2024 Writing Log, Part Eighteen
May. 16th, 2024 06:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynling- I finished Chapter 17 of An Unfound Door. This chapter is a beast, and it was nice to be able to sit down and work on it with a clear mind instead of struggling from paragraph to paragraph in my spare moments during the semester.
- I didn’t intend to write the scene that became Chapter 18, but it jumped into my head fully formed, and I’ve learned never to say no to inspiration.
- I commissioned one of my all-time favorite fantasy artists, Emily Cheeseman, to draw Fhiad from An Unfound Door, and the portrait she created (which I posted on DW here) is perfect. Fhiad’s character design is strongly inspired by Cheeseman’s work, so it was amazing to see how she took the basic template for "an Emily Cheeseman wizard" and imbued the design with a more individualistic sense of character.
- My short essay about what a Legend of Zelda game might look like with Princess Zelda as the main playable character was posted on the Zelda Creators blog (here). This was a lot of fun, and I’m super grateful for the community’s support.
- One of my stories found a home! There’s an online poetry + photography + art magazine I’ve been following called Suburban Witchcraft that recently opened submissions for fiction, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to send them “Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy.” And they accepted it! The new issue will probably come out in late August, hopefully.
- As an aside, I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies when I was young (maybe 19 or 20?) and hated it, but I recently found my old copy of the book and enjoyed reading it as an adult. It struck me that “Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy” is essentially a Jhumpa Lahiri story, and maybe it might speak to someone as Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories spoke to me. I’m happy I sent it somewhere.
- I submitted a writer application to New Winds: A Studio Ghibli Zine. This is a long shot, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
- The 13 Days of Halloween zine posted its contributor lineup on Twitter (here), and I’m a writer. Huzzah! The zine is going to be digital only (and probably free) this year, and I think that’s exactly what it needs to be. Their Twitter account has gained a hundred followers in less than a month, and they were able to pull in some amazing guest artists this year too.
- My fan art of Lilac from Ender Magnolia was retweeted by the game’s official account (here). That’s really cool. I hope they know how much one stupid little person in America (me) loves them.
- I presented my paper on “The Affective Economies of Independent Comics Publishing,” sort of without finishing my paper. This is the first time I just made a slideshow for a conference presentation and went into it without a written script, and everything went marvelously well. Thank goodness.
I rented a car and drove around Europe (mainly Germany) for a week, taking small surface roads between villages. I drank like a prince and ate like a king and bought a crate full of wine and a suitcase full of books, all for less money than spending three nights at a hotel in America. I love the European Union. It was fucking magical okay.
- I didn’t intend to write the scene that became Chapter 18, but it jumped into my head fully formed, and I’ve learned never to say no to inspiration.
- I commissioned one of my all-time favorite fantasy artists, Emily Cheeseman, to draw Fhiad from An Unfound Door, and the portrait she created (which I posted on DW here) is perfect. Fhiad’s character design is strongly inspired by Cheeseman’s work, so it was amazing to see how she took the basic template for "an Emily Cheeseman wizard" and imbued the design with a more individualistic sense of character.
- My short essay about what a Legend of Zelda game might look like with Princess Zelda as the main playable character was posted on the Zelda Creators blog (here). This was a lot of fun, and I’m super grateful for the community’s support.
- One of my stories found a home! There’s an online poetry + photography + art magazine I’ve been following called Suburban Witchcraft that recently opened submissions for fiction, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to send them “Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy.” And they accepted it! The new issue will probably come out in late August, hopefully.
- As an aside, I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies when I was young (maybe 19 or 20?) and hated it, but I recently found my old copy of the book and enjoyed reading it as an adult. It struck me that “Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy” is essentially a Jhumpa Lahiri story, and maybe it might speak to someone as Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories spoke to me. I’m happy I sent it somewhere.
- I submitted a writer application to New Winds: A Studio Ghibli Zine. This is a long shot, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
- The 13 Days of Halloween zine posted its contributor lineup on Twitter (here), and I’m a writer. Huzzah! The zine is going to be digital only (and probably free) this year, and I think that’s exactly what it needs to be. Their Twitter account has gained a hundred followers in less than a month, and they were able to pull in some amazing guest artists this year too.
- My fan art of Lilac from Ender Magnolia was retweeted by the game’s official account (here). That’s really cool. I hope they know how much one stupid little person in America (me) loves them.
- I presented my paper on “The Affective Economies of Independent Comics Publishing,” sort of without finishing my paper. This is the first time I just made a slideshow for a conference presentation and went into it without a written script, and everything went marvelously well. Thank goodness.
I rented a car and drove around Europe (mainly Germany) for a week, taking small surface roads between villages. I drank like a prince and ate like a king and bought a crate full of wine and a suitcase full of books, all for less money than spending three nights at a hotel in America. I love the European Union. It was fucking magical okay.
