hello! i am trying to finish a first draft of my wip by the end of the year, so i created this little challenge for myself. it starts on october 1st and will run through december 31st.
my daily goal is to set aside one hour everyday to write or work on my novel in some capacity. weekly accountability posts will be every friday!
i set up a notion calendar with a writing hour scheduled everyday for the rest of the year. i'm actually hoping to finish the week before christmas so i can enjoy the holidays, but the remainder of the days are there if i need them!
i had this idea for myself, but anyone is welcome to join in! just let me know if you'd like to be on the taglist. you can do your own daily goal (could be daily word count, time spent writing, etc) and weekly accountability post and tag it #90daynovel. also feel free to tag me :)
I dislike the Chosen One troupe, except when I like that piece of media I will make an exception, maybe. It wasn't my cup of tea, and I suppose that is fine, just avoid such tropes in the future.
But fuck, you guys wanna know what I am doing??
Writing a book with the very troupe I despised in my current wip.
That's right, it's torture time babes. "But you should write what you like and love—" And I am doing that. I am about to write how the Chosen One thingy will not work most of the time. I am going to write how much it doesn't work just because I want to and no one can stop me.
Yes, the Chosen One has some good parts, but has anyone ever thought how hard it would be to have a sense of responsibility for defeating some kind of a monster or villain? That sense of pressure and expectation slowly mounting on your back as they put their trust on you, as they put their very life on you thinking that yes, you can defeat that shit. You can't make mistakes, you can't even fail, not when the lives of the people who raised you and the state of the world itself hang on the edge, not when these things were your responsibility now to save. You started to pressure yourself even more because of it, you cannot fail, you cannot let the monster win or the people who look up to you would be disappointed. At this point it wasn't just pressure of defeating the villain, it was fear of how people will perceive you if you fucking slip once.
And it is a terrifying little thing.
Anyways will continue writing now. My progress slowed down because of midterms, but my babies will finally meet the said chosen one in my current wip sooo yep.
"Child or not, you will need to hold a gun before they get to you first." Ba signed to the child, before throwing a gun right by his head. "Now get moving."
Title: Miss Ba, Honorary Instructor of the Padaha Palace
Ba was never a quiet person. Well, not until after the last war took their voice. Armed with quaint ways of teaching students, Ba was known among the angels as a person of honor and trust, knowing that Ba would never loose their loyalty to them. But Ba was loosing something else. Their humanity, their sanity, their reason to live.
KARIM_
"Well, I've a better idea." Karim crossed his arms, not minding Ba's expression when he took their only piece of meat on their plate. "What if we eat breakfast down the road? I don't want to hear anymore of you. Mother said people like you rarely eat, which leads to your childishness."
Title: Sir Karim, Musician Karim
While Karim was a reckless adolescent, he was still an ambitious musician in the eyes of his only teacher, Ba. He learned of his destiny to defeat the Angels when he was young, and seeks to make it true. But inside of an ambitious and prideful child is a coward who is afraid of failing the hopes of the many.
TIMYAS_
"I was never great, Ba." Ba has to watch a single tear fall from Timyas' cheek. Timyas, simply wiped it away, eyes averted from her sister. "I was never looked up to by the youth, nor be respected by the many, nor be honored in the eyes of the Angels."
Title: Lady Timyas of the South
The daughter of a governor-general and of the Baroness of the North, Timyas struggled to follow to their footsteps, especially as she was trained to lead then alongside the Chosen One. Timyas rejected such idea, until perhaps the day she finds a child along the battlefield.
SIDHAYA_
"Eyes to the front." Sidhaya warned Karim. He patted the Karim's head, making the child immediately straighten his back. "You don't get to kill angels in that posture, child. Not unless you are me."
Title: Bastard child of the Monarch, Sir Sidhaya
Sidhaya often liked being a bastard. Being someone who was always overlooked, never seen, merely a tool to be used. Sidhaya seeks nothing but pleasure and lazy mornings, used to be in the military leading squads to becoming a scholar in the Palace's Department of Propaganda. But when a new order was given to kill the child sent by the humans, Sidhaya went out of the winter wilderness, expecting it to be another Tuesday for a bastard like him.
there is nothing more that makes me excited than knowing that i am going to write my characters bleeding and in suffering (I think there is something wrong with me but it is finee)
i have actually drafted two chapters already, already going on the third chapter. the thing that i love when writing in a notebok is that i don't have to worry about word counts and stuctures and other things, as long as i continue to write, that is what it all matters.
anyhow, i started the introduction of the story, needless to say Ba became too depressed than expected. needless to say writing a traumatized thousand year old saint who is alredy anxious at the thought of a war was quite enjoyable.
my favorite part there? writing them scrambling to get up in their old apartment while bleeding from head to toe.
meet Ba. also known as Basyon (a recycled name from a deleted wip). from my current wip, a saint's thesis
a saint's thesis, a research paper fantasy novel where a dismissed royal teacher struggles to survive underneath a civil war between humans and angels in a lone winter planet of padaha.
ABSTRACT:
Ba never believed that they are safe from the wrath of the Angels. Especially now when they decided to escape against their clutches.
Being a Mentor to the Seraph Palace, Ba learned to be quiet against the ruling of the Angels. Through out centuries of their life, Ba barely remembers how long did the Angels conquered humnity and turned the planet into an impending apocalypse, witnessing the slow agonizing death of humanity. Even they barely survive in a dying winter landscape that is now the Empire of Padaha.
However, the rumors of a rebellion of the humans against the angels are steadily becoming louder and increasing upon the Monarch, and the Empire now seeks to silence such retribution. Ba, fearing for their life and the life of the only person they cared for, fled the palace against the rules of the Monarch, and tried to warn the Governor of the humans of the situation, they decided to offer a truce upon the Angels.
A sacrifice.
A child, set to please the angels. One of the few children these foolish humans believed would appease the Monarch. Despite Ba's questioning, the child was sent to the Seraph Palace, with Ba sent to accompany him back to the palace within a month's time before the Monarch will try to attack them.
Ba now found themselves in a dangerous position to go back once more to the Seraph's palace. Yet it was that, or the humanity's doom.
THEMES: Humanity shows through sacrifice, passing down knowledge, reasons to live again through chaos
TONE: A chaotic string of words trying to cram together the chaos that is the war happening around Ba. A humorish prose that seeks to insert the fun and thrill of being human while still drowning the reader in an existential crisis.
LANGUAGE: Tagalog
WORD GOAL: 90k
STATUS: DRAFTING
DEADLINE: OCT 17
NOTE: All gifs used here are not mine, credits to the original owners.
This is my current writing project, all written in my notebook. I am going to try to write a whole ass novel within a month without looking back, while posting in here for some random shi such as art and such. With almost all of my wips in the back burner due to academic stress from college, this is my only smidge of hope that I will be able to maintain a speck of creativity in me through out this semester.
im genuinely scared of reading rn because if i dont write consistently i cant maintain my writing style but its exam season rn and if i pick up a book wtv writing style there is going to bleed into my own and then i have to literally go study my own writing and pick it apart and piece it back together this is not fair why am i such a. sponge. absorbable. uhh porous. let me have a consistent steady solid did i mention steady writing style:((
genre : new adult fantasy horror
pov : third person limited, multiple perspectives
themes : black queer expression, grief, sibling (particularly twin) bonds, the policing of expression and creativity, what it means to be the eldest daughter, etc.
also features : underground clubs, an eerie citadel, a witch with too much time on her hands, a stressed out messenger, and multiple crash outs
status : drafting
s y n o p s i s
Rio Vasquez hasn't thought much about her mother since she turned 18. So when her twin brother shows up saying that their mother has died, she doesn't really care much. What they are concerned about is their brother's empty eyes and skinny frame.
Raphael Vasquez spends most of his days in the endless cycle of working, eating, and sleeping. Well, attempting at sleeping, and most attempts are instead spent overthinking about his mother, his sister, and the 26 years he's been alive.
Both eager to lay their mother to rest and move on with their lives, Rio and Raphael are in for a rude awakening when they find their mother's favorite children's book, and are subsequently pulled into it.
In the midst of war between it's two queens, the realm of Noxis is nothing like Raphael and Rio remember it. Separated, the twins must navigate the unsettling society and it's twisted inhabitants to reunite and find a way out, or risk staying permanently.
I watched it happen before. Humanity prayed too much for the sun to shine for their crops and their farm. Someone heard those prayers out there by the stars, I believe. A sun rose from the heavens to accompany them. Humans were relieved. Almost too relieved to not notice how it slowly blinks, turning a day into night.
They were too fragile to see the pupils in the sun looking at us. But I do. I see the giant behind that sun.
The first attack on human civilization was when the sun went out for three days. It suddenly appeared, shaky, even. People are confused. It was too warm. Too...orange to be called the sun. And then it happened.
A pair of large hands slammed the whole earth. Too many people died. Corpses painted the whole streets in red and brown. Their skin was nothing more than a pile of flesh and muscle.
Countless legions tried to fight such thing. They were all dead in the end.
The second attack came right a decade after I was drafted into the military, almost a hundred years later. I was promoted as a Sargeant, and the devastation of the second attack was nothing on the first one. I lost a finger, but it was nothing on my fellow soldiers who lost their lives trying to save the people. Not long after the Federal Task Force Against Cosmic Entities was born, and I was one of its leading officers.
The third attack was unexpected. I'd say the deadliest. It happened too suddenly.
I remember it vividly. I was in the plaza in the western city, far away from the first destroyed one. I was no longer in duty. I was watching the sun, or whatever that was left of it. And there, sirens began to follow. The horns keep blaring against the whole city. Bombs were sent to the sun. Half of the city went blind from the sudden explosion. Even I wasn't safe.
I had to stumble around until I gained half of my sight, but it was still useless. People were running. People are dying from the effects of the explosion.
Blood rained across the city for a few days. It was a living hell for those who aren't blind. The water isn't drinkable for a week, or a month after that.
Starvation came. The famine was like the nail in the coffin.
Everyone is officially drafted to the military. I was back at my ranks, despite the opinions of the other officers. Only a fourth of the city remained standing, and another attack might commence. We don't fucking know. We don't even know what those things were. They were just....there. Standing now. They were just smaller than the usual entities. They weren't the gods as they used to.
The last face off came.
We lost the war.
I was the only one that survived against the non-existent sun.
That day became known as the "Trial". Where many died from the hands of an entity that we couldn't even recognize. The whole planet was soon shrouded with darkness, as the rest of the giants began to feed off into the other parts of the planet. Lifeforms ceased existing there. It was a horrifying place to be in. Some say you could hear the screaming if you fly near that planet.
I fled the city right then and there before I was even eradicated, even if it would be cowardly of me to do so.
[an] this is like, a blurb as an exercise, since I am hitting writer's block again.
what is there to love in all of this awfulness within me?
i am not easy to adore. i am rotting like i've chewed my fingernails enough to make them bleed and every word is a sharp tooth that bites me back each time i try to explain myself—and i am so terrified of the fact that no one actually sees me for who i am because everybody wants beautiful and tamed and well-groomed; so i shrinked to my tiniest, i promised to grow my hair after cutting it too short, and i sucked my stomach in even if it meant depriving myself of air. i'm afraid i've only learned to be bearable. i still don't feel pretty despite the nice things. i still feel ashamed despite the kind gestures. my flesh tastes like cherry soap, but my chest is filled with fruit flies. the bottom of my insides is covered with mold and the softest part of me is what disgusts me the most.
i am not easy to adore—by this i mean come nearer and have me raw, then tell me what's there to love in all this awfulness.
DISASTERS TO SLEEP THROUGH by ester cuervos 《 re-intro 》
✶ genre: magical realism, soft horror
✶ category: adult
✶ pov: first person referral (marilú as “i”, cruz as “you”)
✶ cartoon saloon’s song of the sea but make it less kid story book and more horror podcast, set in 1989 just because, let us ignore the technicalities of running a lighthouse, i think this would technically be set in tierra de fuego considering the climate
✶ themes: loneliness, family, fear of the unknown, co-existing with the unknown, the haunting of the house
✶ tone: eerie, isolated, apprehensive, cutting, blue hour, half-lit, soft
a b o u t : marilú is a lighthouse keeper, has been for almost a decade now. she could count the people she talks to with one hand, one of those being her sister galatea. the only consistent company she’s had are her dreams and the creatures of the ocean, shadows under the water, mermaids on the rocks, the hauntings in her house. while dealing with her divorce, galatea leaves her daughter cruz with marilú until the matter is resolved. to spare cruz from getting hurt or scared, marilú tries to keep her asleep until galatea comes back.
c h a r a c t e r s :
✶ maría luz aka marilú. spends more time with creatures than humans so she has lost all her communication and social skills. “do as i say not as i do.” weird girls simply grow to be weird adults. good intentions but bad execution.
✶ galatea. voted less likely to get caught committing a crime. suffering from perfect daughter syndrome. loves wholly and deeply, it makes her loyalty hard to shake so the breaking point must be significant.
✶ cruz. inspired by lyra silvertongue from his dark materials. bratty and feral the way only little girls manage to be. more like her aunt than she apparently realises. hasn’t had a near death experience yet so feels invincible.
a e s t h e t i c : stark white lighthouse on a rocky island, a dark blue ocean and a grey sky, houses so close to the water they get touched by the waves, flickering light bulbs, raindrops on windows refracting light, water so cold it numbs your hands when you wash them, charcoal drawings that make no sense, old music boxes, old plush toys with not nearly enough stuffing, something scurrying within the walls, grainy shows on a box television set, the chill of blue hour, the feeling of minuscule insignificance, a beach of rocks and grey-brown sand, phone static cutting through words, cheap plastic signs of corner stores and restaurants lit from within, the white skeletons of small animals, a massive figure from the ocean depth, the crushing feeling of loneliness, so many thoughts you can’t breathe
e x c e r p t —
⋆ the chapter titles form a poem? maybe? ⋆
c w : emotional manipulation, undiagnosed mental illness, allusions to marital abuse, thalassophobia
✶ can't remember what changed that led me to writing about a woman haunted by her own loneliness while taking care of her niece. but this is the post that originally inspired this book.
✶ the title is a play on those playlists that are named stuff like "lofi beats to study and relax to"
