Laughter Through Tears

Monday through Thursday is the online convention event that's replacing the usual annual fall geek con, Icon, which takes place every year on the week-long holiday. Taking the con online has prompted the organizers to switch to a payment model where a one-time cover price gains the user access to all events, which has allowed me and my brother to make last-minute, stress-free decisions about what to watch. For example, there was a GOH event on Monday that I had thought about attending, but it was quite late at night and I was tired. I ended up watching two events on Monday (not quite back-to-back) and two and a half on Tuesday.

Then I was going to take a break on Wednesday and do some intensive writing on The Flower of Fairmont, which is getting very close to being ready for a demo, but alas. After a migraine on Monday night (surprise!) and a worse migraine late Tuesday night (my fault, for playing too much Skyrim), I was a wreck on Wednesday. Not the worst rebound I've ever had, but I was not good to work. And that's with being at home and having all the resources available to make things easier -- shades down, dimmed screen, low volume. So Wednesday was not the productive day I had hoped for, and the first week of October passed without me making much progress on my writing goals.

I did get some stuff done this week, but much less exciting.

Today I have stuff I need to do around the house, but I am also going to try and write a little. The only event I definitely want to watch is in the evening, so I can just make that my dinner break, instead of TV. Oh, I also started watching the Mars show, and I found it... watchable, I guess? I'm not super into it, but I still enjoy the sciency aspects.

Fairmont is still pretty far from being done, but I'm making progress on chapter 4 of TC. Slower than I'd like, but progress.

I have an exciting new project to brainstorm, now that I've laid poor old Blue Rose to rest. I feel pretty good about it right now, although of course that's happened before and not always panned out. At the same time, last week I made decent and more progress on TC, so I'm on track for this month's writing goal. I've determined that I need to focus on finishing the last three scenes in chapter three before I move forward.

I don't know what I would do without therapy. I need a place to air and/or confront my irrational fears. Heaven knows now is the perfect time for those to crop up.

On the writing front, I can be pretty happy with my progress on both Turncoat and Fairmont (the new project). I think Fairmont might soon be ready for first readers. I'm especially pleased with the fact that it's more challenging for me on a technical level, that I'm doing more with form and not just with story. I think that means I'm finally gaining some hard-earned confidence forming long-form stories.

I'm also glad because I crave the attention of having a game in public beta, so hey.

Less than a month ago I was thinking, wishing, hoping, believing that by the end of Pesach this would all be over. Now I think we'd be lucky to be out of quarantine before June.

Tomorrow I have phone calls to make. I don't look forward to it.

...so I'm writing a new game.

I'm still working on Turncoat, obviously. In fact, just this afternoon I was able to cross a few items off my to-do list, so I feel good about that. And I mean to work on it every day this week, since the holiday is happening entirely over Zoom.

But I succumbed to the New Hotness, and I have a new game.

I did some pretty good work on TC this morning, and then this evening I discovered (to mixed emotions) that the fic I've been working on since Yuletide, which is not yet complete, is already at a word count that would make it the fourth longest thing on my AO3 page. Conceivably when it's done it'll be the longest...? Probably not, but it's certainly possible. I mean, I think there's only a scene or two more, but...

Eh, I just wanted to commemorate this bizarre occasion.

I had a good morning. Got in gear pretty quickly. Made it to the library. Was pretty productive, although I didn't get a final word count on my work today. And I took some notes. I know where I'm going and I feel good about my work today. Then I went to get a coffee and a light lunch, which was a nice cap to the morning. I also managed to get a laundry in and a few other small things that needed doing, so objectively it was a good day.

But sometimes a bad feeling sneaks up on me out of nowhere and I have this heaviness in my chest, and it's sneaky so by the time I notice it I don't know what to do except distract myself with games and nonsense until it dissolves and leaves me alone.

So I had a good day, sort of, but I still somehow feel like shit about myself.

Apparently I write parser fiction now.

I'm using Inform 7 and thinking about IFComp. And having fun.

Some days I feel terrible about myself, my writing, and my life (in that order). But today I feel good about everything and I'm so excited about TC I could almost throw up.

So I'm putting this note here to remind me of it, later.

Rules: List the first line(s) of your last twenty stories. See if you find any patterns. Tag ten authors to pass it along.

I was tagged by @faejilly​ and it seemed like a fun way to celebrate both the Year of Lots of Writing and the fact that I just looked back at all my accounts to sum up my word counts for December, and I did a lot better than I feared.

I’m only doing ten, though. It already goes way back into August.

( Read more... )

Tag yourself if you’d like to participate.

Got a little bit done today on both Blue Rose and on Turncoat Chronicle. A good omen for the month, I think. I'm still hopelessly jammed on the next scene in BR, but one of the writing sprint prompts was extremely relevant to a scene I won't get to until halfway through act 2. So, yeah.

And Verity is still being Verity. I wrote about 1K for her last night after work. Again, on the whole theme of getting a positive start.