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.