that, I moved back to Vancouver to complete my final year of university. I graduated in the spring of 2022, launched the game in the fall, and have been job searching ever since (☹). Which brings us to…

What’s Next

I have two major projects I would like to do. One is a TTRPG style adventure featuring EA and SEA pirates (haha, SEA, get it?). I’m running it as a D&D campaign for my friends, which has helped flesh it out, but it’s going to be a massive project in the end. The other is a Canadian mystery visual novel heavily inspired by the Ace Attorney series, Disco Elysium, and puzzlers like Nancy Drew and Professor Layton. Players will get to choose between two protagonists and play three different mysteries, getting to swap between the protagonists with each episode if they want. This one is something I really love writing. It’s murdery, it’s queer, it’s full of Canadianisms and sarcasm and features a cast of mid-twenties and thirties.

But I’ve actually been writing a classic interactive fiction/visual novel in an attempt to create an RPG system that works with Ren’Py for my needs. It’s fun, it’s text-only, it’s fantasy, and hopefully I’ll get to release it as a short, free adventure in homage of the modern IF games that I love playing these days. And of course, all of the games feature romance. It’s just optional this time. I’m sure I’ll want to create a traditional otome or amare visual novel at some point (ojijam is looking mighty tempting), but for now, I want to challenge myself in other ways.

Anyway, hopefully you have some insight as to what was going through my mind these past years. I’m always happy to chat dev stuff and give insight as to any part of the process. I’m also happy to be transparent about numbers, if someone wants any particular details on that. Thanks for reading ☺

-Natty

[faeassassin]

Huh.

Local authors I know have peer pressured me into logging in to the NaNoWriMo website again for the first time since 2020, when I was editing Abomination for Camp NaNo in April.

I stopped tracking my progress on it because a family friend had died of COVID and my uncle was in an assisted living home where he caught it and died a couple of months later.

I'm doing a writing conference in a couple of weeks, so I'll be out of town for a week, but I might give NaNo a stab if a title and opening scene grab me by the throat. That's how all my wins have started, after all.

Anywho, this'll probably be the last time I mention it here unless a novel ensues and I'm about to publish it.

[the-rogue-mockingjay]

Writer's end-of-year roundup, 2022! 🎉🎆

Despite the myriad hardships of the year for me - losing my old beagle, fighting doctors, a completely stupid amount of grief/loss, migraines and disability oh my! - it's actually been an amazingly productive and inspired year? I'm very proud! I completed the second draft of my first-ever longfic, which needs another round of editing or two before it's ready to be published, and I've discovered I LOVE editing. More than I love writing, actually????? Lots of people talk about the Dreaded Editing but for me, it was vastly easier than writing the first draft was LOL. I also did what I thought I would never do, which is create another Shepard, Morrigan Vesta, and I actually wrote mostly about her during NaNoWriMo this year. I'm finally getting the hang of how to give characters unique voices (or portray a canon character's voice accurately, which is something I used to be extremely hung up on). I can honestly say I've made a lot of progress both as a person and as a writer this year, and I'm finally starting to find my joy in writing again. Very exciting!

Taking a page out of @pikapeppa 's book in how to format this year's data- I love seeing your charts every year!! My own chart ended up being quite a bit messier, but that's probably because of how I tweaked it to fit my fics. I apologize deeply if the image quality gets butchered, I am not wise in the ways of battling Tumblr's nonsense

(HEY GUESS WHO FORGOT A FIC......the one I forgot is Marevera's Dream, which is a Wayfarer post-Ep 1 pre-Ep 2 WIP, and it clocks in at 1,174 words, making my actual total 60,486!!!!!)

*I forgot to note that In this darkness, on my own is a followup to A New and Dark Horizon.

60K........DUDE!!! I haven't written that much since junior high/I got my depression diagnosis in like 2016, so this is. Big!

New things I tried: For starters, I paced myself during NaNo instead of forcing myself to write every day like I did during NaNo 2020. And WOW was that a night-and-day difference! In 2020, I wrote about 20k and burned myself out so bad I couldn't write for another 6-8 months. This year, I wrote about 30k, and only sat down to write about half the days, successfully dodging burnout. I think that's a valuable lesson for me in what works for me, how to balance my desire to write with what I'm actually capable of that day, and how to work with my disability without letting it limit me.

I also wrote in first person for the first time in maaaaaany years, and while it's not as comfy as third person, it wasn't bad, and it was a good way to explore the different strengths of POVs.

And since my laptop had a fatal encounter with a cup of coffee last spring (RIP little buddy), I've gotten very comfy writing on my phone, which I had previously only done for Across the Sea and Part 1 & Part 3 of broken body built anew because I was bored/inspired during a long car ride LOL.

Fic I spent the most time on: Going Over Jordan, easy. I originally wrote it during NaNo 2020, then re-wrote it at some point during 2021 (time is a weird soup so I don't remember). And then I rewrote it AGAIN this year, edited the crap out of it, printed it, and will edit it again sometime in 2023. It's a fic that exists purely because I am at times a spiteful little goblin, and I had Opinions about the MEA main mission Hunting the Archon, i.e. I didn't agree with how Bioware wrote the companions' responses to Ryder's temporary death, and my Ryder is also an anxious neurodivergent wreck like myself, so I wanted to write how that mission would have actually gone with Brynja as Pathfinder. I wanted to highlight the relationships Brynja has with her friends (particularly Jaal), and I also just wanted her take on the mission in general, because it's not the same as what's in-game. I mean....a lot of people die gruesome deaths in that mission and you see the aftermath, you see the gutted and maimed corpses. There's a lot of horror inherent to what Bioware wrote for that mission, but they glossed over it big time. I wanted to fix that.

I'd like to have someone beta read it, but Andromeda is a niche market as it were, and I've never had anyone beta my work before, so that's honestly the biggest reason it's not published yet. It would benefit greatly from beta reading I think, but uh. I don't know how to make that happen. I'm gonna publish the dang thing in 2023 or 2024 at the latest, though, even if it kills me DGKLJDHLG.

Fic I spent the least time on: I can't say for certain, but it's probably the microfics. Those took only a couple hours. Aside from those, not counting WIPs, it'd most likely be Across the Sea, which I wrote on my phone while sitting on the kitchen floor.

Favorite thing I wrote: ALMOST ALL OF THEM. In all seriousness though, there are a few that have a special place in my heart, and the most important one is Across the Sea. I'd been wanting to explore how Marian processes/copes with Thane's death pretty much since the day I created her, but I never got around to putting any of it on paper until the time came for me to say goodbye to my dog, a 17yo beagle named Maggie we adopted in 2019, last February.

It was an absolutely hellish series of events just in those few days alone: I had a sleep study done which gave me the worst migraine of my life, I threw up in a random parking lot, went home and tried to sleep the migraine off, and was woken up a few hours later to my mom sitting on my bed and saying, quietly, "Maggie's dying". My migraine quit mattering at that point. I sat with her on the couch for hours, held her paw, petted her softly. My parents took turns sitting with her in the living room overnight.

Ultimately, she was just suffering so much for so long we had to take her to the vet. It was a weekend, so it was going to be hours before they opened. Maggie got up and stumbled to the kitchen, and she laid down in front of the door to the garage, and I just...sat with her. There was nothing I could do to help or save her, so I kept her company in her last hours. In the midst of moving and the uncertainty surrounding my health, my new disabilities, traumatizing doctor appointment after traumatizing doctor appointment, I was having to say goodbye to the greatest light and joy of my life a mere 6 months after we lost the dog we've had since I was 3 years old (a shih tzu named Reggie, who wore the pride of his breed like a royal mantle and never stopped carrying himself like a king, even when he didn't recognize us anymore).

Maybe it's silly to compare the loss of a dog to the loss of a lover, but...things just clicked in my brain. I wrote Across the Sea for and about Thane and Marian, yes, but it was for me and my beagle, too, in equal measure. Thane was terminally ill but even so he died quite unexpectedly (THANKS KAI LENG), and the same was true of Maggie. So it was....maybe it's a silly thought, but it was a vent piece. I understood my grief through the lens of Marian's, since hers was so much easier to tackle than my own in its huge overwhelming weight. I'm a very private person with big emotions, and my grief was - and is - a very personal thing. Something I needed to keep close to my chest, hidden, at the time. To write Marian's grief as I waited with Maggie for the inevitable, it was like I had a companion, a friend sitting with me in that grief. I understood Marian much better then.

So perhaps mechanically speaking, Across the Sea isn't my best piece (I'm honestly not certain where it ranks quality-wise), but it is....the writing equivalent of those pendants that carry your loved one's ashes, for me. And it's done quite well on AO3. Knowing that people have enjoyed this piece that is so precious to me and comes from a place of such deep sorrow...there is no greater honor I could ask for, I think. It's a fitting tribute to a character and franchise I love, that's gotten me through many hard times, and to the beagle that made the horrors of life worth living.

(Aside from that, my other favorites are broken body built anew (first trilogy piece), Going Over Jordan (first longfic), In this darkness on my own, Farewell to Arms, Des profondeurs dans la nuit, and the ME3 early game Morrilenko duology Never Enough/In the shadow of your heart.)

Favorite thing I read: Imma be real with you chief, I have.....not read much. Not as far as books go, anyway. But I've sure read some amazing fic and interactive fiction games!!

I reread a bunch of stuff, partly to examine the technical strengths of my fave writers and stories, and partly because hey, they're my favorite stories!! Off the top of my head, the pieces I reread were: Flotsam, Ain't Sentimental, and Loose Ends by @asaara-writes; Sorrow and Resistance by @/myrini; and while I didn't get the chance to reread/finish these like I'd hoped, A Lesson in Drowning by @theherocomplex, Where the Winds of Fortune Take Me and Lovers in a Dangerous Time by pikapeppa are bookmarked both on AO3 and in my brain for the same reasons as the shorter pieces

everything @coldshrugs has written in the past year or two. Both as a writer and as a reader, shorter form fiction is more accessible to my migraine-addled brain (I love reading long stuff but it's often migraine trigger T^T) and Azia's a MASTER of short fiction???? So much punch packed into such concise words!! Incredible clarity and emotional depth!!!! There are many writers on this site that I admire and respect greatly, and Azia is one of them

My favorite IF this year is 100% Wayfarer (@/idrellegames). I haven't been able to focus on it as much as I'd have liked, but the COMPLEXITY the DEPTH. I'm in awe of it and Idrelle. The scope of the project is so massive and the intrigue and depth of the story and characters is incredible to see, Idrelle is a one-person-army of a writer. It'd be easy to think that Wayfarer is made by a team, but nope! It's all the genius and dedication of Idrelle. Having followed Wayfarer from the beginning, the only words I can describe it is awe-inspiring

My writing goals are going in a separate post because this is about 19 times longer than I meant it to be DHFLJKDSLKJHG. If you've read this far, thank you so much!!!!!!! I know it probably got a little more personal and a little bit sadder than you were expecting, so thanks for sticking with me- and I don't blame you an ounce if you skim-read this or skipped some sections. It's a lot of words!

Happy New Year, everyone!! You guys make Tumblr great, and without the people I've met through this site, I would've missed out on not only tons of awesome media, but all y'all super cool folks and your blorbos!!! Keep on creating, everybody. Your stories, your art, your headcanons and metas and dumb jokes, you bring light into my life, and the lives of others. I want you to know that your works bring comfort and happiness to the life of one lost and drifting young woman...and I want to thank you for it, sincerely. I know for a fact I'm not the only person whose life is made better by your presence. The fact that we haven't met in-person doesn't lessen your impact by an ounce.

[marshmallowgoop]

I started compiling yearly writing reviews in 2017.

"I’ve seen people do month-by-month yearly compilations for drawing," I wrote in that first post, beneath a Goop's Creative Writing in 2017 header and various isolated paragraphs, "and I know it’s way harder to see progress with writing, but I thought I’d try anyway?"

In 2018, I crossed out the Creative part.

"I’m including all kinds of writing I’ve done this time around," I said. "My non-fiction work is important to me, too."

By 2019, the header was simply Goop's Writing in 2019. No red X. No sign that there had ever been anything else.

I skipped 2020. 2021 removed headers and isolated paragraphs altogether—a tradition I'll keep for 2022.

But I can't help thinking about that crossed-out Creative from 2018.

What a 2022 mood.

See, there's this essay that's been swirling around in my head for a while. Well, more than swirling around—there are maybe the makings of it somewhere deep in my Tumblr drafts, scrawled out and abandoned way back in 2020.

You Don't Deserve to Be a Good Artist. That's what I've thought about calling it.

Because I'm a Libra, right? (On the cusp, but still!) I'm all about fairness and balance, about earning what you get. And, as I realized in horrible clarity in 2022, despite my Creative Writing degree, I don't deserve to be a good (creative) writer.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, here's a clumsy metaphor: I learned how to swim as a young child, through lessons held at a local high school. There were two pools there, one for swimming and one for diving, and this year, I feel like I skipped the shallower swimming pool and leapt right into the deeper, scarier diving pool of creativity. I wrote fiction beyond November's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge of penning 50,000 words within 30 days—a challenge I've participated in since 2006—completing two short fanfictions, more than I've done in years. 2022 also got me interested in a new hobby of video editing; I've shared 10 AMVs since April.

I surrounded myself with artists, and they welcomed me with open arms, treating me with far more kindness than I felt I deserved. And that's the theme with me, so I do want to stress that it's not the fault of anyone else—not at all, not ever!—that a sense of out-of-placeness filled me.

I got my degree in Creative Writing, I must have said, multiple times, over and over.

But I never voiced, not directly, the reason I ever mentioned it at all. That I'm an artist, too. That I belong here. That I can also write creatively, not just essays! I swear!

Yeah. My need to justify my existence was probably pretty blatant.

In many ways, 2022 felt like a repeat of realizations made in 2021. "I can’t get invested in my own stories," I said in last year's review. And yet, "[S]omething simply feels… lesser, about throwing fiction behind and writing about other people’s fiction instead." So, I tried to write fiction. And it hurt, and it ached, and I cried. (And vomited from anxiety.) I vibed so much with MUNA's "Winterbreak" that I used it in an ask game this year, but it wasn't 'til the closing months of 2022 that I understood that I do actually relate to the song, in a way; my relationship with creative writing feels like a love I'll never get right, but "I'll always have one more try."

Like 2021, I also don't know where I'm going next year. But 2022 got me thinking, for the first time, "So what if I have a Creative Writing degree?" It's been a source of shame ever since I earned it—a painful, haunting reminder that I genuinely went to school for fiction writing and still write pieces that reek of amateur—but in the grand scheme of things, what does that matter, really?

So I wrote some literary fiction for school, studied movie scripts, penned a few plays, handed in one novel. (And the novel was for my Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor!) So I've participated in NaNoWriMo since 2006 and have over a million words on NaNo projects.

So what?

Writers around me have done so much more than that. Why do I deserve to be good? For studying writing in school for a few years? For mainly only writing fiction one month a year, which I then never polish or show anyone?

Of course, the world doesn't work like I would maybe like it to. It doesn't necessarily matter if I "deserve" to be good or not. But how can I get upset over my skills when I've spent so little time honing them?

Well, I kind of like my NaNo projects from 2022. "I'll always have one more try," I think.

Anyway, my struggles with creativity aside, I am proud of what I accomplished this year. Here are my favorite written pieces from each month!

January: Ai Haibara: Will She Choose to Remain a Child in the End?

February: Shinichi Kudo: Hiding His Trauma

March: Episodes 406-408: Toning Down the Tsundere

April: HeiShin Masterpost: Things I Love About Heiji and Shinichi

May: HeiShinRan

June: OVA 9: Shinichi’s Conception of Heiji’s Future (And How He Thinks Heiji’s So Attractive That He’ll be Called “The Lady-Killer of Naniwa”)

July: Opening 56: The Focus on Heiji’s Alcohol

August: HeiShin: Is It Really Onesided?

September: "They Only Murdered Him Once"

October: The only thing in my "ramblings" tag for this month is this post about recommended Conan English dub releases...

November: "Demon Get Out, Luck Come In"

December: Heishin: "Don't Fall in Love"

Yeah, this is, like, all Heishin related 😳

That's all for now. Happy New Year, y'all. Thank you so much for your continued support and kindness.

[heysonjanatasha]

(Image description: two graphs chronicling my nanowrimo progress in 2020. The first is a graph that shows im consistently under goal word count for most if november. The second shows an average of under 1k words until mid November where i jump to an average of 7.5k words a day, with November 29th's data point spiking to a 10k word day)

In 2020, I wrote 2 90k word stories each. One of them was in November for NaNoWriMo.

I was super proud of that (and that 10k words in one day moment), but my writing productivity tanked after that year. Some of it was depression/fatigue/insomnia related. Some of it was burnout.

November is a trying time for me. Some will say, oh the spirit of NaNo isnt the word count, it's writing every day.

To which i say, you do you.

But, for those of us where that isnt sustainable, word count isn't everything. Writing every day isnt everything.

Happiness as a goal i find reductive, so i cant really say do what makes you happy in good faith, but find the writing journey/path that's accessible to you.

And you'll be golden.

Im still trying to find that for myself, and i hope you do too.

[365elephantsoap]

NANOBLAHBLAH

I am not participating in National Book Writing Month or National Blog Writing Month. I really haven’t participated in either of those activities in a few years. I’ve also failed to complete a year of a photo a week project since the lockdown. All I had to do was take one photo a week for a whole year. The constraints of a theme, suffocated the project. I will say that I am very impressed with myself for completing a thirty one day photo challenge presented by LaSahwn Wiltz of Everyday Eyecandy. She posts a list of daily prompts for the month of October and every year, I save the list and say “Cindy, you are going to do this.” I last maybe five days.

This year, I did ALL of the days!

Recently, Michael broached the subject of scheduling an art showing for my photos. He reminded me of the one I had had on the books for 2020 when the world stopped and then asked what ‘we’ were going to do about scheduling another. I feel like every time Michael uses the word ‘we’ he really means me. I need to schedule another showing. I was on glass two and half of wine and not in the mood for this discussion. I told him that we could discuss this in 2023 and returned my attention to the game of Two Dots I was currently playing. That’s exactly how I want to finish out this year: tabling all discussion of personal growth and progress until 2023.

I spent an hour today on a website I used to buy a lot of t-shirts from, browsing for Christmas gifts. Then I spent an hour scrolling through photos from the year to see if I had anything decent of the three of us that I could turn into a Christmas Cars. I do not. The point is, I have found really good ways to keep myself occupied that have nothing to do with personal growth or goals set at the beginning of the year. Yes, I realize that we still have (mostly) two months left in this year, but if your life is anything like mine (and I bet it is) your calendar is filling up with social engagements, holiday planning and general fuckaround time. I currently feel like I’m on a runaway train, flying down a hill and I don’t see the point in doing anything other than just holding on.

I probably would have benefitted from participating in NaNoWriMo this year considering I had set a pretty huge book writing goal for myself at the beginning of the year. I can honestly say that I worked on that book regularly, like daily, for about six months. Then I stopped working on it because I got stuck in the same dang place I always seem to get stuck when trying to write this particular story. My inner critic usually pipes in right around now and tells me how much of a failing loser I am. My inner critic is so freaking mean. She/it is just plain awful, or at least she/it used to be just plain awful. Lately, that inner critic has been really quiet and only voiced an opinion recently by whispering “maybe this isn’t the story you’re supposed to be writing.” For a minute, I thought it was a trick, like being invited to the cool girl’s party so they could throw a bucket of cows blood on me. Or something like that…I never really saw that movie. Then my inner critic repeated her/it’s self with a gentle tone of voice and I thought , maybe this isn’t a joke.

My inner critic just gave me useful advice that didn’t even feel critical and was nice about it.

The thing about goals is that they are always present. In fact, I’m not even planning on making new ones for 2023. I’m just going to tweak the ones I have. More than half of my goals are the kind that are completed only if I’m dead. Those tend to be the goals I set to extend my life, like exercise and eating lots of kale. Those other goals are just the sprinkles on my life sundae. I don’t need them. The sundae is still delicious with our without sprinkles.

I’m a sundae in progress.

[lildovah24]

Gonna be attempting NaNoWriMo again this year for the first time since 2020. I never get more than a few hundred words in except for 2016 where I hit 700 somehow and there's a chance that it'll just be a repeat of that this year as well, but we'll see! If anyone wants to be writing buddies my username on there is the same as my tumblr username but I can't promise much progress.

[ahiddenpath]

Creating News/Status

Help I have too many projects on the brain D: Info beneath the cut, if you're interested.

Puits d'Amour

I have about 2.5 updates worth of written content remaining from Nanowrimo 2022. Only 1 of these updates can be posted soon-ish, because I need to add material in between the next chapter and the one after that (basically I think I need to write a new chapter in the middle to cover some stuff that occurred to me post Nanowrimo).

My next update will be Kido-Sensei. After that, there will likely be some kind of pause to PdA. I'm not sure for how long.

Tri: Integrity Lens

I have one chapter that's looking quite good! It has a ton of Yamato, a truly lovely scene with Yamato and Takeru, and then some Yamato and Koushiro. I love writing characters together who don't interact as much in canon, so I'm really looking forward to this chapter, and I think it's great.

After that, I've got about 10k ish of bits and bobs, a third of a chapter here, a scene there.

Four Years and Four Years edits

There is literally zero progress on this, whomp whomp.

Infinite Possibilities

This upcoming story has three phases, and one is entirely planned (!!!!!). I worked on it a lot in 2020 after the initial Kizuna feels, then... Um... Forgot about it? Left it? More about this here, here, and here! It’s a story that begins before Kizuna and explores the aftermath.

Super Secret Project

I meant to publish this in October 2022, but too much was happening and too much continued to happen and it's almost a year later and THERE IS. STILL. TOO MUCH.

Usually I spill the beans waaay too early- see fic the announcement from February 2020 above that has not come to pass lmao- but I somehow managed to keep this one quiet! I probably shouldn't be this impressed with myself for not blabbing to my blog, lmao xD

So basically, it seems like I will update PdA next, then TIL, and then...

I have no idea. None.

I also have a lot of art to do. I want to make a piece for the 02 countdown event, Jyou week, and- Oh uh, right, um. I'm hosting a Koushiro week in October. And I should. Probably. Have. Content for that.

Basically, I can't promise anything right now, and I'm not even sure what my Nanowrimo project will be, or if I'll... Well, tbh, I'm not sure how viable Nanowrimo is this year? I was thinking I could write the first phase of Infinite Possibilities for Nanowrimo 2023, since it's planned and I... Don't have PdA or TIL planned out in detail. I guess I could use the remaining time until Nanowrimo planning one of them? Maybe I should do a um poll?

I have no idea... If you have a preference, let me know!

[jaz-rites]

it’s been a while

wow, what a year. just... hm. that was certainly something.

I’ve decided that I’m gonna change up the style of this blog, to better accommodate... well, a lot of things. How I feel about writing. How I feel about stories. How to keep myself motivated despite everything.

just a few highlights from my year:

frankly, it’s difficult as hell to even remember what all happened this year. every year since 2019 has felt like a whole decade each, and yet i still keep referring to things that happened in 2020 as “last year.” yikes, right. complex trauma certainly does affect memory huh

just this year, I went from living with my partner & our cat in a leaky, broken-down RV to being housed, then re-housed because the first house wasn’t habitable (though of course the landlords rented it out again as soon as we left, without fixing anything.) I spent the entire summer and autumn recovering from the exhaustion of moving metamorphosing immediately into problems at the apartment (we moved into a pest problem, and just as everything in the apartment has started to break down.) Now it’s already December, and our lease at this apartment is ending in late spring, and hopefully also our time in Kansas. I spent almost the entire year inside again, and that’s showing no signs of improving as covid and other viruses worsen again with no sign of help from those supposedly elected to serve the needs of the people.

I’ll always find as much time for writing as I possibly can-- it’s my favorite hobby, and I’m not about to abandon my goal of writing a novel. I might just go at a slower pace, to accommodate for the way my life has been picking up in terms of responsibilities. I’m back in school, for something I really enjoy and appreciate, and I’m piecing together how to make it my full-time job. My partner and I are looking at houses with my siblings. I’m looking into my future and I see a family and a home there, coming ever-closer.

so much is bleak when i look outside the tiny, slowly-expanding bubble I’ve been able to help maintain. sometimes I get impatient with the way progress takes time.

I took a couple months off after working on a story really hardcore for like 2 months solid. Definitely burned myself out on that one for a while. In the meantime, I’ve been working here and there on non-novel-related writing, and some other personal writing projects. I’ve come to accept that the big ol’ writing challenges simply aren’t well-suited to my style. I work on things as the inspiration comes, I’m always thinking about one story or another even if I’m not writing it. I haven’t yet figured out how to augment and adapt NaNoWriMo-types of challenges to my style, so I’ll just keep writing in my own way. I hope the tortoise give me their blessing for this race.

I started working on a cozy paranormal story inspired a little bit by Natsume’s Book of Friends, just because I absolutely adore the vibe of that show, to the point where it’s one I’ve adopted into my very small collection of comfort watches. working on something I well and fully acknowledge as escapist has had its perks when the bad news gets to be too much. I’m lucky I’ve had the luxury to hide from danger. All of my writing has started to reflect, more than a little bit, how I wish the world would be. I’m still working on WTF, I’m still working on Trash Prince, I’m working on my Cozy Story. Just rapidly oscillating between writing various stories and resting, as my whims demand.

anyway. it’s hard to keep this light, but that’s something I want to acknowledge, too. I don’t want this blog to be only about certain parts of my writing process. I don’t feel drawn to make this blog particularly polished. I made it so I could talk about writing, which for me, is a chaotic, meandering process. So, instead of just using this blog to share semi-polished writing and fundraising links, I’ll be using it more often for journal-ish posts like this, the occasional out-of-context rambling about one of my writing projects as I’m working through something I’m stuck on, or have a new idea to include. And probably, hopefully, more shitposts.

seeya soon,

- jaz

[danpuff-ao3]

5, 9,10 for the NaNoWriMo asks

Love, Echo

Hello Echo!! Thanks for the asks!

5. What’s your personal goal?

I have a few goals, but my primary goal is to write Devotion, the sequel to Contempt. That story is still haunting me months after writing it, so I know I'm not done with it yet!

I'd like to finish my Snarry Swap piece, but I'm also trying to remove as much pressure and stress as possible right now, so...if I can actually submit my fic, great! If not...oh well.

I'd like to make progress on a Dralbus fic I have, and with luck finish chapter 3 of smile with sweet surprise. And there's a Sugar Daddy fic I'd like to make progress on, too.

Any writing I accomplish will be a blessing! But I think the real goal will be to write, while also not pulling my hair out of over writing. To be gentle with myself. To focus on what I love about writing, and letting myself enjoy my passion projects.

9. When did you come up with the idea?

Well, my "write a lot" idea came years ago! 2019 was my first year doing NaNoWriMo and the only year I did it "properly" working on one project. In 2020 and 2021 I dabbled here and there and everywhere! Y'all know I specialize in shorter fics so it makes sense for me! I had hoped to be working on my longfic idea this NaNoWriMo, but plans changed between signing up for fests and the fact that Contempt is still living rent free in my head haha!

So I suppose if we look at Devotion as my big goal this NaNoWriMo, that is...even more complicated. Contempt was an idea I've had for years, so do I count Devotion alongside that? I've known their whole story for a long time. But the actual plan to write Devotion came over summer, I think. When I kept replaying scenes in my head, when I was still so drawn to this world and this idea.

10. Any romance sub-plots?

Haha, no. Romance is the MAIN plot. I love love, what can I say?

All Snarry, all the way. (Except for that Dralbus fic, but it also features side-Snarry sooooo...yeah, all Snarry, all the way.)

NaNoWriMo Asks

answered: 5, 9, 10

[clarislam]

NaNoWriMo update: As of today, I've finished 58.2% of my 50,000-word goal! ✍️

[half-writer]

Write? you mean daydream for 16 hours? Hell yeah