Sunday, December 21, 2025

Looking back on the last few months

    So, things have been.

    Ahem.

    Yes, I know that's not proper grammar.  Or rather, it's very weird grammar.  (Technically, it's not totally wrong?  Things have indeed existed, which is basically what that means?  But's not phraseology that people would normally use.  Nor is the word "phraseology," but that's beside the point.  Actually, I'm not positive it's even a word, but this one character uses it in The Music Man, so...anyway.  Irrelevant.)

    My life has lately felt even weirder and more stagnant than ever.  Partially because I more than ever feel the need to hide in my house from the world, but it's definitely not just that.

    I had to buy a new computer because of the end of support for Windows 10.  And, as I believe I posted before, I absolutely HATE Windows 11.  To the extent that I've been putting off even turning on this computer so much so that one of my utility bills will be paid a day late and it took me a week to look at the results of the MRI I had done.  Also that this computer's battery emptied itself in the time between when I last turned it on and when I turned it on this morning.  (Though it also seems to have turned itself on at some point without my permission to download updates, which 100% should not be possible, but as soon as I plugged it back in and turned it on, it started installing updates.  I looked over all its settings as soon as it finally turned on (after it was done updating the stupid thing turned itself off again!) and didn't see anything authorizing it to turn on at random intervals to check for and download updates, but it apparently did so anyway.  (I think I'll put it on airplane mode before I turn it off, which will hopefully prevent it from doing that again.  Might not stop it from turning on and exhausting its battery, but it should prevent it from downloading anything when it's supposed to be off.))

    So, because of my new aversion to going online due to it requiring this overpriced hunk of junk (I didn't realize that the computer was named the Latin word for "conquered" because I was being targeted to be conquered by Microsoft!), I've been doing my writing on my old computer in airplane mode, because unsupported OS don't matter if the Internet can't touch ya! 🤣  (Ugh, those Windows 11 emojis are so ugly!  Why would they even make the emojis worse for the new OS?  Why would they even change them in the first place, for that matter!?)  Which means, of course, that getting any of what I've written onto the internet to, say, quote a passage in my blog, is suddenly somewhat tricky.  Unnecessarily tricky, in fact, considering that one of the changes to the way Blogger adds pictures to a post means that I can't add them on my phone anymore.  Also there's the fact that for some reason this computer has decided that I should not be allowed to access my own pictures on Blogger, nor even to upload new ones!  Thankfully, it turns out I can still add pictures by dragging and dropping (for the moment!) so I can still add pictures, but it's even more awkward than ever before.

    Anyway.

    What I've been writing lately has been (surprise, surprise!) another Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfic.  Though I did at least get a little writing done on the rewrite of The Tablet of Destinies, but...ugh, it's such a mess.  It's actually really hard to rewrite it just because the current draft is such garbage.  It's much easier to just focus on writing pointless fanfic.

    I want to talk about this current fic now, blathering meaninglessly, as usual, but I think I'll put in a blocker line so the whole post won't go on the front page of the blog.

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

IWSG: Last (IWSG) post of 2025


    So, I've figured out how to add pictures to blog posts on my phone, as long as they're pictures I've used before.  😅

Uh.

More pertinently.

Once again, the suggested question for this month's post doesn't speak to me, so I'll be posting about something else instead...

But my writing life has been pretty stagnant lately, so I guess I'll write about that stagnancy?  (Wait, is that a word?)

I'm not totally sure what the problem is that's making it hard for me to write lately.  Lack of motivation, definitely lack of ideas (except for fanfic ideas), those are factors for sure, but are they the only factors?

I don't even know, nor am I sure how to figure it out.

It's making me feel like more of a failure than usual, though.

Without knowing quite what the problem is, it's hard to fix it.

In looking over my posts for the year, I realize I've been failing to get any significant progress made on the rewrite of book four of the Atalanta and Ariadne books for the entire year.  😭  I really need to get off my backside and get that rewrite finished.  If I can just power through into the climactic confrontation, it should be...um...possible?  I dunno.  I don't even know if anyone would care about it even being released.  I had one comment on one of the AO3 versions of the earlier books in the series that indicated someone had genuinely read it all the way through and liked it, but... 🤷🏻‍♀️

Monday, December 1, 2025

November writing challenge over

 So.

Yup.

It's December 1st, and my not-NaNoWriMo is over for another year.

It felt like a big old mess, if I'm being honest.  (Well, that's perhaps the most suitable-to-be-said-in-public version of an honest summation, anyway.)

As much as I want to blame having a tooth break off, leading to many hours lost to pain and dental work, that didn't realistically cause most of the problems.

The main thing was just that my main project petered out into insanity that was not really feasible to continue working on...or, not that exactly, more that it meandered off into a direction that does not appeal to me so that even though I had a solid outline of the next chunk of the story, I just didn't feel any appeal in continuing to work on it.  😭  Not sure how that will play out in the long run.  Maybe a short while off from writing will recharge me to keep plowing ahead on it?

Anyway.

Final numbers!

Words written in November previously:  86,535 (or 91,430)
Thursday's word count:  1,851
Friday's word count:  1,450
Saturday's word count:  856 (or 2,402)
Sunday's word count:  104
Total word count in November:  90,796 (or 97,237)
Projects, with starting and final word counts:

Untitled MDZS fanfic w/time-travel elements
Starting word count:  21,100
Word count as of previous post:  98,194
Thursday's word count:  98,534
Friday's word count:  98,604
Saturday's word count:  99,460
Sunday's word count:  99,564
Words added to the planning document:  4,796

The Tablet of Destinies, Atalanta and Ariadne book 4
Ended up untouched.  😭

Untitled sci-fi VN

Total word count previously: 8,649
Thursday's word count:  9,555
Friday's word count:  10,935

Opening section of a future MDZS fanfic (NHS-centric, canon compliant) that I'm nowhere near ready to write:
Thursday word count:  605

Words added to the planning document for a My Time in Sandrock fanfic that who knows when I'll actually write it:
Saturday word count:  1,546
(In my own defense here, I just finished replaying My Time in Portia, the first game in the series, so the sequel (which is the better game) has been on my mind a lot lately.)