A very un-put-together writing update; also, being a slow writer is valid

I wasn’t actually going to post anything today, because my mental health decided to take up extreme sports and go cliff diving (and also I didn’t have a post written up anyway), but then I realized I wanted to post something. So here it is.

(Oh, also my computer broke. And I mean straight-up disintegrated. I can still turn it on and stuff, but it’s not looking good. Thankfully, my sister is letting me use her old laptop. It’s a little bit finicky, but other than that it works fine, so I’m able to still write and stuff. Just…that’s my go-to excuse if I miss any posts now. 😉 )

I haven’t written very much at all this year month, and that’s okay. Honestly. I’m pretty impressed that I managed to get all the stuff done that I did. 4k words written this month! Whoo! (1k of that was spent working on my fanfic, 3k on my novel.) I’m not sure I’ll continue with NaNoWriMo, though, because as I said, mental health, but it has been pretty fun.

It’s okay to write slower than everyone else. I kind of wish I could be a fast writer–I’d like to be able to get all my project ideas completed in a reasonable time. I like working on different stories! But writing slowly means I’ll be able to spend a lot of time with the current projects that I love. And frankly, I’m only *checks* 8606 words into this novel, but I’m already dreading having to end this project, like the sentimental freak I am. Be proud of how much you’ve written, even if you’ve only written a sentence.

Hold up, I’m 8606 words in? Twenty-nine pages?! I’m further in than I thought!

Does anyone else get it where if they go three days without writing or something they immediately start feeling like they aren’t even a writer anymore and they get really ashamed? Because I do that, and it’s a bit ridiculous.

Maybe I fall into a trap of needing to make a wordcount in order to feel like I’ve achieved anything?

I was having trouble getting through this one chapter in my novel, and I promised myself that when I was done with this I would post snippets. That did not help me break through the writer’s block, and I’m not even done with this chapter yet, but I still want to post snippets from this chapter. (Incidentally, I broke the writer’s block by including a scene in between the two chapters from another character’s point of view–Guinevere’s, in case you’re interested–but also getting a certain little word counter thingy called NaNoWriMo helped too. Sometimes all you need to push you through is to break up your rhythm a little.)

But now I need to find snippets that aren’t trash.

Or maybe I’ll post trashy snippets! Why should I only show the semi-decent aspects of myself!

I tried my very best to smile. She grinned back at me. She looked more like a tiger baring her teeth. But she did not look unhandsome.

Written at twelve in the morning and…I do not?? know where this came from?? WHY IS THIS HERE.

By the way, as you can tell, I have finally beat the desire to go back and edit. every. scene as soon as I’m done. I’m fine with editing by the chapter, but if I edit by the scene it’s waaay too easy for me to just decide ‘this whole thing is trash and isn’t going anywhere’ and toss it. For me personally I need to wait until I’ve at least got a chapter down.

NOT THAT YOU CAN TELL THAT I EDIT MY CHAPTERS EITHER.

“Your condolences are appreciated,” I said drily. The corners of her mouth tilted up.

Okay, I kind of like this.

A smile grew over her face that we both knew she did not mean at all. It was not that it was unconvincing. It was only that we both knew. “I am Queen Guinevere,” she murmured, leaning forward. She looked as if she were admitting something mildly embarrassing.

I really like this.

Her hand jerked, the light flickering as it moved, and she stared at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. “Really?” she said. “Gawain’s little brother?” I had never thought of myself as ‘Gawain’s little brother’ in my life.

I don’t know why, but one of my absolute favorite things is having characters in an extremely dysfunctional/otherwise bad situation and then just have them treat it like it’s completely normal. I don’t know why.

She was a tall woman, taller than me, and her brown skin was dry and the skin on her hands were cracked. But it was her eyes I couldn’t look away from. Her eyes were endless and ancient and dead. There were dark hollows underneath them like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

Does someone want to crown me queen of sexy character descriptions or what? That is sarcasm, by the way. Literally no one should want to crown me queen of sexy character descriptions.

But I’m kind of sick of sexy character descriptions anyway. Screw your emerald eyes, Warner! (Okay sorry jk we love your emerald/jade/whatever eyes. Even though they’re ridiculous. NO ONE ELSE GETS A PASS THOUGH.)

Does anyone else type their characters to things way too much? Hogwarts house, colour, whatever that weird personality-type-thing-of-debatable-scientific-accuracy was (MBTI. It was MBTI), etc. I don’t know why I like doing it, I just do.

Mordred’s a Slytherin with a dash of Hufflepuff, I think. Agravaine is…I don’t know, but it’s not Slytherin. BRB gonna go waste my time doing some stupid quiz again. (According to the knockoff Pottermore quiz I took, he’s a tie between Gryffindor and…Hufflepuff?! Nah I’m not buying this I think he’s just outside the Harry Potter house system. He has no house. Gryffindor might be a fit, though.) Guinevere is certainly Slythern. Just in case anyone was interested, which you weren’t.

On a complete and total side note, why on earth are Ravenclaw and Slytherin separate houses? Sure, there is a difference between cunning and general intelligence, but…if you’re intelligent, don’t you also have the capacity to strategize? And you might say that it’s the difference between intelligence for its own sake and intelligence for the sake of ambition–to get you a job, to help you succeed–but those often go hand in hand. I, for one, love writing for its own sake, but I would also very much like to be published and make money one of these days. I don’t know, I just don’t understand.

Oh, weird thing I realized the other day about my story: I tend to imagine my characters with the same accent as me, as if any sixth century British character would ever have the same accent as a fairly accentless American, but you know, Mordred and his brothers are, technically, from Scotland I guess. So I finally looked up what a Scottish accent sounded like, and now I…I can’t get the accent out of my head? I’m thinking in a Scottish accent? Send help?

Also. I studiously avoid writing dialect because I just have this sense that giving the characters a way of speaking exactly like my own is still less offensive than butchering whatever the characters’ dialects are. (And I mean dialect as in speaking patterns, not dialect as in doing bizarre things with your spelling. No one should butcher any spelling here, and you’re probably getting it wrong anyway, 19th century authors. Whoops, did this just turn into a callout post?) Has anyone had to research these sorts of things, and how did you do it? How do you fight the fear that you’re butchering everything that is sacred and you now have an army of angry…Scottish people in this case I guess at your door? I don’t want an army of angry Scottish people at my door! England already tried that!

And hey, I still probably wouldn’t bother with ‘accurate’ speech patterns in this case, because hello it is historical and if I were to be truly accurate no one would be able to understand me. Let us translate this novel from ancient Welsh.

Oh! I also started a fanfic for a show you’ve probably never heard of (unless you read my last blog post), but I’m going to tell you about the fanfic anyway! So there’s Seonho, who is an extremely ridiculous character, from this Korean drama called My Country, which is an extremely ridiculous show. I love it, of course. Anyway, the show (spoilers if you’re actually interested in watching it, just warning you) fridged the hero’s sister, which kind of annoys me, considering I liked the sister very much. So now I’m just over here writing a Seonho/Yeon AU. Where, you know, they escape from evil dad and everything. And I have no idea what direction this is going to take, but I have lots of extremely stupid ideas. But hey! At least I can’t outdo the show in stupidity!

(If I ever do outdo the show in stupidity, please send me help. And also maybe kill me, because that’s a state I don’t want to be in.)

I’ve got five pages of fanfic so far! Yay!

So, uh…snippets?

“Of course,” he said. His smile grew still more uneven. He always had that nervous smile whenever he lied to her. “I always make it out alive, don’t I?” He looked to the side, the smile beginning to slip off his face.

I’ll admit, I kind of love these morons.

She used to have nightmares about losing Seonho.

She would wander and wander through the house and the courtyard, but the rooms would be empty. The house was abandoned. Except for Nam Jeon. She never saw him, but Nam Jeon would always be there.

She’d wake up terrified each time, but Seonho was always there in the morning, a tired smile on his face. She never knew about the future, though. She would never know about that.

Idk if it’s any good I guess you decide

She ran ahead to keep up. “You’re injured.”

“It’s very thoughtful of you to care,” he said kindly, inclining his head. She rolled her eyes.

“We’re likely to get caught if you collapse, orabeoni,” she said, nudging his shoulder without thinking about it. He hissed in a breath. “I’m sorry,” she said.

I really hate how WordPress formats my quotes? It looks ugly, and I can’t figure out how to change it. Does anyone have any advice for this? I also can’t figure out how to change the color of a few words without changing the entire paragraph. Am I technology-clueless or is WordPress?

But anyway, let’s be proud of our writing. 💙 And I’m sorry that this post is way too long for what it is. It’s not a very good post, but that’s sort of the point. Stuff straight from our brains doesn’t necessarily make a very good post, but they’re certainly satisfying to write. I’ll try to get out a more polished post next Saturday, but I certainly make no promises.