2023 Writing Log, Part 23

[rynling]

- I posted Chapter 6 of The Demon King on AO3 (here). I wrote this short chapter from scratch, and I’m not sure if it’s any good. I’ll probably end up rewriting it once I get a better sense of the POV character, but it’s good enough for now.

- And I posted Chapter 7 (here). I added a few paragraphs to this chapter, but it was surprisingly fine on its own. It could probably use more editing, but I want to keep the momentum going.

- I edited “The Annotated Kitab al-Azif” and submitted it to Apex Magazine. I’m currently number 568 in their queue, and I should get my rejection hear back from them in 19 days.

- I edited and submitted the final draft of my essay on Ganondorf’s robes in The Wind Waker to the Hyrule Fashion Anthology zine. This piece was difficult to write, but it turned out okay in the end. The mods were super kind and supportive, and I was able to get a lot of creative inspiration from my spot artist, who did some really interesting work.

- The roundtable on LGBTQ+ manga that I contributed to is up on Women Write About Comics (here). I hate being perceived, and I’m always embarrassed by having a strong opinion about anything, but this was a good conversation.

- The June “WWAC Reads” roundtable is up (here). I talked about a British YA fantasy-adventure novel series called Tunnels, which was published in the mid-2000s and unfortunately overshadowed by that other British YA fantasy-adventure novel series from the 2000s. I’m not a big fan of YA fantasy, but Tunnels is really something special.

- The June “WWAC Recommendations” post is up (here). I talked about How I Met My Husband, a series of autobiographical essays that was recently published in translation. It’s written by one of Japan’s most famous LGBTQ+ activists, but it reads like somebody’s LiveJournal and it’s so good.

- I posted the sixth and final part of my botanical horror comic Seeded Ground on Tumblr (here). This part was going to have a third page, but I decided not to include it. When I sketched it out, I realized that it was a bit unhinged and wouldn’t be fun to draw (or post on social media). I decided that it’s probably better to close the comic with a soft ending that leaves more to the reader’s imagination.

- Just this week I realized that there was a serious formatting error in the newest edition of my Haunted Houses zine. Hooray for fun times with ADHD!! After spending two days forcibly suppressing my urge to commit seppuku, I got my shit together, re-edited and reformatted the zine, and ordered a reprint.

- While I was at it, I decided to do a hardcore line edit of the botanical horror zine as well. There was nothing seriously wrong with this one, but I did manage to find three small typos and one remarkably shitty spelling error. Having ADHD is great! Fun times, fun times.

All of the plants I put in my tiny concrete backyard are growing and thriving and living their best lives. I am also soaking up sunlight and rain as I do my best to get my shit together. It’s difficult to overstate how tough the Spring 2023 semester was for me, and the two weeks of travel afterwards didn’t help. I’m still an ADHD monster who can’t focus on anything for more than 15 minutes at a time, but I’m trying to be patient with myself as I get back on solid ground.

Comments

[lassarina]

I'm glad you were able to fix the things and order a reprint. it's so frustrating to find something one "should" have caught; it always makes me feel vaguely tantrum-y "I should never do anything again."

So many other things done!

[rynling]

I have a friend who's working on a report for her office. I messaged her earlier this morning to ask how the editing is going. She said it made her so upset that she threw up. She then said she has given up on writing forever, and she is going to the beach. I was like, yes. This is a true and accurate description of editing.

[lassarina]

That sounds exactly like it, yes.