RE: https://retro.pizza/@trixter/116084514290429066
Okay so back to this novel-I-wrote thing...
So if I've become disillusioned enough to give up on traditional publishing, do I want to just make whatever little changes I'd like to make coming at it several years later and then self-publish? Just to let it be out in the world and maybe get a tiny trickle of validation? (I will be honest, I desperately need some validation at this point.) Traditional publishing money would have been nice, but that's not a real thing so much anymore, and the truest reason anyone has for writing is to share all the nonsense in their head with other people. I still love these characters and I want other people to love them with me.
What I've written so far is, *of course*, only the first part of a trilogy, because that is how things go, but maybe I could find it in myself to keep going if it felt like a single fuck was given by the world.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy
My favorite thing about bringing up self-publishing is the people/bots watching the keyword searches waiting to tell you that what you really need is their $2,000 Professional Self-Publishing Services Package.
Thinking about the whole novel thing some more and wondering if I want to rewrite the romance subplot as sapphic or just be satisfied that the male love interest is absolutely the kind of male love interest a lesbian would write, just big Hozier energy here.
*opening up my old novel project folders and immediately going to the text files of smutty non-canon drabbles*
Look, this isn’t monsterfucker romance, it’s adventure fantasy with a monsterfucker subplot
There are two important reasons why this is not a “romance” or “romantasy” novel and one of them is that the main plot isn’t about the romance, it’s about the main character rescuing her twink brother from his evil boyfriend, and the other is that everyone is absolutely miserable at the end.
Yes, it’s planned out as a trilogy. Does that mean that it takes until the end of the third book to get to the Happily Ever After? No, of course not, you absolute fool.
(The romance is just the raven-man psychopomp she tragically falls for on the way.)
Doing my best to fight the urge to just make a new playlist for this novel instead of working on it. That Transformers fic I was getting back into is currently all of 3 chapters and about 3 hours of playlist.
(The new playlist would be entirely Hozier.)
(Actually it would just be this song, which came out over a decade after I started working on it, on repeat:)
https://youtu.be/-32-6FqGW2E
Hozier and Bear McCreary - Blood Upon the Snow (from God of War Ragnarök) - Lyric Video
When I try editing or even rereading my own fiction writing, I run into a problem where I'm not so much reading the words as I am letting the words trigger the memory of the story as it existed in my head. Also because of this I tend to speed-read because I know what's going on, I know what happens, I'm just trying to savor the meaty bits, but that makes it very hard for me to tell if something is paced well or not.
I'm going to work on that as I go back over this novel one more time. I'm tempted to compile it into an epub or PDF to see if that helps, but if I don't at least let myself do line-edits I'll go mad.
Maybe sometime soon I'll toss the first chapter out here in case anybody wants to see what I'm on about.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy
I am *struggling* against the urge to use this novel project as an excuse to buy that wee e-reader Aftermath just had a post about.
I want it so much but I am so broke.
Gonna start describing my novel as “Hawkwind meets Wardruna”.
The Xteink X4 Is The Cheap, Hackable eReader That's Just Enough
It has no touchscreen, no light, and it's under-powered. But the Xteink X4 has a devoted community that wants to make it sing.
Making sure I have enough good queer representation in this story to allow for one (1) Evil Gay
Giving theme songs to my supporting cast but I'm stuck on one because his song would be, like, something from Darius Rucker's country phase or some shit.
All right, any of my buddy-pals here interested in reading my first chapter? I’m open to feedback but mostly I need encouragement and accountability at this point. Also I will warn that this is dark fantasy and not exactly cozy.
I have the whole thing written, btw, but I’m doing one last round of revisions.
I have reached the stage where I am annoyed at anything I need to do that’s not writing which is unfortunate because I have a job.
My actual goal with finally putting this novel out into the world is so I can secretly post my non-canon sexy parts as fanfic.
Writers will literally be like “look at my favorite blorbo, he is so perfect and I love him,” and it’s a damp wizard with depression
(I’m writers)
The struggle of writing a scene with a character who you know would be inappropriately horny
The difference in vibes between how I talk about my writing and the story itself is pretty significant ngl
There's a lot in this novel that's really good at this stage, but I need to put some more work into the villain arc, which is basically "men will literally join a necromancy cult instead of going to therapy".
This book isn't fanfic-with-the-numbers-filed-off but you can *definitely* tell which WoW expansion was my favorite.
Back in '00 or so I read an ebay listing for a Gundam Wing hentai doujinshi about Wufei getting sexually assaulted while in prison that referred to him as "grumpy little Wu-chan" and that's the energy I bring to talking about the emotional harm that comes to my characters in my writing.
I'm not writing romantasy, I'm writing fantasy in which people fall in love and it makes things so much worse for everyone involved.
There was a point very early on when I was thinking of telling the story that ended up as my novel as a 16-bit Final Fantasy-style game in RPGMaker, and that's not *consciously* why it ends up with a balanced 4-member main party for a chunk of the book, but I can't account for my subconscious.
I think I’ve accidentally recreated Bucky Barnes from first principles.
I'm gonna have to ask my characters to stop being horny for like five minutes.
Current Writing Status: *playlisting intensifies*
I guess I’m at the “Oh shit how it is so late” stage of Writer Brain.
No LLM could come up with the depravity of the chapter I'm working on.
(It's mostly not even that bad but the bit that gets real bad gets *real bad*.)
I feel like I’ve oversold the quantity of sex in my novel but I hope to make up for it with quality.
Honestly it’s kind of amazing how little my novel owes to any Transformers fiction considering that’s My Thing, but there is a slight hint of mnemosurgery, and also a reference to a completely unhinged alt.toys.transformers post circa Beast Wars.
This novel I’m working on is aesthetically influenced by all the Scourge stuff in Warcraft/The North stuff in GoT/Skyrim, narratively and characterly influenced a lot by Michael Moorcock, and okay, I’ll admit the main character is prone to melodramatic inner monologues that are very Simon Furman.
I just like ice zombies, I don’t care if they shouldn’t work, they’re magic
This novel is really just a cautionary tale about goth boyfriends.
Trixter of the Moon Council
Chara 🐰