Hi everyone!
The first quarter of this year has ended, so it’s time for a Currently on my art update. If you haven’t read my recent post on the libraries’ digital rights being at risk, please do read it. It would mean a lot to me if you did.
The rest of this Q1 was rather eventful. Among other things, I had my very first job interview ever and, somehow, got the job. To say that I was over the moon would be an understatement – I had a hard time believing it had even happened, but now I’ve got the signed employment contract, so it most certainly did happen to me. I’ll be starting at the beginning of May and working throughout the summer. While I am nervous (especially whenever impostor syndrome decides to hover over my shoulder and wonder what I think I am doing), I’m also excited and looking forward to starting. Perseverance and sending out job application after job application paid off in the end.
Of course, starting in May means that I’m in a rush to get as much of my master’s thesis done as possible throughout April. Since I’ll have to play through a 120+-hour game to gather the data for it, there will be a considerable chunk of work left for weekends and evenings after work, but I don’t mind. I’ll make it work somehow, and I’m sure I’ll be able to finish it before the end of the calendar year – especially since I’m getting to the fun part now that my literary review and theory sections are over halfway done.
As for what else has been going on, I finished the storyline for Navigator’s Glove last Saturday and now I’m adding missing segments that don’t affect the story pretty much at all. However, while writing the epilogue I came across a pesky plot bunny that decided that I need to do some considerable reworking to the story once I’m done making the initial edits. So, there’ll be editing once I’m done with adding the segments, and then there’ll be reworking. I’m planning on making a copy of what was originally going to be the story’s final form (save for further edits) and start reworking.the original draft. I might release the original version with or without edits either as-is on AO3 or as an EPUB created with Scrivener like I do with my World Collections. Depends on if people even want to see it. While it is infuriating that the plot bunny appeared this late into the progress, I can’t begrudge its existence; it’ll add content that I wanted to see more of in P5R, so the reworking process will be worth it.
Speaking of World Collections, my FFM 2022 collection is just about ready now. At least I believe I won’t be making changes to the cover art anymore. My initial plan was to release it and 2022 World Collections alongside this update, but since the situation with the Internet Archive fighting for the libraries’ rights popped up on my radar, I decided to postpone my own releases and spotlight IA instead. I was initially planning on making a section for it on this update, but my text wound up becoming long enough to warrant its own post, so it became a separate thing. My next book releases will come up sometime in early-to-mid April, depending on how many changes I find myself doing before I pull the trigger on releasing.
So yeah, a lot has happened in the last few weeks, although my other projects have seen little progress. My creative juice for them seems to still be running low, which are clearly visible in the Q1 2023 stats, where adding Navigator’s Glove caused the levels of increases I ended up doubting my math and checking my last year’s statistics to check that I’m reading the numbers correctly.
Now that the stats have been dealt with, let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 77 is in writing. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I need to revise chapters.
- Off-DA projects: Nothing notable here now that Navigator’s Glove is included in the statistics.
- Greenfield: Editing has been stop-go, currently stuck at the stop position since I ran into a tougher editing spot again. I’m currently working on editing chapter 5. Read more about the project here.
- Lyokostar: The second part of story 7 is still waiting for betareading (or rather alphareading, which I haven’t gotten around to doing). This story is in need of massive reworking, so it’s going to take a long time to finish. References need to be done.
- A Wandering Aura: I haven’t done anything for this in ages. I probably should put this on hiatus.
- Navigator’s Glove: I finished the storyline and now I’m adding the segments for Confidant hangouts that I hadn’t written. Once that end editing is done, I’ll be reworking to add a considerably big plot bunny into the fic. 170196 words were written during Q1, while currently there are 1109 words written during this quarter (meaning today).
- Gaming: Habitica, Pokémon GO, Pokémon Masters EX and Dr Kawashima’s Devilish Brain Training keep on going, although Pokémon Go only rarely nowadays. I’ve also played Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, and soon I’ll be playing the remaster of Persona 5 Royal for my master’s thesis.
- Other stuff: I’ve just about finished my FFM 2022 collection and 2022 World Collections. I haven’t read much else than a book for one of my last courses, articles and books for my thesis and fanfics. I still haven’t gotten started with IDW’s Transformers comics and at this point I might just postpone them to tackle some other stuff I want to read since the ones that I’m missing are no longer available digitally as far as I can see.
- Personal life: It’s been more eventful now, as I had my first job interview ever, got a summer job and have gotten good progress with my master’s thesis. It’s going to be a busy summer for sure.
WindySilver 