Welcome to the Belorehalla progress thread!
Word count goal: 175,000

Hello! I go by a few couple different names. My real name is Jonah, and most people online call me Valhalla. I'm twenty years old, my pronouns are they/he, and I'm bi + transmasculine nonbinary. I'm also disabled, neurodivergent, mentally ill, and mixed race! I'm white and Native (primarily Cherokee) and currently trying to reconnect with my culture.

Being a minority affects how I write, and it's also why I have such a passion for having diverse casts and why I enjoy calling out bigotry in my fiction. I'm an intersectional feminist and a communist, which are crucial parts of my outlook of the world and how I present certain things in my writing. I have also unfortunately been the victim of severe abuse for most my life starting from before I can even remember, which has led to numerous mental health issues - but on the bright side, I'm capable (and usually drawn toward) exploring these things in realistic ways through my writing! Ultimately, I write with the end goal of being able to help people with it, and the difficult things I've been through only help make that more possible.

I used to favor high fantasy because writing was pure escapism when I was younger. By now, I've reached a level of maturity where I can reevaluate my goals and analyze why I do the things I do, which has pushed me away from using writing in this way. Not to say that writing for escapism is immature by default - I just mean that it takes maturity to truly analyze the things you write, why you write them, and what your ultimate goal with writing is. It's not something with an age limit, just another form of self discovery. Either way, that process of analysis, for me, mostly shifted me away from specific genres and pushed me toward a focus on subject matter. Whatever genre I think is best for the subject(s) I want to explore is the one I choose.

I like writing fanfiction as well! It's usually whatever I'm feeling like, and sometimes I post my things on AO3! Same name as here ("belorehalla" is my brand, really), but there is very adult content on it. You can find me on Twitter, Tumblr, and TikTok under the username belorehalla as well!

Other assorted fun facts: My middle school emo "phase" turned out not to be a phase; I'm from Oregon but I reside in Arizona (but I plan to move to NH!); I love classic lit and my favorite author is John Steinbeck; I have two actual pets but I also consider any spiders in my house my pets; I adore axolotls and most marine life (especially the brainless ones!); my favorite bands are Hollywood Undead, Breaking Benjamin, Adelitas Way, and Shinedown; and my favorite video games are World of Warcraft and Octopath Traveler!

Writing goals for this year!

I envy anyone who can confidently make monthly goals. I'm already at 12,822 words and I only started writing anything for this year, but I'm prone to getting tripped up by my mental health or by just getting distracted by other things (ASD/ADHD gang rise up). Specific commitments are really difficult. I'm considering fanfiction commissions because I currently really need extra money and I'm pretty sure I could have the focus for anything if I'm being paid to since I can't exactly work - but I also don't know how the heck pricing works. (That'd be sure to help with my word counts though!)

My writing goals for this year are more in terms of projects rather than a schedule for how much to write when. I'll write however much whenever I do.

This year's projects are as follows:

• matches burning holes in my soul - Literally just an Octopath Traveler fanfiction. It's a lot of confronting mental illness and trauma, with a nice, healthy dose of loving, supportive, domestic fluff and platonic bonding. The trajectory is worked out, but I'm terrible at figuring out how to divide up chapters when it comes to fanfic (but my current estimate is ~10-15 chapters). I plan to start posting chapters weekly once I've gotten maybe ~6-7 written.
• On Bloody Knees - Contemporary fiction about a boy who is subjected to religious trauma from a very young age and begins to understand it's not normal when he's allowed to go to a secular public school for his senior year. It explores sexuality, gender, religion/faith, mental illness, abuse of boys and men, childhood trauma, and eating disorders (specifically anorexia) in boys. It's certainly not going to be for everyone as it will contain graphic depictions of abuse, bigotry, and severe mental health issues, but all of these things are why it's a project so close to my heart.
• The Breakup Letter to Anastasia - Contemporary new adult fiction about a fresh-out-of-high-school boy and his abusive girlfriend. It's a take on anorexia recovery through the lens of viewing the disorder as an abusive partner. Because of that, I'm also using it as a way to explore how domestic abuse (in straight relationships, at least) is treated/viewed when the woman is the abuser rather than the man.
• Promptober 2021 - 31 one-shot fanfics for the month of October of this year! I know myself so I already know it's going to be entirely not safe for work.
• Etc - Finishing my 2020 Promptober fics (four to write/revise/post, ten to revise/post); some poetry, perhaps, to get better at it; worldbuilding for other things I'm planning.

Progress on my projects:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 12,822 words, 2 chapters finished, ch.3 in progress.
• On Bloody Knees - 2/4 Toyhouse profiles finished, loosely plotted, most major plot points sorted out.
• The Breakup Letter to Anastasia - loosely plotted, detailed outline partially finished all major plot points sorted out.
• Everything else - N/A

measuring in projects is a great way to set up your goals!
i know for me, i guesstimated the amount of words it would take to finish the minimum amount of things i would be happy getting done this year...
then divided that by 12. xD
your projects all sound very cathartic and also unique.
much luck getting all of the things you want done this year!

Jan 11, 2021 20:12:57 GMT -5 erin said:

measuring in projects is a great way to set up your goals!
i know for me, i guesstimated the amount of words it would take to finish the minimum amount of things i would be happy getting done this year...
then divided that by 12. xD
your projects all sound very cathartic and also unique.
much luck getting all of the things you want done this year!

That's such a good way to set up goals. Huge respect for people who set lofty, ambitious goals, but sometimes it's best to just set your goal in a smaller range that you know you can get through. All about pacing and whatnot!

Thank you for the compliment and well wishes! Good luck to you as well!

01/15/2021 update!

New word count: 24,368 / 175,000

New progress on my goals:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 24,368 words total (+11,546), four chapters finished (+2), ch.5 in progress.
• Everything else - N/A

I think I made pretty good progress in the last week (or about that, six days), all things considered. My aunt is currently visiting, which has led to me not having nearly as much time to be writing as I'd like. But I don't see her that often and she's one of the few family members I can actually tolerate, so it's been fun. I told her about everything related to this - WriYe in general as well as my goals - and it was nice to have someone in real life show interest for once.



I'm having thoughts about my project of focus right now. It's difficult for me to look at progress on a fanfic without being... dissatisfied? Not with the fanfic itself (I'm quite proud of the one I'm writing now, truly), but with my writing ability in general as well as things I've already written. I sit and wonder why I struggle so much with other things comparatively and get so frustrated. I know it's because writing a fanfic means you don't have to go through the effort of worldbuilding or character creation, but it's difficult to process that logically. I'm not exactly a perfectionist but I'm something close to one, so it just doesn't feel great to reflect on it too much for too long. (But isn't it also important and healthy to learn how to sit with dissatisfaction and frustration with yourself? Do you learn to work through it if you don't teach yourself to sit with it and just be okay with it?)

Another thing I think I'm struggling with is the idea that there's not really an audience for what I'm writing. It's not about people reading it, I know, writing should be for yourself first and foremost, I know - but "writing should be for yourself" and "enjoying and even wanting validation are a perfectly normal things" are sentiments that can and should exist together. Posting fanfiction that I feel there's no audience for is incredibly intimidating in a way I have a hard time putting into words. But the only reason I look at the more serious things I write and think no one is going to bother with it comes from the fact that I write far more fanfiction than I read. I didn't even start reading it until years after I'd been sharing mine. If I want to read something, so does someone else - but when what I'm writing is so specific to personal experiences, it's hard to picture anyone else caring, even though the really bad personal experiences I'm writing about are not nearly as uncommon as I often feel they are (or really wish they would be).

Anyway, wow, I talk a lot! I don't really expect anyone to read this, but I also feel like that doesn't matter. Speak like I'm talking to an audience without expecting one - funny, isn't that how diaries usually work?

01/22/2021 update!

New word count: 33,377 / 175,000 

New progress on my goals:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 33,377 total words (+9,009), six chapters finished (+2), ch.7 in progress.
• Everything else - N/A

I know it's technically the 23rd, but I simply do not care. It's 22nd until I go to sleep for the night (morning?), and I haven't done that yet.

I look at the progress I've made and I wonder, "Man, why haven't I worked on literally anything else?" And the answer, I think, is that I am just very autistic. I hyperfocus on what I'm writing whenever I sit down to write it or make little revisions, to the point where I accidentally ignored one of my best friends for hours because I was that heavily invested in what I was doing. The time I'm not writing, I'm either reading (Warhammer novels, which is slow-going on account of the whole dyslexia thing) or I'm playing Octopath Traveler for a solid 6-12 hours. Being autistic is as much a curse as it is a blessing, as far as the whole aspect of special interests goes.

My intent with this year was to buckle down and get some original fiction done as well, but I keep ending up jotting down other fanfic ideas. (All one-shots or two-chapter ideas, thank god, but it's a pain! I want to work on things that feel like they matter more. But I guess it's a personal problem to work through if I think fanfiction is a waste of time - at the end of the day, I'm still writing, still having fun, and still improving my skills, so what about it makes it a "lesser" art form?) I guess at this point I also consider fanfiction a better medium to vent through most of the time. I write with the intention of others reading it, and I guess with fanfiction it's much easier to skip past that worry that comes with original fiction of wondering if the protagonist of the story is too close in personality to me or that I'm being too direct with my parallels in a way that I feel says too much - such as constructing a fictional relationship identical in all aspects to one I had with an abuser.

I say a lot of things I don't expect anyone to actually read. But it's fun! I can say whatever I want and I never have to worry about it being unfit for people to read because hardly anyone is looking at this anyway.

Welcome to Wriye!

Best of luck with your goals!

There's nothing about fanfic that makes it lesser art form. It's valid and if that's what's calling you, it's not a waste of your time to write it.

01/29/2021 update!

New word count: 61,749 / 175,000 (35.3%)

New progress on my goals:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 61,749 words (+28,372), twelve chapters complete (+6), first draft completed
• Everything else - N/A

An average of roughly 4,000 words daily is kind of amazing, actually. Usually I struggle to hit 2,000, and 3,000 is what I consider a particularly good day. I get distracted far too easily, and that leads me to getting burnt out of writing for the day just because the entire time spent being distracted was with a word doc open in front of me with the occasional pauses to actually type more out. A special shoutout to my childhood trauma, my horrible mental health, and several songs on repeat for making this possible.

My plan is to post a chapter on AO3 a week. That makes revising and editing on a schedule manageable. I considered two a week, but... no. No, there's no way I could manage that. I might start the chapter one revisions tonight, and if not, then tomorrow. Maybe my posting days could be Mondays? Or maybe I'm being too ambitious with that. I can't keep hiding out in my room while my family is doing things - it's making me feel weird, in the way that it's making my BPD act up really badly. I'm fine when I'm writing, but then it's one in the morning and my dad has gone to bed and I realize it's been another day where I've barely seen him outside of coming downstairs to get coffee or an energy drink or occasionally a snack/meal.

Anyway. I've also been considering something outside the goals I started with. I'll have to see if this is just attracting me because it's a shiny new thing, but I think it's good! I think it's got potential. The plot - what I have of it, at least - is about a young woman (18-21, maybe) with a history of being taught that she exists to "help" and "fix" men, as many women are taught from alarmingly early on, and forces herself into being a real-life manic pixie dream girl in an attempt to be palatable to the wrong sorts of men. The idea is to show what she lets herself go through, the childhood and adolescent lessons from adults that shaped her to be too willing to accept far more than she should, and the process of her learning how to allow herself to be a human being rather than a caricature.

This last paragraph is a lot of rambling. Not much of a point. I've despised the manic pixie dream girl since I've had the ability to view media critically at all. I loved the trope when I was a child, because wow, I want to grow up like that! And then I did, and then I learned how to care about media analysis, and then I realized that nobody arrives at the manic pixie dream girl personality in real life without being practically groomed into it from a young age. Real people don't turn out all bubbly and fun and cheerful and quirky all the time with a presence that can uplift and enchant whatever pessimist of a man whose life she enters. Real people just don't arrive at such an easy-to-recognize, two-dimensional box of a personality. And mind you, there's a huge difference between a bubbly, eccentric, cheerful, free-spirited woman with a complex, multifaceted personality with agency and a manic pixie dream girl. You know 500 Days of Summer? The one about the pessimist who hates his career and is waiting for "the one" to come along, and then an eccentric woman who he perceives as "the one" because of how enigmatically full of life she is - and then he gets a wake-up call because, hello, buddy, this is a real life woman and not some romance trope? Yeah. That one. The manic pixie trope is literally just misogyny. It's for when you want a female character but you think that women are for the use and benefit of men. Sorry I just feel so strongly about this.

02/05/2021 update!

New word count: 61,943 / 175,000

Monthly total word counts:

• January: 61,843
• February: 100 (so far)

New Progress:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 61,943 total words (+194); ch.1 revised & posted; ch.2 revised
• Etc - N/A

I know it's the sixth, technically, but it's the early hours of morning so it still counts. I guess at this point I can move onto something else while I'm editing and revising, since I'm on a one-chapter-a-week schedule with posting. I can't believe I settled on a schedule at all, really. I'm an ENTP, what on earth am I gonna do with a schedule? Especially an unnecessary one?

I think my next target is going to be finishing up my extremely late fics for promptober 2020, because man, those are really overdue. I think I'm going to reevaluate my plans for this year, in terms of what I want to write. I'm thinking I want to work on an anthology I've been kicking around ideas about for years, and while I do want to work on one of my really hard-hitting novels, I also think I want to balance it out with something lighter. I don't exactly want to be fixating on two really heavy books with one right after the other. I need pointless fluff in there. A romance, maybe.

Speaking of possibly going with a romance this year, I've had the same romance plot in my mind since sophomore year of high school. The only evolution has been me making the main character a trans man, giving the love interest a sister, and bumping the characters up from being around 15-16 to being more around 20-21. It's just a sweet romance between a couple of guys who go to the same community college and meet at the main character's place of work (a bookstore) - and the twist is the main character has dissociative identity disorder. I remember a while back reading a novel about a woman who falls in love with a man with DID and frequently wished she could spend all her time with the "real [LI's name that I forgot]" and that had my blood absolutely boiling. That might have been my inspiration, but I really don't remember my high school days that well. I got my diploma and never looked back. Either way, I'm not an uneducated, disrespectful scumbag, so there's nothing about the "real" person. It's all the brain, there's no such thing as one who's more real than the others. There's also no mean, scary alter, because I don't know who needs to be told this, but having an alter who's evil and cruel is 100% contradictory to why DID happens at all. I just want a cute romance between a couple of young adult men where one of them has DID and the other learns to love and respect the other alters for who they are without expecting a romantic relationship with any of them.

I have a few other ideas regarding a protagonist or other important characters with DID. "Be the change you want to see in the world," I was told growing up. The change I want is more recognition and understanding around mental illness and disability - especially more vilified and less understood disorder like DID - and so that's what I'll put forward. I shouldn't have to, but whatever. The mentally ill criminal/evildoer is getting mentally ill people murdered in real life, and I just think that's a shame. You know that mentally ill people are FAR more likely to hurt themselves than others, right? You know people with DID specifically went through horrendous things that leave them extremely susceptible to abuse and violence later in life, and far less likely to commit it, right? Like you know that? You do now. All this does make me want to write a horror about a protagonist with DID, but the horror part is their incredibly brutal childhood. There's also one I want to write about a married couple, and the main character's wife uncovers that she has DID... Ah. A lot of things about it. Almost like I desperately want to see better DID representation. Almost like a have stakes in this.

There are some memoir collections I want to write, too. The main one I care about is going to have a few parts - one about childhood trauma, one about my teenage years, one about my adult life, and one about holding onto optimism and hope for the future regardless of trauma and mental illness. I think of it like a long, multipart goodbye letter to the child I could have been, a collection of reassurances to others that they aren't alone, and a guide for people who have no idea what trauma is like to better understand the suffering of others. Sounds so sappy and sentimental, but I guess that's because it is.

Anyway, wow! This is a lot! So many words to hardly say anything at all.

i think that giving better DID (or any sort of thing like that) representation is always great!
i think that would be an awesome, sweet romance to work on.

02/12/2021 update

New word count: 63,485 / 175,000 (36.3%)

Monthly total word counts:

• January: 61,843
• February: 1,642 (so far)

New Progress

• matches burning holes in my soul  -  62,356 words total (+413), 2/12 chapters posted (+1), 3/12 revised (+1)
• Extremely late 2020 Promptober  -  +1129 words

It's after 6am on the 13th. I always post these after midnight. I always feel the need to mention that the day doesn't end until I've gone to bed. The defensiveness I feel about this position probably suggests my sleep schedule could do with some fixing, and so does the fact that I'm now wondering when it's "tomorrow" if I just don't sleep. When I make my coffee?

I'm deciding that posting once a week is a pain. Editing is hard. Dyslexia makes it such an arduous process when I have to get upwards of 7,500 words edited and polished every week. Between doing that and getting other things done, it's just an inconvenience. Now, yes, I have fun with it... but it still feels like a bit of an inconvenience. Things I write also tend to be a little longer once I have them revised, but sometimes I rush a little to just get things finished and that leaves spaces that feel a little empty. Just have to keep the commitment up until mid-April, and maybe I'll figure out how to get everything done more quickly before then, or be more efficient with my time. Step one is to work on my attention span, but man, I'm not totally sure what an attention span is in the first place.

On another note, after months of my younger sibling insisting I read a manga called Black Jack, I've finally committed to reading it. I was already sold on it knowing that it largely focuses on medical themes, and even more so knowing the author was a medical professional but made the creative decision to write absurdly unrealistic medical techniques and whatnot. Med science is my biggest interest, sparked by lifelong medical problems that are ironically also the reason I could never withstand working in the medical field. And that's fine, there are worse things in life! There's enough public research and med-related entertainment. The reason I mention that, though, is because I think now that I'm reading the series, it's my new favorite. For being largely comedic, it hits hard when it touches on disability and illness. Seeing a disabled protagonist with parent issues who grew up to be a surgeon because of a life-saving operation in his childhood... well, it hits home. I can't imagine it's particularly touching or impactful for able-bodied people, but for me, it's restructuring a pretty major aspect of my worldview - my life is not a tragedy and no one who disagrees is worth my time.

I guess I never thought much about how media can sometimes make or break people, in a sense. Minority kids - and even minority adults - learn to shape their expectations of how they'll be treated not just by real-life interactions but by what they read in a book, watch on TV, or hear on the radio. Being a disabled kid means the media you consume is probably teaching you how your mundane day-to-day is either a tragedy that your family deserves praise for dealing with or an endless well of inspiration to able-bodied people. I didn't realize how much even simple positive messages in fiction can pierce through two entire decades of being dehumanized. And I guess that made me realize how much of an impact I can have. The stories of our suffering, when portrayed accurately, are crucial. The stories of us living and overcoming suffering are crucial as well. And I guess there's something about realizing just how much my dreams can contribute to the world once I make good on them that makes me feel really happy that this is what I want to do with my life and my talent.

Yes I talk a lot. Yes it's purely because I don't expect anyone to read this. But I think that's it for now!

02/19/2021 update!

69,040 / 175,000 (39.4%)

Monthly Word Counts:

• January: 61,843
• February: 7,197

New Progress:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 3/12 chapters posted (+1), ch.4 in revision
• Etc - finished first draft of a single-part fanfic (+5,555)

This week was... unproductive. Good mental health is simply just not something I have, and lately it's been particularly bad. It's this cycle of being extra depressed because I oversleep, oversleeping because I don't eat enough, not eating enough because I'm too depressed to bother with it. So great to see that the human body, including the brain, are all immaculately developed into an incredibly functional mechanism of interwoven systems. Truly remarkable. One thing went wrong in my body from before birth and now the whole thing refuses to function and it's thoroughly unfixable. Thanks, great, that's a solid F- for poor design integrity. I think of everything I'm just sick of my parents complaining about things I have no control over and actively talk about being inconvenienced by personally (sorry that excruciating pain is part of my daily life and have low mental energy because of that, I guess?? yeah, no, I chose to live this way).

I will say that my friend had an absolutely galaxy brain idea for a fanfic and I did write that out. I expected to get maybe 2k words from it, but no, over 5k because I have no restraint and everything gets away from me to some extent somehow. I do like how that turned out but when I'll get around to completely touching it up is a mystery to me. Hopefully soon, since I did tell that friend that I wrote it for her, which I did. It came out so self-indulgent but in ways that I know she'll thoroughly enjoy as well. LOL.

For this week I want to list out all the projects I have rattling around in my brain and choose 2-3 to dedicate my time to this year. We'll see how that goes. 

Additionally, I've been thinking about a YouTube channel. I've been thinking about making one for a long time by this point, but I just don't know how to start something like that. It would help me feel more productive I'm sure, and I think it'd be a fun thing to do. I think it'd mostly be vlogging, story times, little things like that. I feel like there's this perpetual expectation when it comes to people who are visibly mentally ill or disabled on YouTube to center their content on their mental illness or disability. It's wonderful if that's what people want to do, but I also wonder how many disabled and mentally ill YouTubers who make that sort of content only do so because they don't think there's much space for them on the platform also. For me personally, I don't want my presence to be a constant slew of information on all the ways my genetics formed differently from most people's and how my childhood was so bad that now there's 300+ others inside my brain. Openly talking about these things is one thing, but they aren't really what I want to be known for.

Although speaking of that last thing, my best friend wants to start a podcast with me as the cohost. True crime and cults and whatnot, and the gimmick would be that "I" sometimes go live talking and acting differently with no acknowledgment of it at all. (All with consent, of course, if this was uncomfortable at all it wouldn't even be joked about as a possibility.) I just think that would be fun.

All of my posts get so derailed, LOL. ADHD brain in overdrive constantly.

02/26/2021 update!

70,387/ 175,000 (40.2%)

Monthly Word Counts:

• January: 61,843
• February: 8,544 (so far)

New Progress

• matches burning holes in my soul - 62,460 words (+104), 4/12 chapters revised & posted (+1),  ch.5 in revision
• Very late Promptober 2020 - 2,111 words (+982), 1/4 drafted (+1), one currently in progress
• Planning/prepping - 261 words (+261)

Another unproductive week, I guess. I'm remembering how much I really dislike editing, especially now that I'm trying to edit two things simultaneously. I constantly want to prioritize the thing I wrote for my friend, but I keep reminding myself that I'm trying to maintain a posting schedule for something else. I sometimes wonder if I'd ever bother editing fanfiction if I didn't like attention so much because it'd be so much easier to let it sit on my computer forever otherwise. I guess my perpetual need for attention has done at least one good thing for me since it helps a little with productivity, but man, it sure isn't worth the cost. I think I lost the receipt for it when I was a little kid and haven't found it since so I don't think I'm ever getting a refund.

I'm realizing now that it's a massive pain to track the little changes to the word count on my fanfic with each finalized version of each chapter. I'll just keep down a note of how many words it's at now and adjust it with the final word count. It'll mess with my monthly word counts slightly for this month and next month, and it'll affect the weekly word count a bit more on whichever one it's completely finished, but WriYe is ultimately focused on a yearly goal, not a weekly or monthly one - whether or not you even track weekly or monthly stats is pretty irrelevant and based on personal preference, so I don't think it matters.

I also wish I was better with numbers and math. My memory isn't the worst but it's certainly not good, and even too much basic math is really draining because it requires me to work with numbers. And like, that's fine, I've been living like this my whole life, but I certainly don't have fun with it. The issue, though, is the fact it takes a couple extra steps to make sure the word counts on my planning is definitively only accounting for what I've done this year, and that's a hassle. I have this condition where my skull doesn't contain a brain or cerebrospinal fluid and instead contains marimo moss balls and stagnant pond water. It was caught when I was fifteen, too late for early intervention and support, and my parents didn't believe the doctor anyway.

I think I've made my mind up on what projects I want to work on this year. I'll give it another week of consideration, but I'm almost certain I know what I have my heart on. It's funny, I was really considering that memoir collection I've been wanting to start, but then I realized I hardly know myself and I hardly remember anything from before 2015. My recollection of my own life is more sliced and diced up than I thought it was, and the more I think about it, the more I realize the extent of the holes in it. It's not a big deal, they're memories I'll get back eventually, but it's kind of hard to write a memoir collection chronicling your life when you hardly remember any of it. It'd be like trying to retell the plot of a movie you slept through except for a few moments here and there of groggy wakefulness before falling back to sleep. Oh well. I'll be able to get to it eventually, I'm sure.

03/05/2021 update!

73,069 / 175,000 (41.7%)

Monthly Word Counts:

• January: 61,843
• February: 10,189
• March: 1,037

New Progress:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 5/12 chapters revised & posted (+1), ch. 6 in revision
• Very late Promptober 2020 - 2,645 words (+534)
  
• Planning - 427 words (+166)
• Ect - started a single-part fic (+1,982)

Looking at February's total word count looks so unfortunate, but I guess not every month can hit a 60k-word mark. I guess it doesn't really matter either way, because I wasn't anticipating to be anywhere near 70k words until next month or the month after. I think 175k accounts well for potential burnouts that might come, seeing as I've gone up to an entire month without writing anything at all.

I've been listening to the entirety of Preacher's Kid by Semler a lot lately. It's not really my genre of choice and I pretty rarely touch Christian music at all, but something about it helps to hear. It's not the praising Jesus and singing to wonderful grace of God type of Christian music, but instead it's a recount of religion-related of the Christian singer's life that left her hurt. I've admired her and looked up to her for a long time, and her new EP just really speaks to me. There's been controversy about if it's actually Christian music, but I don't really know why there are people interested in saying it's not "actually" that when it's a Christian singing songs about God and the Bible and church. I'm pretty sure those are the only two criteria, right? There are people in the genre because superficial, vapid pandering makes easy money, and if we're going to be gatekeeping, then those are the songs that shouldn't count. Anyway, I think listening to Preacher's Kid for the billionth time in the span of two days enlightened me to the fact that I don't think I'm actually ready to touch the subject of religion in a serious way in my writing. The only context I would ever pay it much mind would be if it was a centerpiece because I've got a lot to process before I can do anything different, and the idea of it is suddenly too daunting to attempt. I was hoping to finally unpack some things this year, but I don't think it's time yet. I'll see how I feel later on, I guess.

I think I'm going to start doing some worldbuilding for a setting I want to start working within. I've had the idea for the setting in my brain for so long but it fell out of my favor when I started preferring real-life settings over fantasy ones. It's hard to wrap my head around how I spent pretty much my whole life wanting to be a fantasy author only to have that change fairly abruptly somewhere in the weeks prior to my nineteenth birthday. However, I've come up with the general idea and the skeletons of a plot that can be used to center around things I actually care about within the setting, so I'm very interested in building up the world again. I don't know how much I'm going to properly flesh out yet, but it's going to have to be enough.

Call me a bad fantasy writer all you want, but I don't actually care about the pieces of this setting that aren't relevant to what I care about in a narrative, and no one who reads it is going to be focusing on unnecessary aspects unless they do a care post-reading analysis, because it's not going to be about this setting at all. It's about racism, classism, ableism, gender roles, and privilege. It's going to follow the very well-worn trope of elemental powers (you know, the generic fire/water/earth/air type of deal, with the extra bonus of light/dark), but it's not about that. Or well, it's a little bit about that, but only in the scope of it being important to shaping life experiences of characters and breaking expectations (ie., main water magic user has a really fiery and headstrong sort of personality, main air magic user is very down to earth and practical, main dark magic user is kind and patient and always knows how to lighten more upset moods). POV character is an autistic library archivist with access to all forms of magic, and the only one who is about what you'd expect, specifically because it's about him realizing that no amount of reading will ever inform him of intricacies that real-world experience can teach I almost made him fantasy white as the extra cherry on top but... no, I don't think you can pay me enough to write a protagonist who's white. No thanks. Every genre has enough white protagonists, I'm not adding to that. I considered not making him autistic but I don't really... know how to write a not-autistic experience, so a protagonist that isn't would be out of my depth. You can learn the autistic experience if you're not autistic, but you can't exactly learn the not-autistic experience if you are, because there are so many intricacies and so many subtler, smaller symptoms that you can't really check for and most people will just think they're "quirks" rather than straight up just autistic symptoms. So yeah, all my protags are autistic, and the world will thank me for that someday.

You can learn the autistic experience if you're not autistic, but you can't exactly learn the not-autistic experience if you are, because there are so many intricacies and so many subtler, smaller symptoms that you can't really check for and most people will just think they're "quirks" rather than straight up just autistic symptoms.

An insightful observation! And while February didn't get you as many words as January, you're still doing so well - almost halfway to 175k already!

03/12/2021 update!

75,815 / 175,000 (43.3%)

Monthly Word Counts

• January: 61,843
• February: 10,189
• March: 3,783 (so far)

New Progress:

• matches burning holes in my soul - 6/12 chapters revised & posted (+1), ch.7 in revision
• In the Gold of Sunrise - 1/7 character profiles completed (+1) (+533 words)
• Super late Promptober fics - 2/4 drafted (+1), 4,858 total words (2,213), Day 30 being written

Projects I Want to Work on This Year (updated)

• In the Gold of the Sunrise - A high fantasy about an introverted library archivist who decides to set out on an academically-driven adventure after stumbling across a book detailing an ancient civilization and a yet-untranslated "prophecy" in the dead language of the civilization. Everyone in the world has the ability to use magic, typically confined to one element (the elements being fire, water, earth, air, light, and darkness), but some people - usually scholars/academics - are capable of more than one. This novel will look like it's about magic and a cool fantasy world, but really, it's just a social and political commentary but those elements are hidden until far enough in that reader investment has been built up.
• The World at Midnight - Contemporary fiction about a 20-year-old autistic man who is wheelchair-bound and mute as he and his best friend from middle school try to sort out how to move in together and get by without too much external help. The protagonist's parents are overbearing and abusive, mistreating him while using excuses about having his best interests at heart and just being stressed by his "issues" (as many parents of disabled people do). What changes the trajectory of things is when he meets a man who starts showing up regularly at his place of work, a small bookstore, and is adamant about striking up a friendship.
• Glitter Glue and Paper Hearts - Contemporary romance about a part-time college student and a part-time barista with DID who one day serves a girl who gives him her brother's phone number because he was too shy to do it himself. It's just a cute romance between a couple of guys who go to the same college, with the twist that the main character has dissociative identity disorder. All about clumsily navigating new romantic feelings, learning about boundaries, and figuring out how to communicate emotions and limits in an open way. Parts of it will be heavy as is the nature of living with DID, but it's mostly just a soft, cute, feel-good romance novel.
• Promptober 2021 - Exactly what it says on the tin.
• Ect. - Mostly just a bunch of fanfics that I have ideas jotted down for; it's pretty much just a collection of single-chapter or two-/three-chapter things. Nothing difficult to get through.

I'm getting back into the swing of writing more regularly. I think I was temporarily a bit burnt out after how much I got done in January and how I immediately went onto trying to get a ton of editing done as soon as I was able. I'm looking forward to Camp NaNo next month because I'm hoping it'll help boost my motivation at least somewhat. I just hope I can get all my planning done by that point, because man, I'm so bad at staying on top of that sort of thing. Two and a half weeks is plenty of time to finish planning a novel you already have the vague outline of in your head, right? Surely? I hope so. I'll probably get at least the major plot points written out tomorrow and see where I go from there. (And hopefully I won't spend too much time gaming... Prioritizing things isn't exactly my strong suit.) I'm also thinking about taking Sundays off to do whatever I want to, regardless of if it feels "unproductive" or not. I don't think that'd hurt at all.

Today was the first round of the $1,400 stimulus checks, and while I know it'll be a matter of being patient, it makes me anxious that my parents got theirs when I haven't yet. What I need most right now is extra money, considering I live in the middle of nowhere and can't drive. The closest place to work is an hour away walking and that's also where the nearest bus stop is, and that distance coupled with the 95+ degree Fahrenheit weather here seems a little unreasonable even for someone who doesn't have various physical disabilities. I have migraines that have required hospitalization before, I'm not playing Russian roulette with that one, thanks. I just feel useless when most of what I do is play video games and write and read, especially when I will be kicked out if I haven't moved out by next year. Fair enough, I guess, my mom wants to be a traveling nurse, but I'm not capable of living on my own. I already had plans to move out before next year, but jeez. No pressure, right?

Speaking of moving out, I don't really know how I plan to go about this, but my future roommate provided me with an epiphany. Xe made a joke about how xe's surprised that there's no sitcom or something about a couple of people living together and one has DID. It'd be the perfect sitcom premise - the very common and well-worn trope of a couple of people who live together and get up to hijinks, but with the twist that one character has DID as the selling point. I'd certainly watch it (hesitantly; after United States of Tara, my expectations would be very low, because that show has exactly zero redeeming qualities). But I thought, man, I bet I could write the next bestseller if I just compile a bunch of funny stories and happenings with my roommate and just write them down in a fictionalized way. I feel like I've conceptualized what could very well be the epitome of written comedy. And that's because I have. Unfortunately I have a moral obligation to toss in depictions of the more brutal elements of DID because there's a group of very stupid people who already think it's all fun and games to have it, but oh well.

As a final word, it's always shocking when people comment on this thread or like the posts I make! I approach this like I'm just talking to myself in a weekly journal entry, as I imagine plenty of others probably do, so it's just surprising! In a good way. It's just a little exciting. I'm not disappointed by a lack of interaction, but I'm always excited when I see someone has interacted in some way - but maybe that's a little weird? Maybe it shouldn't be that shocking, I've been trying to keep up with a few threads on here (which is... not easy when this site's fonts are Like That, and by that I mean they aren't very dyslexia friendly, including the default even though I use it). I really wish there were more aesthetically pleasing fonts that didn't make me feel illiterate when looking at them. But even the threads I do keep up with, I don't often often remember to interact. I also recognize certain people talking in the discord server because I like reading their posts, but I tend to be a pretty shy person so I don't actually say things in the server. But yeah. I talk so much.