No More Malice

I did the last set of edits on Malice yesterday to tighten the language and fix a few stray typos. It took almost all day, from noon to eight in the evening, but I think everything turned out okay. I posted the last two chapters on FFN and moved the story folder into my digital archives.

I feel like I should do something to celebrate, but what I actually did was write the second chapter of the second story arc of The Demon King, as well as the first half of an original story based on the Poe Collector in Ocarina of Time.

I’m going to continue to post The Demon King on AO3 (with better initial editing this time around, hopefully), and what I’m going to do with the original story is this:

- finish it
- create a copy of the file
- edit it while pasting the serial numbers back on
- very quietly post that version on Tumblr and AO3
- return to the original version
- polish it based on my experience editing the fanfic
- submit that version to magazines

We’ll see how this works, I guess. The main thing is to be able to retain a sense of joy in writing by any means possible.

Re: No More Malice

> The main thing is to be able to retain a sense of joy in writing by any means possible.

I'm already getting to a point with visual art where I feel that pieces aren't worth finishing if they don't get notes.

On one hand, I think it's important to listen to the inner voice that says "nobody cares about this," because this is what's going to help you figure out what you need to be doing, ie, the intersection between what you like to do and what other people like to see.

On the other hand, feeling compelled to judge the merit of your work by the random functioning of social media algorithms is unhealthy.

On my third hand, you have to take risks and experiment if you want to get better, and some of these skill-building pieces are by default going to be harder to finish and probably not of interest to anyone other than yourself. Still, you have to put in the time and follow through so that you can do the thing you need to do when the time comes to make use of that particular skill.

Meanwhile, with writing, I'm just like, "I fucking love writing."