Cerulean Mornings

Look, I Remembered To Post!

2026-01-29T02:10:05Z

Well, not a great start for keeping this journal up-to-date but I have to tell you that my January has been a mess! Apparently stress from the end of last year just piles on and continues into this year, and it took me forever to deal with it properly. I'm still not sure I did deal with it, but whatever. I'm trying my best. And my best right now is just do something every day even if it's like, five minutes, or I start at 11 pm. Making it routine is the key.

I can't get myself to write words right now. I can get myself to plot and plan and think about what to write, but actually writing it down is like, a stuck car. I don't like it, of course, but not sure how to overcome it. Sure, the obvious answer is "just write something it doesn't matter." Uh, yeah, if it's that easy no one will have writer's block ever! It's so uncomfortable sitting in front of my computer after planning my outline and be like, okay! Now it's creative words on paper time! And after an hour nothing comes out because every word feels stupid. What creativity? What if I write so shitty that people think it's ChatGPT so they report me if I post? (I will never use ChatGPT in my actual writing. Every single word on the page you read is mine! Yes, even those em dashes that I actually like to use. They're my habit first not ChatGPT's!) What if i re-read the chapter/section a million times and just can't get it right? What if the plot just twists itself into knots halfway through? All those questions for someone who hasn't written anything complete and serious in a long, long time. Ugh. This is not writer's block - I'm not blocked, I have ideas and things - this is writer's...stage fright? You know what to say-ish but you can't get the words out? Your mouth and voice stops working? I don't know.

I am glad I'm in getyourwordsout because their check-ins and posts keep me accountable and engaged. At least I can make comments. That's practice for writing, right?

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First Album, to Distract Myself From, Well, Everything

2026-01-07T08:54:29Z

See title. lol.

I am very determined not to doomscroll any longer. What a crazy beginning of year! I've spent most of the past few days just doing nothing but doomscroll, and that is bad! I do not want to do that any longer. For my own mental health, for my productivity, any of that. I have enough stress without adding reddit forums to it. So yeah, let's just talk about something else, shall we?

I have finished the first album I've been listening to this year. I mean, it's mostly for background while I'm doing journaling but like I said, I just want to keep track of it, nothing as serious as "this is an official review of an album by me" or anything of the sort. I wanted to feel some comfort these days (due to the aforementioned doomscrolling) so I went to music of my teenage years haha. Artists I've listened to many times when I was younger but haven't at all for the past, uh, decade? I wanted something soothing so I started with Sarah McLachlan. (You know, I loved the song "Angel" before that stupid commercial ruined it for everyone forever.) I actually have never listened to her oldest albums because when I got into her there was no Spotify, or Napster, or even mp3s. Just good old CDs. (I am old!) So I've never heard of her b-sides or stuff like that, just her most popular albums. Well, now I do have Spotify, so I went way back to her first album, Touch, and listened through that.

Track List

Out of the Shadows
Vox
Strange World
Trust
Touch
Steaming
Sad Clown
Uphill Battle
Ben's Song
Vox (Extended Version)

It's...okay? It definitely feel older, like an 80s album instead of a 90s album. "Vox" is an alright song but other ones I just kind of glossed over. I guess her style is just very unique? I don't know. This first album to me is a bit meh.

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A New Series - Album Listens

2026-01-03T06:16:37Z

Yay, start of a new series on this blog! I've been trying to think of ways to use this blog more and well, let's just put things on here that I have opinions about haha. Before I used to list all the songs/album I've been listening to for the month and I stopped doing that because I haven't really been listening to full albums as much. I've just been putting on background music mixes from Youtube or just do without any music at all. Now for some reason I want to revisit albums - Spotify is still a thing I'm paying for and enjoying - so I figure, why not continue what I was doing before? But not the exact same! There are changes!

I've always been one of those people who only listen through full albums. I find new music from random places, but a lot I just click on the artists who've collaborated with an artist I already like (super easy to do on Spotify, really) and listen to them to see if I like them too. I like T.I. and through his albums I started listening to Yo Gotti and Keven Gates. I listen to some trip-hop mixes and like certain tracks by some artists I've never heard of and then start to become their fan from there (like DJ Krush, and Phontaine, and Kruder & Dorfmeister.) I never use the suggestion feature so people who gripe about AI ruining everything, well, I have wholly escaped that problem. So I'm going to put short blurbs on here of 100% my opinion on some albums I'm going through now. Might be fun.

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Welcome 2026!

2026-01-01T21:24:59Z

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope your 2026 goes well. This will be your year, I can feel it!

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New GYWO Goal!

2025-12-29T19:14:42Z

New year, new goal, yeah! Well, technically we're still in old year but my mindset has gone on to 2026 already. 2025 has dragged on so long that I'm mentally way into the next year already. I'm hoping 2026 will be "my" year. None of that "toxic positivity" stuff. I'm just saying what I'm sincerely hoping.

I have officially joined 2026 getyourwordsout and now have a banner for it. Woohoo!

GetYourWordsOut: Year Eighteen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net

I have pledged for "The Excursionist" habit pledge, which is to work on writing 180 days out of the year. Yes, it's kind of ambitious that I couldn't even do the Backpacker last year (120 days) and now I'm pledging for a higher day count. Well, I'm thinking that the count was too low last year might be one of the reasons I kept putting it off. Like, I was always thinking "it's only 3 months, you've got time!" and before I knew it, time had flown by and wham, it was September! So I'm thinking if I make the goal a bit harder, I'll be less complacent and I will start early. Also, I actually do want to seriously attempt the challenge this time, and not let life completely suck my motivation out. Push myself a little, you know? So 15 days a month working (not writing words only, but working on fics, including planning, brainstorming, anything as long as it's my fiction related!) on my writing should be the bare minimum I want to set for myself. I want to try to make this an actual career-like thing and not a hobby, so I definitely need to treat it like one. We'll see how this fares for me next year. I do feel like starting over, kind of, at 41 when it comes to career is, uh, a choice. But hey, better late than never?

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Hello Hello!

2025-12-06T07:03:49Z

Why, hello everyone. I'm still alive ahaha. And just bought another year of DW services for paid account because, well, as little as I frequent here lately, I still like it here. And I want to support this site. This is the longest I've stayed on one account since, well, since LJ bust I think. And I will be here for more.

Right, so, my getyourwordsout attempt this year ended in utter failure. I was doing nothing for most of it, due to many, many life reasons. So I decided to quit around October (?) or so and try again next year. Well, it's now almost next year, and I'm back for another try. Ironically I'm no longer that much into the same fandom as last time. But it doesn't mean I don't have fanfic ideas! Or any other fic ideas. Like my previous entry said, I'm now on appropriate medication for my mental condition, and I'm seeing results! It's wonderful what modern drugs can do! (I don't mean this in a junkie way I mean this in a sincere way, to applaud the progress we've made for diagnosing and treating neuro-atypical disorders for women and girls.) I'm lucky that I have a regimen that actually works for me, unlike my bestie, who has "treatment-resistant depression" as she said it and is coping mighty hard with just therapy. So I'm again, hopeful that next year will be the year I break out of my decade-long slump and move forward with my life, and writing. And this journal. Yes, yes, I say this all the time about starting and restarting, but I think this time I will actually restart and stick with it. I've done this a few times now - starting and sticking with it - with things that I have never been able to accomplish before. So let's pray this will work.

First, I need to catch up on all the prep-work for getyourwordsout , now that NaNoWriMo is no longer a thing, this is the community I want to join to keep myself motivated and an external check, so to speak. I look forward to writing more here in the future.

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Life Update

2025-03-15T03:57:35Z

Hi all. It has been a couple of months, and I have written 0 words and have done 0 brainstorming for my writing projects, and other projects in general. Why? Well, let's just say that I have finally, officially been diagnosed as someone who is not neurotypical. Pretty severe forms of it from the look of things, and I have been prescribed new medication to try to tackle my symptoms. It made my life in the past few months complicated, to say the least. So many side effects and revelations about myself! But, but but but! I also think, for the first time in my life, I'm approaching what "normal" people feel everyday. I stopped freaking out and spiraling over every little (and big) thing, for one. And hidden within the depth of my neuro-atypical brain, there is now a tiny glimmer of motivation that had not been there before. At least not for the past decade or so. So there is progress, just coming very, very, very slowly.

So yeah, I didn't have the capacity to get up from my bed on some days, never mind working on a fic. I've diligently checked in with the GYWO monthly checker but I put a big fat 0 for progress. Will still be a 0 for this month too, but maybe next month something will have changed. I am hopeful. Until then, I guess. When I finally began any brainstorming I will update here. It'll be an important milestone even though it's probably a miniscule amount of progress. I still would like to celebrate it as an achievement for myself.

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Happy 2025

2025-01-06T07:42:53Z

Yes, I'm five days late already to say happy new year. But, whatever. Happy New Year!

I have finally joined getyourwordsout this year. I have no idea what to expect for myself. I want to get back to writing again, and I want to write for myself, mostly, so I'm not even sure I want to post what I write anywhere. Well, all these thoughts are counting the chicks way before they hatch, though. I first need to write something, and then I can think about posting, yeah?

I like that getyourwordsout gives you a good structure to work with. I signed up for the lightest habit pledge - only need to write for like 10 days a month. Doesn't even have to be actual writing - working and thinking about what I'm going to write counts, too. So if I fill three notebook pages brainstorming you're damn straight that counts for me! Like what I said in my last entry, I am definitely trying to delve into Saint Seiya this year. Don't care that the fandom is small and possibly dead. (I'm actually not sure how active it is, because a lot of the fics are not in English, and they've been importing from Stayka's Saint Seiya Archive as one of their OpenDoors projects, so I'm not sure how many people are creating new fics vs. importing their old ones over.) Doesn't matter, again, I'm not even sure I want to post anything in the end. I just want to write a long complicated romance between the Bronze Saints, i.e. people no one cares about haha because you know the Gold Saints took all the personalities/drama/flair/fun/plot/etc. Like, I'm actually making one of the Bronze Saints that the original manga mentioned maybe twice ever and making him a fairly important side character with depth and stuff. So this whole adventure is sort of like "original characters light" with my own plot thrown in.

I also want to write some decent smut. Been too long since I wrote those, so that alone is good enough reason for me.

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I'm Back!

2024-09-26T06:25:47Z

Hi! Yes yes, I disappeared again for a while. That seems to be the trend, eh? Disappearing for a few months at a time but never actually abandoning this journal. I consider this a win ahaha. Used to be if it gets consistently like this I'd just delete the whole thing and start over fresh. But for some reason, I always come back here after a while, no matter what. It's been 6 years and this journal is still here, active and paid for, so yeah, let's keep this one around, eh?

I do have some excuse for the past month to not be back, because I had my in-laws staying with me this entire time, and they were very stressful! Since this journal is mostly about me writing in fandom, well, obviously I did not get any writing done with that much stress. I didn't even get any fandom reading done, let alone anything else. So that's my excuse for being absent in the month of September. However, the months from May to August I had no excuse. I think I was trying to write ChengXian but then I got stuck plotting, and then life happened so I never got to the actual writing part. It's 100% my fault, and now, when it's almost October, I want to rectify that for realz. But! But but but. Not with ChengXian.

Why? Well, first of all I haven't read in fandom for a while, and I've never actually wrote in MDZS, so I am a little bit trepidatious about the whole thing. Second, I am trying to restart this whole "writing" bit, in general, and so I think trying to write characters accurately is stressing me out haha. I think it's better if I have a blanker slate, so yes, I could do my own characters and work at my actual novel, but that is even more scary as I haven't written in that for a long time either. *sigh* Anyway, the point is, I'm going to try to write in a fandom where it's more, forgiving, shall we say? In that it's a dead, small fandom and nobody cares if the people I write becomes a bit OOC. (Or at least I hope not 😅). Yeah...... Remember a while ago I talked about Saint Seiya? No? Good! Because I want to start off there! (It's in my tags if you actually want to bother finding out.) I actually brainstormed a crapload of plot - even got a pretty good Notion board out of it, but like with my ChengXian plot, I never put any words down. I think I've been paralyzed with not writing so long I've forgotten how to do it. Well then! That won't do! No time like the present to try to get back. It's a skill, right? Practice makes better (never expect perfect, that's just counter-productive thinking).

So hopefully I will talk about writing and fandom more here. I had started a writing side blog hoping to track my progress, but I think it just ended up being way too much. So I'm going to delete that blog and talk about writing here. I'm not sure what to do with my gaming side blog, either. I do use it but not nearly enough to warrant a whole blog for it, you know? I have a habit of starting many things and never finishing them, which is terrible, so I'm going to try to break that. The first step is to pare things down so I don't have too many obligations haunting me. They're very counter-productive in my case.

One last thing, I really want to join getyourwordsout this year. I missed the sign up by like a day or something last year. Will set myself a reminder for December.

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Random Thought

2024-05-06T01:55:07Z

Taylor Swift's "imgonnagetyouback" has huge ChengXian energy.

Just saying.

Link to lyrics.

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A May Reset

2024-05-01T22:07:09Z

Hi. It's been a while. I have a good excuse, though, and that is that my medical issues did not get better. In fact, it got pretty bad for a stint there, which also contributed to my depression, and so I pretty much took all of April off from, well, everything. I stopped blogging; I stopped journaling/planning; I stopped writing/working. The only things I managed to do were some essential household chores like dishes and laundry. And, yeah, that was why I disappeared for the past month.

However, I have recovered! At least physically. Mentally it's another issue, but I'm taking steps to get it addressed, so not the most pressing right now. I am getting back to my regular routine, so hopefully soon I will be able to go back to writing. I am tackling coding today, though. There are just so many other things I have to do now that I took a month off. Most are large chores like vacuuming the entire house, dusting the entire house, organize all the stuff I haven't been able to get to, cook, plus I have life chores like make more doctor appointments, go to the DMV, you know, annoying bureaucracy things. Sometimes, seriously, I wonder how anyone get anything done in the short daytime hours. Just a few things could take up so much of your time that you felt like you've accomplished nothing even though at the same time you felt like already tackled a mountain. Oy.

Sidenote: I am considering restarting posting monthly playlists again. I did that before, listing out all the music I've got in the background in the course of a month. Nowadays I listen to white or brown noise more often than not (because I've got this annoying tinnitus!), but I have been delving into full albums (the new Taylor Swift and Beyoncé ones, at least) again, so perhaps I should post them for myself, for fun, again?

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Self Camp NaNoWriMo - And Not in April

2024-03-28T01:00:06Z

First of all, and off topic, but Spotify finally put out a mini player for us desktop folks. Wow. Only took like 15+ years to catch up to iTunes. Like WTF Spotify? I suppose better late than never but still. With that said, I do like it. It's very flexible compared to iTunes. Although I wish there's a way to make it not always appear on top of my windows. Sometimes I just want a choice, you know? Maybe in another 15 years they'll add that function in. 🙄

Anyway, I am super behind on writing because of medical issues; just could not summon the motivation these past few weeks. But I'm picking it back up now! I definitely don't think I'll be able to start writing the fic on April 1st like I had planned. NaNoWriMo the org is dropping the ball hard, so I don't think I'll be joining it on the official site either. Instead, I'll continue to work on the plot/outline portion of it at a normal pace, and whenever I finish it, that will be the first day of my own Camp NaNo count. So if I finally get everything sorted out on April 10th, then I will run the 30-day challenge from April 10th to May 10th. I will not be attempting to write 50k in a month, though. It will be a much smaller goal, but the point is to write/work on it every day those 30 days. Maybe I'll scrounge up a tracker of some sort and post it here too.

I've also decided that, as soon as I start actually putting down words for this fanfic, I will join the ChengXianCheng Heaven Discord. Just too tempting ahaha. Also I probably need character writing help for Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao. It's so hard to differentiate them and pin them down but they're so important in a plot point of view. If Jin Guangyao were not crazy and soaked in revenge how would he behave in a political setting? What if I want to make him conniving but not evil? What if I want Lan Xichen to be calculating and not evil but also not quite so benevolent as he appeared in canon? How do I differentiate between these two, especially in an AU? Questions, questions. (Well, not sure exactly how a ChengXian place would help with these, but someone there's gotta tried to write these guys at some point right?)

But those are conundrums for another day. Today I just want to lay out plans for my late-start April. Wish me luck.

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A Few Writerly Things

2024-03-19T23:42:24Z

So apparently NaNoWriMo is imploding from the inside. If you want to know the tea may I suggest the nanowrimo subreddit. I myself don't really know too much about it, but I'm sure the folks there will have great summaries and such. All I know is that the org is in disarray and community managers are quitting left and right, so that means...I'm not going to really participate in Camp NaNo in April, I guess?

Well, I'm still going to participate in my own pace, because I got a long fanfic to write, folks! But I'm probably not going to use much of the site resources. They still haven't put up any Camp NaNo 24 official art anyway. I can find word trackers elsewhere. Heh, maybe I'll go back to the good old days of posting a sticky entry and paste a word tracker there that I update daily. (Ah, LJ, how I miss you.) Except nowadays I'm not sure where I can find a word tracker that I can just insert. I have my own trackers but they're not really public, or easy to paste-and-use. I'll look around and see if I can find anything in this day and age.

Speaking of fanfic, I have been thinking of my ChengXian plot bunnies. I have a few kicking around, like everyone does, though I am making sure I only focus on one right now. Anyway, I've been thinking of the major themes in each plot, and I realized a couple of points:

I like writing from Jiang Cheng's POV. He's easier to inner monologue, and in most cases he's the one with more power than Wei Ying in the political sense, and I love me some political intrigue than out-and-out fighting. Wei Ying is a wild card, a whirlwind who obeys no rules. It's much more fun writing as someone who reacts to him than Wei Ying himself. Also, there's more complexity. I can put JC in a very difficult position so he can't do what he wants, but has to maneuver around it (mostly to save WY lol). It can get juicy! I'm not saying WY is not complex. I'm just saying I find it easier to write complex JC for an entire fic than complex WY.
I currently have 4 major plot bunnies (yeah...don't even....I don't think I'll be able to write all of them, seriously). They neatly fall into different relationship dynamics. I seriously did not realize this until just now, as I'm trying to figure out their major points. They are:

One is JC and WY get together, but circumstances force JC to give WY up. WY still comes back to him in the end, though.
One is JC and WY mutually decide to give up on each other, and then later both regret it. They fight against the urge to be together but, alas, they fail, and a lot of shit ensues because of this.
One is JC and WY are not together, and everyone are actively against them to be, but they fight on regardless, and never give up.
The last one is different, in that JC and WY are side characters in a mostly NieLan story. They do end up together but with some significant caveats, but overall it's still ChengXian. The NieLan side, however, is a whole different ballgame. That is all I'm saying about this one.

The fanfic I'm currently on is the first one. Don't worry, it really isn't a spoiler because it is ChengXian after all. Plus, by the time I finish and start posting it'll be like months later, so you're probably not gonna remember this anyway lol.

The second one is a giant epic that I probably won't write. It'll be controversial because, uh, there's cheating involved. I'm not sure I want to face that wrath from fandom, yet. If I ever actually write and post this I will make sure to tag it clearly so people can avoid it if they want.

The third one I will attempt, after I finish the first one, because I really like it but it's gonna be devastating and hard to write so, we'll see when I'll be up for it.

The fourth I love, and will write, because it's a series of connected short stories and not a giant novella. I will at least write two stories in it. The NieLan is going to kill me, though.

And that's enough writer talk for the day haha. I do hope NaNo sort itself out soon. At least let there be an alternative so I can keep my yearly tradition with a little bit of community.

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Ah, The Smell of a New Project

2024-03-05T23:27:14Z

I have thought through my writing dilemma, and have decided that, yes, I will focus on fanfic for the next...however many months I want to devote to it. I'm starting with two, March and April. Will reassess by end of April if I still want to continue or switch to something else. It's just that I really want to write this fic haha. I started a Scrivener file for it, because I'm not a fan of putting things online all the time and I haven't found any offline Notion alternatives that I like. So Scrivener it is!

My goal for this fic is two folds. One is that, come on, we all could use more ChengXian, especially long, intricate plot-heavy ones, so why not write one myself? I've been reading Qiang Jin Jiu (in Chinese, mind you. Hoo boy, never has the built-in Chinese-English dictionary in Safari been this useful!) and my head is filled with political intrigue, so that's what this ChengXian fic is going to be about. It's NOT cultivation related. The setting is a historical AU of some fictional, pseudo-ancient-Chinese-Warring-States-era epic. Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying are not adopted siblings; in fact, they don't even meet until the story starts. And there're a lot of major changes that I will of course, talk about later, after I actually start writing and posting it. And that leads to goal two. I've never been able to keep to a good deadline. Like, I would set out to do writing, but instead of actually writing I would just get obsessed with planning everything, but in my head only! So in the end nothing is ever actually written! I am aiming to change that now. I have setup a plan, and I am sticking to this plan of writing every day (with reasonable breaks). Literally sitting down for an hour or two every day until my goal is met, instead of just waiting for the muse to strike or just work out details while taking a shower or eating or doing chores and then write nothing down, and therefore waste all the creative effort my brain went through. Yeah. If I succeed in getting this not-short story (at least novella length, which is about 20k words) out in a reasonable fashion, then I think I can probably apply the method to writing my novel. And maybe I'll actually accomplish something this year.

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Welp, That Didn't Take Long

2024-01-17T07:38:24Z

Yeah...so there I was in, in my last entry, all waxing poetic I'm going to write my novel and not do fanworks and blah blah blah, and then my period hits so I'm in bed with painkillers and a hot water bottle, and I thought, okay, I haven't even read any fanfic for a long while. Let me just open AO3 and take a small gander...

...and of course, read like a madman for like a few days and now I'm like, yeah, I really want to write this MDZS thing because goddamnit ChengXian deserves more fics! (And NieLan deserves even more fics but I can only focus on one couple at a time). Okay, so wanting to write fanfic does not mean not wanting to focus on novel. In fact, I should be looking at novel right now and not posting on DW but, anyways. I'm very torn about this. I really have an itch to write this fanfic - got sort of a plot going and everything. But like, if I just stop all my fanfic thinking right now, cold turkey, and just go to my novel, I feel like I could also jump right into the novel if I just give it enough thought. It's just that my thoughts are all occupied with this fan idea right this moment, it's hard to see otherwise. I don't know what to do!

Sidenote, I just learned about this community called getyourwordsout today. One day after their cut off deadline to join. Great. At least I can still subscribe to it? A shame.

I'm also trying to find an off-line alternative to Notion. I actually am really digging using Notion for fanfic plotting, but I don't really like the always online aspect. Sometimes I want to not be connected to the Internet on my laptop, you know? (Or can't, if I'm behind some country's firewall *coughChinacough* while traveling.) I've heard Obsidian is a good alternative but I just downloaded and it's like, not at all similar to Notion? Maybe I just haven't learned how to use it yet. I'll dive deeper in it before judging.

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"And Once More, With Feeling"

2024-01-03T20:02:02Z

That title was a quote said by someone somewhere, definitely not my own words, but I'm too lazy to look up the exact source. Just know that I'm borrowing it because it is super fitting, because today, I am announcing that my writer's impediment (not writer's block, will explain below) is over. I am going to work on my novel again this year. After all these months (maybe years? I lost count, seriously) of hiatus, I finally feel removed from the craft enough that I am finally, tentatively, ready to dive into writing once more.

I say my writer's impediment is over, in that I was so stuck on everything that the idea of even thinking about the novel for one more minute was preventing me from writing anything altogether! I tried to work on fanfic to "clear the air," but was also super stuck there too, despite all my Notion planning and random plot sessions while taking baths. I was sick of writing fiction, period, and a clean break was sorely needed. Now, today, I am happy to say I want to write again, especially on my novel, which is a miracle. However, my writer's block is not over. I define writer's block as being stuck on specific parts of the novel that I can't think past. That particular dilemma is still going on, but that can be worked through. The loss of desire to write anything at all, however, is a different issue.

So in the future if I get so discouraged I get writer's impediment again, I will simply stop writing altogether. I will read more and do other things, but it seems that not doing any writing, not even thinking about writing, for a set amount of time would reset my brain. Had I just given up on shambling along with fanfics earlier I might've gotten back to writing the novel sooner. So, lesson learned. I am a bit sad with not writing fanfics, but I was definitely putting way too much effort into those when my energy could be spent on writing the novel instead. And I will do exactly that in 2024.

I don't want this novel to be "the novel." I want it to be my "first" novel, which implies there'll be a second, and third, and many more. It's not easy to try to start new things again when I'm literally "middle aged" now, but eh. People go at their own pace, right? I mean Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings after he retired, soooo, I still have time, I hope.

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Happy New Year!

2024-01-02T02:50:03Z

I wish everyone a happy 2024!

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November Things!

2023-11-02T23:23:18Z

It's November. It's NaNo. And, contrary to what I've posted before, I am NOT participating in NaNoWriMo in the way that I was going to. I didn't make a new project for it, and despite my NaNoWriMo 23 icon, I'm not really doing it the "right" way. And I'm not sure how much I'll be able to get done, either. We'll see?

So, October has passed and I've got precious few things done. Because I have houseguests and I was basically running around with them for weeks doing chores and trips and all kinds of when-you-have-guests-you-do-those kinds of things. Finally, they're leaving this weekend, and I can finally, finally, settle down and write. Gosh! It is so hard to do things when there are other things going on. Yes, I know it's a terrible excuse and I really need to stop caving into it, but it's so, so hard. Anyway, the point is that I will hunker down and work. No excuses! I have a lot of other things to take care of too, both in chores and doctor appointments that I just have to make. Oh and contacting friends! Argh! Too many conflicting things competing for time! This is why I love planners ahaha. They save my brain so much.

I hope everyone else's having a good NaNoWriMo, though.

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This!

2023-10-11T21:03:56Z

The very, very few times I post political content. But. This really, really should be watched right now.

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It Is, Indeed, the Perpetual Cycle...

2023-09-30T00:00:22Z

...of NaNoWriMo, that is! Yeppers, people, it's NaNo time again! The actual, official, 50k-in-a-month November one. And I'm doing it again, sort of, this year. I know I like, fail every year, and I say this every year, the success or the "win" is not the point for me; the point is I get to write at a schedule and push myself, at all.

This year I've decided to formalize my lack of ability to write 50k a month, by spreading the goal out to three months. October through December, I will try to write 50k of my aforementioned novella of a fanfic in the previous post. And nothing else. No extra plot bunnies, not even a 100-word drabble. All my effort will be devoted to this, including planning. I will count whatever I've done in October into my November word count. Yes, yes, that may be "cheating", but, uh, this is a personal goal and not an exam, so I can structure it however I want. I sincerely doubt I'll meet the goal by end of November anyway. But somehow, if I do, well, then I should buy myself something nice to celebrate ahaha.

I get so excited about NaNoWriMo anyway even though I don't do much with it. I used to go on all the community stuff when they had write-ins, but lately I've just decided to do my own thing. Maybe I should try to engage more with the community this time around? I don't know. One of these days I'll have the courage to try to join the ChengXian discord too. (I really should but I feel too old and am too asocial to join the newfangled discord thing.) We'll see in a month.

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There Can Be Only One?

2023-09-15T22:39:06Z

So. I have perpetual writer's block. And work fatigue. And a slew of other things, but the point is, I've discovered that I can't focus on too many things at once. Except I think I have ADHD so I tend to do the exact opposite, and then I feel super drained at not getting anything done. Like, a couple of days ago, I kept on switching between working and relaxing so I can work more. Well, turns out when you do some work, then you relax some, then you keep working, you don't feel relaxed at all AND you can't focus on work. Imagine that. (I know that works swimmingly well for a lot of folks, but doesn't for me, apparently.) What I need to do, personally, is devote a single large chunk on work, with maybe like 5-10 min of breaks (and by breaks I mean like, lie on the bed and do nothing or eat some food, NOT chores or play games or read. It needs to be NOTHING.) in between, and just continue until you're done with the chunk you planned. And then I can move on to the next chunk, whether it's chores or a good hour of gaming or whatever, and so on. If you feel like your brain's leaking out of your ears from work, well, too bad, keep going. Because otherwise you just feel worse AND you get nothing done.

What this means, consequently, is that I really, really should NOT be having all these ChengXian plot bunnies and switching between them. I need to find one and just do that ONE until it's done. If I keep switching I will keep on not finishing anything, ever. Even when my brain is desperately going 'you're bored go do something else', I need to firmly tell it, no, I'm not 'bored', it's just hard to wrangle you into submission, that's all!

So I've decided that I will focus on the novella idea of my ChengXian plot bunnies. Yep, just keep going at this one story until it's done. Or at least until I completely finish the first draft. (When I say novella I mean novella. It's probably going to run 50k.) Good thing NaNoWriMo's coming up, eh? I shall see how far I can go this year.

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Omegaverse Short

2023-09-09T00:07:06Z

In my last entry I talked about "shorts" potentially becoming not so short. Well. Do I know myself or what? lol. Now one of my "shorts" is going to be a full on short story, instead of just "shorts." Christ. But you know, sometimes things just get away from you and this idea is apparently too detailed to be contained. It's, of course, the alpha JC and omega WWX one. Was going to be just some pure PWP porn and then I started thinking about their backgrounds and, uh, yeah, got carried away like whoa. At this rate I can probably write another story that accompanies this one later. But no! Will not fall into insane rabbit holes when I haven't even stepped off the grass yet. And did you know porn is hard to write? I haven't written full-on smut for so long I think I'm super rusty. I also have never written omegaverse smut, uh, ever. This is not going to go well.

I'm still excited though.

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Oh the Many Plotbunnies, AGAIN!

2023-08-30T22:24:13Z

I believe I lamented this at length when I was into Laviyuu back in my D. Gray-Man phase. Way too many plots and setups and I finished like a fifth of them? A tenth? Very little. And, of course, me being me, getting into ChengXian just means the exact same situation. Again!

I currently have 3 ish plot bunnies hounding me. Now, don't let the number fool you, because 1 is a novel, as in literally with over 100k words planned. 1 is a novella with maybe 50k words planned. And the last is a series of short stories that will probably have 10k each, if not more. Yeah. I also have a collection of "shorts" that I'm currently working on. They're actually supposed to be short, but you know, sometimes they grow into monstrosities, too. I...I'm not sure what I should be doing at this point. I started the shorts to ease myself into writing ChengXian, but now I'm like, goddamn it, this is supposed to be fun and easy! What in the seventh hell? 🤣

Here's a quick run-down of what I have planned:

1) The novel - a complete AU where the Sunshot war doesn't happen until much later. WWX and JC grew up together, had inclination to marry, but were denied when WWX had to be married off for political purposes. Contains indisputable WangXian and some serious cuckji moments because, yo, this is a ChengXian story, okay? (I am 100% NOT tagging the story with any of those when I post though, because I ain't inviting that drama!) Anyway, no one loses any golden cores or take up demonic cultivation. And despite everything, this is in essence a very sweet love story. (Or a very long, torturing love story, depends on who you ask.)

2) The novella - a canon-divergence AU where instead of JC getting captured, it was WWX who got captured and lost his core. JC then tries everything he can to get WWX out of Wen's hands. Major hurt/comfort vibes, some serious, depressing PTSD issues, and instead of a lot of people dying they're alive but are very, very miserable.

3) The series - a modern, mobsters/gang wars/police AU. (Got some inspiration from The Wire, for sure.) It is a multi-ship series where WangXian and ChengXian co-exist peacefully (or at least they do in my fic. Some people might interpret it differently but you know, that's out of my hands.) Also my first serious jaunt into NieLan. Actually you can probably call this series a NieLan fic with ChengXian on the side. At least the angst does not come from JC and WWX this time, mostly.

4) The shorts - Random small bits that, like I said, I'm writing to get myself familiar with these characters. Also I found that there's a curious lack of alpha!JC/omega!WWX fics in the omegaverse AUs. It's always the other way around, which I think is fine but don't understand why it is so much more prevalent. So I'm going to add to this rarest of rare things just for kicks.

And that's what I have so far. I say so far because who knows what my brain'll come up with tomorrow. I'm trying very hard to keep it contained to these four items, though.

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Know Thyself

2023-07-07T00:56:11Z

After some deliberation, I have decided to NOT join the Chengxian2023MiniBang.

It's mostly because the story I want to write for it requires some extensive setup, mainly that there should be at least two other stories written before it for it to make sense. Sure, I guess it can be a standalone just for its sexy parts, but I think it misses so much stuff this way. It's part of a series where some major things have gone down before this fic comes in, and knowing me if I wrote this for the challenge then this will be the first story getting posted, and that just doesn't make any sense. So in actuality I probably need to at least post the very first story where you get the very initial, basic setup of the world first, and then post the challenge story, which means...I now have TWO stories to write in the span of the deadline of three months. Yeah...no...that is not going to go down well.

So I will not be participating this year. I assume they will have one next year, too. Perhaps then I'd have written enough to post this as a standalone and it would work out alright.

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Why I Chose to Write This Pairing

2023-07-02T07:51:16Z

Alright, so here we are, I'm going to talk about Mo Dao Zu Shi and my chosen pairing. I've actually talked about this on tumblr at length, but I'll talk about it here too. Not as much, though, because less people read this. It's more for myself than anything else.

Anyway, let's start with why I am not writing the canon pairing. I do not have issues with Wei Wuxian or Lan Wangji (I am actually an avid Wei Wuxian stan). Or Wangxian itself, for that matter. I just feel like this pairing has run its course in, well, canon! They do not have problems that need to be solved after the story ended. Look, their entire relationship is very sweet and simple: two boys meet, they instantly fall in love, some plot-related shenanigans happen like death and amnesia and etc., they overcome the misunderstanding arisen from those plot-related problems, they get together, get married, have lots of crazy sex, live happily ever after. Like, what the hell is there to do after that? (It's why my favorite Wangxian stories tend to be completely full AUs where they have not-canon-related problems, because the canon already took care of all the problems!) Of course, I can write just these two living happily in fluff or full-on PWP, but, uh, I'm not that kind of writer, y'all. I live for angst; I die for angst. And so, this pairing doesn't jive with my writing self, you know what I mean?

So, naturally, I turn to people whose problems did not get solved at all post-canon. In fact, I think every single other character aside from Lan Wangji has problems that did not get solved post-canon. (I don't know what the author's thinking giving us like, five different postscript stories that're awesome and sweet but did not address any of the pressing matters after the main conflict is over. Is poor Lan Xichen just going to be in seclusion forever like what the hell man tell me how he fares!) And so, I fell into one of the most complicated relationships, and that is between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng. Oh my god talk about ridiculous feelings! These two ran a gamut of it - there's love and hate and guilt and devotion and frustration and protectiveness and, every emotion under the sun, yo! There are secrets that they still haven't divulged to each other past the end (pretty important ones, too); they also have not reconciled nor resumed any kind of relationship henceforth. You could write so many different takes on these guys and, yeah, that's the one that really tickled my writer self's fancy. I want them to have relationship problems, not just plot ones. I want to write them sharing a desperate kiss because they can't be together, but they want to do it anyway. I want them to fight and have misunderstandings that push them apart, but in the end they cannot keep away from each other. (It's kind of a perfect setup for them to cheat ahaha, with the backdrop of Wangxian as the "correct" relationship.) And by fight/misunderstanding I don't mean amnesia or kidnapping or whatever, I mean like with Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen when they have that horrible spat that kind of doomed their entire future. Very personal fights. Very personal choices for the good of the clan, or the realm, or other big picture problems. Not the 'oh you died but then you came back alive 13 years later and that's why we only got together now' kind of issues. But the 'oh we had a huge fight and broke up for a while' or 'I have to marry someone else for the good of the realm so we don't all get genocided and that's why we can't be together' kind of issues. I hope I'm making sense.

Phew. That was long. I really do hope my point is clear. But anyway, I am definitely a Chengxian supporter (Jiang Cheng tops, okay? lol), which unfortunately is a rare pair sooooo, we'll see how this goes. Fortunately for me, there's currently a mini bigbang going on right now specifically for this pairing. I have not decided if I want to join yet. Mostly because as you can see from my posting history, I suck at deadlines. And then I feel bad about missing it, so it's more stress. But I might need this for a push so I can actually finish fics? I have two weeks to decide so I will think about it more. If I decide to join I will definitely post about it at length here. Now, I know there are some people on DW who're into this pairing. Perhaps I should go friend some of them...?

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