2024 Writing Log, Part 33

[rynling]

- I finished Chapter 21 of An Unfound Door, my original gothic fantasy novel. This is the chapter where the two main characters finally find what they were searching for, except it’s not what they thought it would be. This isn’t a surprise to either of them; and hopefully, if I’ve pulled off the foreshadowing correctly, it’s not a surprise to the reader either.

- I’m starting to get a sense of closure with this novel. Since almost all of the thematic development has already been accomplished, I think it might be possible to wrap up the story in just two more chapters. Please wish me luck!

- My dark magical realist story “Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy” was published in Issue Six of Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, which is free to read (here). I originally wrote this story for a zine anthology project that never materialized, and then it got a whole bunch of rejections, so it’s nice to have it find a good home. Suburban Witchcraft is a weird and gorgeous magazine, btw. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re curious.

- I resumed work on “The Record of the Last Heavenly Warrior,” my story about Castle in the Sky for an upcoming Studio Ghibli fanzine. I got stuck because I was having trouble with the narrative voice. I therefore decided to reread Kazuo Ishiguro’s (beautiful and heartbreaking) novel Klara and the Sun, which was exactly the boost of inspiration I needed.

- I was contacted by the editor of How to Love Comics with a request to provide a few annotated listings for an article about horror comics. I’m happy to contribute, of course, and this week I wrote the first two listings: The Hills of Estrella Roja, and Bloodborne: The Healing Thirst.

- I edited and formatted my “Eight Short Free Horror Games on Itchio” article for Sidequest, and I also created a set of graphics to go with it. This was a lot of work, but it was a labor of love.

- Sidequest put together a short list of comfort games that help calm mental noise (here). I’m definitely the odd one out, but I think I've made a decent case for why Elden Ring is my favorite cozy comfort game these days.

- The summer reading recommendation post on Women Write About Comics is now live (here). I got to talk a little about why I love Italian ethnobotanist Stefano Mancuso’s The Nation of Plants, an accessible work of environmental political philosophy. This book is very short and very fun to read and very uplifting, and honestly I’d recommend it to anyone who’s feeling burned out and alienated by the contemporary political landscape.

- For this week’s post on my book review blog, I wrote a full review of Mina’s Matchbox, Yoko Ogawa’s newest novel in translation. This is a sweet but non-sentimental coming-of-age story that reminds me a bit of the Studio Ghibli movie When Marnie Was There. I really enjoyed this book, and the translation is excellent. You can read my review (here).

- This was the first week of the fall semester, and it’s been hectic. I drew a water lily for self care. I posted it on Tumblr (here) if you’d like some chill and calming vibes.

This week I finally got rid of an aging set of Ikea Billy bookshelves and replaced them with something a bit sturdier. I also did some Marie Kondo on the books themselves, but I ended up keeping almost everything. One of the pleasant things about getting older is that I now have an entire library of books curated to my specific tastes.

Comments

[lassarina]

I can see the argument for Elden Ring (or another, similarly high-difficulty game) being really effective for calming mental noise - if you're fully focused on Doing the Thing, you have less room to hear your brain screaming.

Good luck on finishing within two chapters!

[rynling]

Thank you! Probably because of the ADHD, meditation has always been exquisitely painful for me, but I get the feeling that super-difficult video games create the same sense of calm and flow that other people achieve through breathing exercises. Just being "difficult" isn't enough, though; the game also has to be beautiful and worth playing. Elden Ring really is something special, and it's a shame that it's inaccessible to so many people.

[lassarina]

I think I feel something like meditative calm when I've gotten really close to mastering a difficult fight in FFXIV, so that makes sense. (I have to be good enough at it that I'm not stressing over what to do next, but not so overpowered that it's easy to survive carelessness.) But that's a fairly narrow band.