Hi everyone!
This quarter has reached its midway point, so it’s time for a Currently on my art post. Everything noteworthy this year seems to have accumulated into a singular post, because I have a LOT to tell you all this time.
First of all, FFM 2025 came and went. It was a blast – and a flood. On day 1, I decided to make use of an idea for an Exceptional Jedi AU storyline that I’ll never write for an FFM story to stop that idea from living in my head rent free and… I ended up writing about the characters I created for that purpose in their own, non-Star Wars universe all month (plus I also wrote 2.5k words of worldbuilding in one day on top of less than 100 words of worldbuilding one challenge story necessitated, which later on grew into an outdated 3.5k-word worldbuilding doc), excluding some challenge days. And since the plot bunny I accidentally unleashed on myself isn’t satisfied with just my FFM work, I started a new project. Its working title is Whoops because that was the word of the month with that project. I do have a continuation flashfic drafted but I decided I had better tackle all the worldbuilding I need to document or nail down first, so that’s what I’ve been doing with it all of August. I essentially have a Whoops wiki within my Scrivener project lol. I will probably include that wiki in some kind of a compilation release of the project at some point, maybe. We’ll see.
In other news, I finally got around to quietly discontinuing my Pokémon fanfic, A Wandering Aura. It’s just not going to progress since I’ve completely fallen off the bandwagon with the main series games and, as such, have lost all interest in writing that fic (further exacerbated by me losing all interest in Pokémon Masters EX). It’ll stay online on AO3 but nothing new will be coming to that… probably ever.
Oh, and before I forget, here are the massive FFM 2025 stats, this time also featuring how many words I went over the limit when writing the first draft:
Honestly, I don’t think I can top this, at least not without disregarding challenge days’ wordcount limits, which I won’t. I think the only way I can improve is getting the stories out on time; the heatwave thwacked me so hard I wound up being days late in the middle of the month, only cobbling challenge day stories together on time until I was able to catch up. It was pretty rough, to be honest. Somehow, my best and worst year in FFM so far (out of the ones where I’ve produced decent enough stories anyway)?
Another piece of news is that my Tribble Month 2020 collection, Should Have Known Better, is finally out. I didn’t quite manage to finish it before FFM, but now it’s out. Next, I’ll be working on my FFM 2025 collection, titled Whoops (because of course it is, knowing what happened during FFM 2025). Here is the Books2Read link, which includes the link to the book on Smashwords: https://books2read.com/u/b5EAkR
Aside from that, it’s been fairly uneventful in my life. I spent most of July with my parents, fortunately escaping the worst of the insane record-breaking heatwave that lasted over half of July – previously, the record for the temperature being over 30 degrees Celsius somewhere in the country was 13 consecutive days (back in 1972) and this year the record wound up becoming whopping 22 consecutive days. It would’ve been absolute hell to go through in its entirety in my apartment, which gets way too hot on a sunny day when it’s even 10 degrees less outside, so I’m glad I was not there when the heatwave suddenly kicked up. The time that I did spend there during the heatwave, during the time the sun was shining straight at the exterior wall, the difference between the temperature outside and the temperature inside was negligible at best. Absolutely awful.
I’m also still looking for a job since recruiting went to basically a standstill during the summer. I’m hoping that I’ll finally find something during the autumn but if not… I’m going to have to seriously start asking questions about pursuing an IT PhD to have something to do. I’m not particularly interested in getting back to academic writing – my master’s thesis was enough of that for me – but, honestly, it would beat my current situation of being completely adrift. I’m starting to get real tired of that, especially since there’s no end in sight to the mess that is the job market right now.
Well, that’s all about what’s going on behind my screen. Let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 88 is in writing. I’m still not particularly close to beating my writer’s block here but I am making okay-ish progress. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I finally found the time to revise and release a chapter on AO3 for the first time in over a year (oops). I’m hoping to get another one revised and released at some point during the autumn.
- Lyokostar: The second part of story 7 is still waiting for alphareading, but that’s a thing for once its indefinite hiatus ends. This story is in need of massive reworking, so it’s going to take a long time to finish when I do find the time and energy to resume it. References need to be done.
- A Wandering Aura: Discontinued in silence. This bullet point will be removed in the next post.
- I’ll Draw The Stars: I’m reworking to add a considerably big plot bunny into the fic and lots of smaller plot bunnies in the form of the background characters I researched for my master’s thesis. I’m currently working on chapter 83 out of (currently) 89. I’ve written 2200 words in this quarter so far; it’s still very slow progress.
- Whoops: Following this project’s start in FFM 2025, I’ve been working on a wiki of sorts within Scrivener to get all the necessary worldbuilding recorded and nailed down. The plot bunny that’s making me do this is eyeing my fingers as I neglect the continuation flashfic that I drafted at the beginning of the month because I had to get it out of my head before I delved into the worldbuilding.
- Gaming: Habitica keeps on going. I’ve played Desktop Survivors 98, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Bongo Cat (as much as you can play an idle game lol).
- Other projects: My Tribble Month 2020 collection is out. Next is the FFM 2025 collection, Whoops. After that, it’s back to Tribble Month collections.
- Reading: I’ve read some Star Wars and Shin Megami Tensei V fanfiction and about half of the Star Wars: Rebels comic omnibus and the entirety of the Star Wars book Star Wars Rebels: Head to Head by Pablo Hidalgo.
- Personal life: Nothing aside from continuing unsuccessful job hunting and the record-breaking heatwave that hit my country during FFM.
That’s all for this post. Thanks for reading and take care!
WindySilver 