2020 Writing Log, Part Nineteen
May. 24th, 2020 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynling- I posted Chapter 37 of Malice.
- I edited Chapter 36 and posted it on FFN.
- My writing style has changed since I began the story, so I decided to start editing the chapters again from the beginning. I took care of Chapter 1 this week. I also updated the story description and tags on AO3 and FFN.
- I commissioned a big illustration for the fifth story arc!
- I edited the stories in Haunted Houses, put all of them into a PDF document, and sent it to the cover artist. I’ve been friends with this person for a few years, and I’m really looking forward to working with them.
- I started editing my recent posts on my book review blog. I intended to do this earlier this year, but I was derailed by various unpleasant circumstances. I’ll continue this project next week. I’d also like to update some of the blog’s side pages.
- I began working on a short story that I’d like to submit to an anthology of short horror fiction based on public-domain literary works. My piece is a twist on The Tale of Genji, and I’m having a delightful time writing it. The call for submissions was only posted earlier this month, and the deadline is next weekend. I hope I’ll be able to make it.
I don’t have anything clever to say about this week. It’s been a nightmare, but I was finally able to (hopefully) conclude the ongoing saga of my messy divorce from the rubbish university where I worked for the past six years. I’ve also been taking care of all the prep work for packing up my apartment and moving to Philadelphia. It might be possible that I own far too many books for my own good. I know how pretentious this sounds, but that doesn’t make it any less true, unfortunately.
- I edited Chapter 36 and posted it on FFN.
- My writing style has changed since I began the story, so I decided to start editing the chapters again from the beginning. I took care of Chapter 1 this week. I also updated the story description and tags on AO3 and FFN.
- I commissioned a big illustration for the fifth story arc!
- I edited the stories in Haunted Houses, put all of them into a PDF document, and sent it to the cover artist. I’ve been friends with this person for a few years, and I’m really looking forward to working with them.
- I started editing my recent posts on my book review blog. I intended to do this earlier this year, but I was derailed by various unpleasant circumstances. I’ll continue this project next week. I’d also like to update some of the blog’s side pages.
- I began working on a short story that I’d like to submit to an anthology of short horror fiction based on public-domain literary works. My piece is a twist on The Tale of Genji, and I’m having a delightful time writing it. The call for submissions was only posted earlier this month, and the deadline is next weekend. I hope I’ll be able to make it.
I don’t have anything clever to say about this week. It’s been a nightmare, but I was finally able to (hopefully) conclude the ongoing saga of my messy divorce from the rubbish university where I worked for the past six years. I’ve also been taking care of all the prep work for packing up my apartment and moving to Philadelphia. It might be possible that I own far too many books for my own good. I know how pretentious this sounds, but that doesn’t make it any less true, unfortunately.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-27 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-29 12:34 pm (UTC)Hello roomie, I am also living in this house right now. It's gotten to the point where I no longer read anything online. Instead, I've been sticking to physical books that I can pick up, read for a set number of pages, and then put back down without leaving a multitude of open tabs in my browser window.
The writing at the beginning of Malice isn't as bad as I was afraid it was going to be. It's fairly clean, so I'm just adding some extra polish.
That being said, I'm totally lying about this story being a lighthearted adventure. It's a psychosexual melodrama with some fairly dark themes.
Link is smart, hard-working, attractive, and charming, but he doesn't come from privilege, so he's been jumping from one pointless temp job to another. He does good and interesting work on social media, but he can't monetize it, which makes him bitter. He doesn't feel as though he's allowed to express negative emotions, though, so he comes off as fairly shallow. Later in the story he is going to snap and go feral.
Zelda was horribly abused as a child by her family, who tried to use psychiatric medication to control her. She represents a conflict between science as an incredible driving force of civilization and science as a means of social control, but she's also my vehicle for working through my own experiences with how I've been dehumanized by the mental healthcare industry.
What's going on with Ganondorf is something of a spoiler, but it's distinctly unpleasant. On top of some Akira-style body horror, he's an immigrant in a country where there's a distinct possibility that the police could arrest (or even murder) him for no good reason. Even though he has an excellent grasp on human psychology, he sees empathy as a luxury he can't afford, and the way this mentality influences his behavior toward Zelda can be creepy and uncomfortable.
I don't openly talk about mental illness, but Zelda and Ganondorf are both coping with intense trauma. Neither of them is mentally "healthy," and I don't clearly signpost their toxic behavior as such. There's no violence or angst or abuse for the sake of being edgy, but there's not a lot of healing. Their character development goes from "bad" to "bad in a different way," with "empowerment" being an unhealthy but necessary response to horrible circumstances.
When I started writing, I told myself that I would allow this story to become as dark as it needed to be, and it has gone to some places.
I'm not saying that you can't handle dark themes. I mean, hell. You write dark themes extremely well. I'm a fan tbh. But I don't know if I can say that this particular story is good quarantine reading.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-03 03:37 pm (UTC)Also holy fuck, thank you for all this delicious detail
now I want to read it even moreThis is 2000% Me. But also totally get that it's not prime quarantine reading. I know I binged on horror movies at the beginning of quarantine and now I'm onto rewatching nostalgic Disney movies. Yup.But legit, I hope you keep rocking this fic. I know you've spent a lot of time and energy on it and I can't wait to bellyflop into it when I'm ready 💕💕💕