Arduinna

This year hasn't been great in terms of writing. While I've hit my wordcount goal for the year (75k words), almost none of that has been fiction writing. That went from continual frustration to an apathy that was almost worse, where I just didn't care about it at all any more.

Then I had an atypically strong reaction to some caffeine, and decided to try setting up a pen name that's not connected to the rest of my real life or online presence. It was a very enjoyable (if short) burst of enthusiastic hyperfocus, and while that level of excitement didn't last, at least some amount of interest has remained.

My goals for August were:
- get an intro blurb done for that pen name
- do some assessing and prioritizing of ideas
- finish that section of the snowflake outline for my WFM fic
- possibly finish the current chapter of that WIP

And how did I do?
- I did get the intro blurb done!
- I did at least start prioritizing the various ideas, narrowing it down to five that I want to really consider working on
- I did not finish that outline (but plan to possibly work that more into a scheduled thing)
- I also did not finish the WIP chapter (but plan to instead give in to the desire to do the re-plot and rewrite of that particular story, which is one of the five I mentioned.)

I'm feeling pretty decent right now, at least emotionally, in regards to writing. I haven't really made a lot of forward progress on the writing itself, but I'm hoping to build up at least a little bit of a "framework" that will make it easier to move forward without burning out. That might be wishful thinking, but I'm trying! I at least don't feel like I want to avoid it entirely, so that's progress, haha. I really do have to figure out the next step stuff, though, and make sure I'm not just using other tasks as procrastination.

I've tentatively poked around on accounts set up both on DW and on tumblr... but it's kind of a "resounding crickets" sort of situation. I wasn't expecting otherwise, but I also don't entirely want to be shouting into the void. I'm seeing a lot of other people also seeming to shout into the void, and not a lot of interaction happening, though with obvious exceptions. I don't expect (or even want!) a ton of instant interaction, but I'd like to lay the groundwork to connect with the types of writers I vibe with once I have things worth sharing.
I think it's likely that Bluesky is going to be a more active place to look for community, but I also am not good at using Bluesky, lol. I never enjoyed (or got to the point of really "getting" twitter even before it was a Nazi bar, so I feel like I'm lacking a base level of experience to just jump into Bluesky. But it's time to try and get used to it, I suppose!

My goals for September:
- Start looking at Bluesky. Figure out what hashtags seem active and relevant, see if there are particular accounts or hashtags or feeds that writer-types seem to congregate around. (I started off by following a bunch of the authors I read and like... but that's obviously not a peer group, ha.)
Regrettably, I also probably have to figure out what kinds of things to post. And then I have to do it. :( Ew.
- I need to figure out my WIP next steps. (Possibly start with making intros for the WIPs I'm hoping to work on? Start with an outline? Do a preliminary intro, then outline, then revise the intro? What kinds of outline do I want to do? Give snowflake another try, or look for a different method?)
- Pick one of the WIPs to actually start with.
- Start putting together some collections of images for future use in moodboards and things like that. I want some sort of visual I can attach to posts about my stories, but am not a good enough artist to illustrate things myself, am too broke at this point to commission art, and am definitely not ever going to use AI for it, so... moodboards it is, ha. But I want to get a repository of images (via sources that allow them to be used) for that. This I hope to be an ongoing "when I have spare time" thing that will hopefully be enjoyable, too.

We'll see how it goes!