You go out and vote in the midterms! Sad to see AO3 needed to be ritually sacrificed to finally turn Texas blue.
Remember people, every vote counts.
Back onto lighter matters though before I grab my old high school soap boxes out of my closet: this week was both awful and terrible at the same time in vastly different ways. For one, a lot of personal stuff is coming to a head months sooner than we expected, so I’m about to wreck myself trying to get my house ready for the holidays. They also put into effect a whole new system that I was honestly dreading at work.
Except… everything’s working out. All those tech issues I kept getting? They finally just switched out my laptop so no more hours of troubleshooting. New security system blocks Squarespace and Ellipsus on my work laptop? The hotspot on my phone finally gets fixed. Family suddenly moving back in with us? Surprise, one of our coworkers just closed on a house and are offering us a free washer and dryer.
Everything’s falling apart just enough to make us appreciate how it turns out in the end, and I haven’t been filled with this much hope since I was still in school.
Writing though has been a struggle. I’ve been getting my new setup and system down to a science and also stressing about, well, everything. Not exactly condusive for getting things done. Still, I’ve gotten a significant chunk of the final edits on Ace of Wands finished, meaning we’re almost ready for P-Day!
Posting regularly on social media is still a work in progress. I’d welcome recomendations on editing and producing videos because I am struggle bussing over here. I’ve got a Tik Tok a week old in my drafts because transitions are HARD. Ya girl is not made for this life.
I’m also stuck in a bit of a limbo. So much editing to do, but also so many plot bunnies dying for a chance to be written. I’m holding firm, though. Nothing new until I finish what’s already in progress. Otherwise I’ll go back to never finishing anything. So much of writing is holding yourself accountable. Especially in indie writing. If deadlines aren’t met, I have no one to blame but myself. I also am the one suffering when everything’s on the wire.
Still, I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration this week. Not just for stories (who wants to hear my One Piece inspired epic about a tapestry maker), but also just about writing in general. Twice this week on Threads, I’ve made a comment to baby writers that a sweet Australian woman made to me years ago. Write what you want to write. People are going to like it or hate it no matter what you do. If you write what you want/like, then at least you can be happy with the art you made.
Now, she was talking about OC inserts on a Transformers fanfiction of another fanfiction at the time, but I think the point still stands.
Why am I making a werewolf/mermaid romance? Cause I grew up on Charmed and Teen Wolf and all that ilk and I miss the good old days. Why am I writing a mafia series with tarot cards? Because I love the idea of letting tarot cards decide the direction of the story and having to work within the confines of it. Why are all my male main characters like that? Well… honestly they’re all just different versions of my husband in different fonts.
I’ll love him in every lifetime. If that’s a threat or a promise depends entirely on how much he ragebaits me that day.
This weekend (when I’m not stress cleaning my house like my foremothers) I’ll knock out the last of Ace of Wands final editing and start format editing it. Which is going to be an… experience. I’ve dipped my toe into a new software that looks fancy and professional. It also looks terrifying. Like the first time I ever opened a word processor back when I was ten.
Windows 2005 was not for the faint of heart.
I’m hoping I can find some step by step tutorials on how to set things up. Maybe some YouTube videos when I’m not sharing my phone with a toddler determined to get her Peppa Pig fix. I just don’t want to get too confident. It seems like every time I think I have the formatting of a book down, I’m reminded of a page I forgot or a margins specification that slipped my mind. So many orphan lines, do I look like Batman?
Fingers crossed I can get a lot done soon!