...I'm very glad to report that after three solid months of writer's block, I'm back to typing away again!

More specifically, I'm working on my poetry, and I plan on submitting to a few publications if/when my editor friend says I've advanced enough. As of right now, she said I need more practice but I definitely have some promise, which is a big relief after a lot of not-so-positive feedback from other professionals. I've only been writing poetry for a little over a year, longer in my native language, and my early stuff in English was awful (that's not self-deprecating, my imagery was okay if a bit cliche, but I had zero grasp on rhythm, rhyme and very little on syntax), but I feel like some of my more recent stuff is getting smoother. It's obviously still a long way to go for me, but I take joy in my writing and in looking for inspiration, and I feel like I'm starting to find the tricky balance of expressing myself more freely while keeping safe (for context, I'm not out as a they/them person to most people IRL, which makes writing on the topic a bit of a challenge sometimes). If I ever manage to publish anything meaningful, I'll be sure to let some of you PPC folk know. :)

Because I am a writer, in a writing community, and writing is a thing I do! Have done . . . before . . .

Yeah, okay. I've been pretty devoid of free time for hobbies ever since I became a full-time zookeeper. That's partly out of my hands, with all the time I have to spend at work, plus necessary chores, plus getting a healthy amount of sleep, plus maintaining social obligations with friends and family . . . But it's also definitely partly my own weird psychology, where I feel that all hobby/free time has to be pushed back until every last chore is complete, and my absolute hatred for having to stop in the middle of a project, which makes me want to wait until I have huge, multiple-hour chunks of day before working on long projects . . . which never actually happens, after chores. If only there were some way to like, change behaviors and routines and be different. Oh well! Anyway . . .

Anyway!

Anyway, I definitely have stories I think about writing! Nearly daily! It's very healthy to constantly think about doing something and then never give myself time to do so, right? Write?

"The One With All the Character Introductions"
This will pick up in the middle of “Because We Like You,” but from Mollie and Ollie's perspective instead of Vania's. They'll start adjusting to Nursery life, and finally meet all the other Nursery kids I've used in short stories for years now. Honestly, I've become more focused on my Nursery characters than on Doc and Vania any more, although I’m not done with them, either. Speaking of which . . .

“A Fistful of Hs”
Yes, I’m still doing the “HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” mission, and no one can stop me. This one’s been sitting half-finished in a GDoc for literal years, and was IMMENSE fun to write. And I still owe Laburnum the Pokémon!

“The Garden Spells Trouble”
A very weird one involving my Cafeteria characters that no one likes or cares about, but it formed in my head after reading Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells. Tangentially involves Phobos’s Catastrophe Theory series. The rough draft is complete (years ago), but it’s really going to need at least one very dramatic rewrite. Will introduce a new Flower.

a contribution to the Blackout
Still want to write one, it’s only eight years late and counting, lol. Going to introduce a new agent who is very cool, and may become Vania’s romantic interest, haven’t really decided yet.

And I think that’s it for PPC stuff; I have some ideas for original novels, and I’m definitely going to write them, but I don’t know if they’ll ever be good enough to publish. But that would be far in the future in either case. Here they are, read the synopses and despair:

“Beneath the Gaze of the Sun”
A broken sword is stolen by embalmed zombies and taken to an island of sun worshippers, heavily coded to represent white U.S. suburban excess. The currently unnamed protagonist has to figure out who sent the dead to take her father’s sword, without alerting the zealous, light-obsessed inhabitants to the presence of a dark-skinned outsider in their midst . . .

“Lane Lines: A Life on the Road”
In an alternate timeline, the United States has been reduced to a population of mindless consumers. Houses are a thing of the past; the entire countryside has been paved over with roads, and everyone lives in cars. To maximize foreign gasoline profits, families take turns behind the wheel so that the cars never stop. Beneath the roads is an electric grid, with all the driving generating power for some nefarious purpose that only the vestigial remains of the U.S. government knows and profits from. Yeah, it’s a giant, anticapitalist metaphor for the relentless grinding down of the working class in the real world, so sue me.

Untitled small town paranormal story
It’s a little rural community somewhere in Appalachia, and it’s haunted, cursed, hunted, you name a supernatural thing, this town’s got it. As infrastructure and societal norms break down in the face of the constant danger and fear, individual citizens have to band together to care for each other, or face a slow, lonely march towards death. Is there a reason for one town to be so ridden with misery? Or is it all, ultimately, just part of being alive? Cripes, I didn’t notice all the thematic parallels with Lost until I sat down to write this . . .

So uh. Yeah. You probably will see at least some of the PPC stories out before 2030. If the novels ever actually happen, hm . . . I’m thinking maybe the 2050s? It’s just so hard to slow down this car, you see, I need to keep producing energy for my benevolent overloards . . .

—doctorlit, alive

I've been very slowly chipping away at an Avengers mission. Just a few lines or so every few days, give or take.

Mostly I've been stressed about focused on finding new steady employment (quit my day job with the micromanaging boss at the end of August, for those who don't know), and otherwise just keeping my head on straight amid world chaos and family drama. If anyone knows anyone hiring remote workers, I'd love to hear about it.

~Neshomeh

Currently on Year Three now. Some notable changes include turning Sirius Black from an alleged murderer into an alleged terrorist and making Bellatrix and Voldemort Marvolo Gaunt have a political marriage.

Hoping to update Year One on AO3 this weekend, too!

Aside from slowly poking at my next book, I've been deep down the rabbit hole of Final Fantasy XIV fanfic writing. It's a world ripe with angst (as can attest the other poor PPC souls I've sucked into the story) so you know I absolutely eat that up, haha.

...I'm tossing around some ideas for a fic about a defunct MMO. It's a bit rough figuring out what technology should be present in the setting, mainly because the game had a general lack of cohesion about how advanced the setting was. We're talking about a setting that seemed to be in medieval stasis, but the currency system was called likes (as in social media) and one of the NPC races came from another planet.

Not a NaNoWriMo project, but I had been trying to rewrite/redesigning one of my agents since she didn't feel right to me and didn't make much sense the way I had her before. Though, she may as well be a new character. Right now, I'm stalling on doing the next step, which I don't know what I want to do. I might write a rough draft of a mission with her in it.

~Ozzielot

Although I'm not doing the 50,000 words in one story thing, instead (like previous years) I'm doing 50,000 words spread across five different stories that I'm working on simultaneously. Currently sitting pretty at just under 40,000 words although I'm hoping to reach that target by midnight (so I've got just over an hour to do it and I'm sitting here typing this instead of one of my stories, go figure).

Really trying to push myself to actually write something every day, and I'm doing it so far. Whether it's any good or not, I don't know. Hoping to actually proofread everything I've written for NaNoWriMo (both this year and in previous years) in the new year and actually tighten it up as I know I've made some mistakes (like giving a character in one story two different first names, oops).

Outside of NaNoWriMo I am slowly working on my first mission, but that's taking a long time, but someday it'll be ready (I hope)

Oh and while it's not technically writing I have been made my company's unofficial proofreader, which is needed much more than one might think. I swear half of the management at work don't use spellcheck and could do with learning some basic SPaG.

Nova

P.S. I keep thinking about re-starting the Monthly Writing Prompts on the Board, not sure if anyone would be interested though. If anyone really is let me know I guess and I can start them up again.

I've been working on some non-PPC poetry here and ther. I could definitely share some of it here. I am also working on a MST for Minh's Asylum. The first part of it is up already, and I am writing the next part. I think that this kind of sporking works better for me than PPC mission style. Don't worry, I'm not leaving, and I may write some more interludes or something if I get the inspiration.

I am not doing 50 000 words on one project, but I am currently on track for producing over 25 000 words in at least two different projects. One (new mission) is finished and in beta. The second project is my bestie's Christmas present. We tend to give each other prompts and a lot of freedom, either with fanfic or something original. Her prompts this year were very gothic and spooky, so that's the vibe currently. I am approaching 5K words there, but a thousand or so of them is synopsis and like... planning it out. (We are also writing a novel together and I've been keen on continuing that lately, so Adorable Werewolf YA Thing is a third project that's dancing through my head.)

If people are on the NaNo website, I am very open to being buddies! I am Ekwy there too, come find me if you want.

I’ve written only two chapters.

I've got a good amount of writings on the WIP rack at the moment - three missions, two interludes, and a DIA piece for PPC things. I've also been working on a spork for Minh's Asylum thing.

In non-spork related things, I've been batting around some original story concepts in my head, though I haven't gotten to actually writing any of them down yet. I... probably should eventually, come to think of it. Oh well.

The first chapter of a ... prequel plus reboot? of the very fanfiction my characters come from. I'm involving Mai Dire Fine stuff a lot in TWWA, so a way to have a decent read of the happenings from back then is now necessary.

On the spin-off side, still writing the crossover with Ls. That fic has a lot of funny nonsense.