PREVIOUS REPORT - CONTEXT POST
it's anotha week anotha update. fuck san antonio. read below if you'd like to hear more about what i be peddling
I'm writing this update rather early in the morning (3am MST), as I drank a nice coffee at the brink of midnight, and I'd rather get this progress update out and written now before the terrors of being-up-all-night invariably grab me by the scalp and absolutely nuke me from doing anything super productive for the rest of the day.
This is basically the part of the fic's process reports where most of my updates can be boiled down to "Yeah, I'm making progress, workin' on it, still alive and well". These progress reports kinda act as my motivator to keep on actually working, as I feel like if I don't keep doing it I'll be murdered by gnomes or whatever. But, like, yeah. Sorry there's not anything super interesting to talk about. This week, I got chapters 12-14 done, and I am planning on getting the latter half of 15 done sometime today as well--whether this is done before or after I fall asleep for 10 hours and wake up at 8pm is still up in the air.
I've actually gone ahead and started the process of beta-reading for some of these earlier chapters, though! Nothing super heavy right now: I've sent the first 3 chapters over to a close friend of mine, Luna, and she's working her way through reading it right now. I'm saving the uper heavy editing for later, but after watching a particularly enlightening video I made the sudden realization that "Oh, it's been a little more than a month since I have started actually writing this piece of shit, and I've hardly ever shown anyone the actual content of it other than barely context-less snippets".
So, yeah. I've technically got a beta reader now. If I was really about that I'd get someone who'd really kick me in the teeth on my writing prowess, but that's a situation to save solving for another time. If you'd like to kick me in the teeth in that regard, reach out to me on like, Discord, or Tumblr or something, and maybe we can mutually kick eachother in the teeth about eachother's writing. Is this a job post only fueled by a stupor that could only be obtained at 3 in the morning? Venus knows.
Otherwise, life's been good! Save for the next couple of days that will invariably be quote-unquote "fucked" because of this stay-up-for-30-hours sabbatical I am on, I've been getting on a fairly healthy schedule. Been going on afternoon runs and walks, been doing pullups, been drinking water, generally doing a lot of things that are considered "good for your health". I've been doing some more outside-of-longfic, nonfiction writing recently on my Backloggd (light shill, ha-ha) and that's been a pretty fun side-quest to take on. Once my sleep normalizes again, I'm attempting to get into a more consistent, blocked-out schedule that can fit in all of the stuff I want to do in a reasonable enough time-frame. Right now I do perhaps a little too much internet-scrolling for my own good, but I'm trying my best to get past that. Promise. Pinky promise.
Gonna stop the update here before I get too carried away and start incoherently rambling. Thanks for reading once again! Slowly but surely, this fic will come along. And, as a gift, here's some more context-less snippets for your viewing pleasure:
Yo what up. I been working on a new longfic (you may have seen that draft chapter I posted earlier!) and I've decided it'd be pretty fun to sort of log how it's going as it's gonna be a big ass project of mine planning and execution wise. Basically a blog... call dat shit the blogletix. freak yes. keep reading if you wanna know what i'm up to bug fables wise
So the down low is that I've been doing a bunch of prep work for this next fic of mine CALLED...
[TITLE PENDING]
I don't have a concrete name for it yet LOLLL
I had one and then I was listening to Wild Smile by Suckers and got another one and i'm still trying to figure it out. Not important though. As for what it's about, it's about Vi realizing she's transmasculine and all the stuff that comes along with her realizing that and trying to learn what's going on with her. And it gets pretty sad but also pretty happy at times. (see graph below)
As for the why, it all started roughly 4 weeks ago when I remembered this comic I really liked back then by @rotten-dan-art:
💬 0 🔁 107 ❤️ 355 · Sorry if this is really old but I was wondering if you completed that comic about Vi and gender?
oh heck that IS reall
I always thought this was a really nice comic and I wanted to do a bit of writing inspired by it, but it mostly just got thrown into the ideas pile and that was the end of it. I had some greater horizons, after all!
A couple of weeks later, I was getting off of a rather annoying stint of creative block when I had a lightbulb moment:
And ever since then, I've been putting in a hell of a lot of work on this thing! It also helped that I was convinced to make one of my OCs transmasculine earlier, so it was kinda just on the mind and it felt like a fairly natural thing to try and get working.
There was one sort of big problem, though: I am not actually transgender, and I am very much lacking the life experience necessary to actually write about that experience without it feeling weird--you ever seen someone who doesn't play fighting games talk about a game's balance? I am trying to avoid that.
So, I've done some stuff on my own to try and prepare for this. One of the things I've gone about doing is actually just asking around! I think I take for granted how many queer and trans people I'm actually friends with, and I've reached out to a fair few of them to get their sides of the story.
(A small look into a DM with one of my homies, Luna. She's told me some very insightful things!)
This has actually ended up being a really nice experience! Many of these people I've actually known for quite some time but never really gotten to know past the basics, and I am very much appreciative of their willingness to let me in on how learning you're transgender actually is. I think I remember reading something about how a lot of people's ideas of what a trans person is comes from the one they know, and so widening my view of how that experience is has been really helpful in designing one for Vi.
Because like holy fuuuuck there's a really big variance in how every trans person goes about figuring it out. Some people have told me they figured it out in university, some always had an inkling they were something but didn't know what, some were gradual and some were more straight to business, and it's been incredibly eye-opening to hear these perspectives as someone who's never had to really go through that "Ah shitt maybe I'm not who I think I am" phase. Trans people are strong as fuck yo and I plan to make a big acknowledgement thing for all of the friends I asked once I'm done, as this shit would NOT be possible without their influence
I've also been doing a lot of reading! While this has started as mostly memoirs, the general scope of this project has ended up being much, MUCH bigger than I thought it would be, and I have made an active effort to try and get as much related literature read as possible before I truly commit to writing the full thing
(The two books I've read so far. Sorted was a really nice memoir that taught me some new stuff about the transgender experience that I didn't know about, and The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was an amazing, horrifying read that is SIIIIICK! Easily one of my favorite books of all time now.)
Doing the reading for this fic has probably been the most I've been to my local library in quite some time. I've truly forgotten how nice libraries are--if you haven't in a while, go to one and get a library card and shit. It's so lit. Of course this also means my reading is limited to what I can find in my library's system, but it's nice that most of the stuff i've wanted to read so far has been in there.
In terms of books I am currently reading, I am reading The T in LGBT by Jamie Raines! Very much in the 'hey read this if you're figuring shit out' category rather than a straight memoir/novel BUT it's been a nice read nonetheless, and it's also had some good information of which I will definitely be using for some scenes of the fic. I plan to start documenting what I've read and plan to read in these blog posts, mostly for fun. Alternatively, if you wanna see what I'm up to, my Goodreads account is here
SO HOW'S THE ACTUAL FIC COMING ALONG?
Pretty well, I'd say!
In terms of actual writing progress, I am currently in the very early stages of writing--mostly just throwing together a bunch of ideas onto a page for later. I've also been working on my first outline draft, one of many I plan to do until I land on something that I think 100% works. As this will very much change as I read more and get more ideas of how Vi should experience this sort of stuff, it's gonna be a while before I get to actually writing.
One of the big problems I ended up having with my last longfic (A Life of Possibilities) was not having enough planning done, which I think was a symptom of it being my first attempt at writing a more fantasy-oriented work. While the story for this is far more grounded in comparison, I want to make sure I am extremely confident in the outline before I try to write it. I don't want to be 85% done and then have no idea of what the ending would be! That'd fucking SUCK!!!
In terms of a more percentage based progress, I am I think around halfway done with the first draft? I've been pretty good about getting 5 or so chapters of it finished per day (save for Wednesday, of which I think I could designate as an official break day). It's kind of strange to really put into words because I am still, well, figuring out how the story will go LMFAO so Chapter 13 could be out of 26 or maybe 40 or 15. Truly got no idea.
I also plan on writing the whole thing first, revising, and THEN posting to AO3 (probably chapter per day)
Reason? I think it'd be cool. Fellow mutual of the blog Spectral was actually talking about this sort of thing during one of the Book Clubs:
I think sometimes I'm way too ambitious for my own good, and this might be one of those cases. This has essentially warped into me writing a full on novel's worth of fanfiction, including the heavy editing and planning that goes into actual professional works, and it's also a topic out of my comfort zone writing wise (Not in terms of 'I don't want to', but 'I've never done this before'), and in general there's a lot of 'firsts' going into this work that are kind of scary to think about.
However, I plan to stick it out. It's going to be a fairly intensive creative process, and it's going to probably suck 2 months in when I am digging in my heels to stay motivated, but I want to make this happen. My endgoal before I lose interest in Bug Fables is to release a really, really good longfic. The fact this will be in a black box for so long is also why I wanted to do this blog: having a weekly thing to talk about my stuff will help with the onset nausea that comes with working on a big project for so damn long.
I haven't worked on it today (as the aforementioned rest day is today) but tomorrow will be my first day of Spring Break after classes are over (HYPE!!!) and I want to get a lot more of it done then. Once this first draft is done, I'll spend a couple of days off to focus on other stuff, and then come back to it with a fresh mindset. They say taking time off is the best way of reflecting on your writing (you ever read something you thought was amazing a year ago and realize you SUUUUCKED? i want to do that with this but a Lot of times) and it'll be cool!
So yeah, tune in next Wednesday for edition 2! This is the end of the weekly blogletix post. While it may be a while before the fruits of this labor will be seen, I hope it'll be worth the wait!
ADDITIONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
While many people have helped me out with this entire thing so far, I want to give a particularly big shoutout to @plut0cor3 for being the ABSOLUTE homie and letting me throw stuff at him in his DMs--he knows far more about this than anyone else so far, and it's been super fun to talk about it with him! I consider him the resident transmasculine expert I know, and he's been one of my favorite people I've met in recent times. Dats goat.
(The high IQ, intensive planning that happens in our DMs)
today is wednesday which means it's transmasc vi day... transmascnesday... PEEP BELOW!
It's been another week where I've mostly spent it drawing as I've not really been in the correct space to write anything! Not in the sense of like "I'm sad", but more in the sense of "It's the last part of the semester and I gotta power through it".
I have three final exams left (one of which I'll be taking basically an hour after this post goes live). The silver lining is that it'll be way better for the outline to have taken almost two weeks off, and I am more than excited to get back to it! After my final exam on Friday, it'll be writing season... LETS GO!!!
Other than that, not much has been going on! It's been a relatively un-busy week for anything that isn't studying for finals. I've been drawing way more as it is much easier to sit down and draw something than it is to write, and I've been pretty proud of my progress in the past two weeks. Drawing is freakin' awesome...
(On a sidenote, I've been thinking about doing chapter art for the longfic like I did for A Life of Possibilities, but that might end up being a more supplementary thing for Tumblr/fanon chat on).
My homie and notorious ate Luna also finally got the chance to read the Bug Fables context document I made! I've been patiently awaiting her input on this project as she's one of my closest friends (and also someone who knows ball) and she dropped a nuke in my DM:
Never really thought abt the bees in the longfic that way... this why patience is freaking epic yo. W waiting.
No book section this time, mostly because I've been unable to read once again. By next week, hopefully things will change! Thanks for reading once again.
back to the lab again... said lab being transmasc vi... it wednesday... READ BELOW!!!
It was a more productive week this time around! Although, it's kind of hard to really gauge that when I only really looked at the outline again yesterday LMFAO but we're finally off break. We're in business.
In terms of review, I was able to get to ~Chapter 20 before I got busy with some other stuff! I highly recommend everyone take breaks from their work every now and then, because the weeks I took off have actually been super helpful in improving the outline. There's a major plot-point I have now cooked up because of it... HELL YEAH!!!
I plan to finish this review and refinement by the end of the week (in some part so I can also send this over to the homie for review) and my hope is to be able to start writing next Wednesday. Maybe I could aim for finishing the first chapter? But, I won't sweat it.
Although, I am most likely going to be taking the rest of today off. In some part because I'm graduating today!!! I'll be busy most of the day chilling with my family and doing all that cool stuff. However, I should still have a little bit of time in the evening (and morning) to get some more done.
I've decided to phase out the books part of this until I actually finish reading something LMFAO I did get trainspotting from the library though... W reads
That's about it for this week! Thanks for sticking around almost 70 days with me, it's almost time to actually begin writing and I am more than excited to get going. I hope to make the best thing I have ever written 📠
PREVIOUS/CONTEXT POST
Yo what up i got more stuff. Been a pretty good week progress wise peep below if u interested in hearing
i started the week off by getting fucking SICK!!!!!!! IT FUCKING SUCKED!!!! i don't know what I had exactly but I know it made me unable to write for at least like 3 days. while the worst of it is over (like saturday i actually just couldn't get out of bed or sleep for multiple hours) it's still a lil uncomfortable but otherwise I be #Chilling! shoutout emergen-c for saving my life
Doodled portrayal of what it was like
Other than that though, it's been coming along! I've been working on a title for the fic so far and while it's still very much subject to change, I've really been liking the one 'A Mind I Knew' cuz like, Vi knew her mind and then didn't you feel me.
I've been a fan of this song since forever and especially recently I've been giving it a ton of listens. Love the progression, love the vocals, love everything about it. The previous name I was floating was 'And I Can't Wait Forever' by Mount Junior (another artist I really like!) and it's still to be seen if I choose one or the other.
The draft itself has also been doing pretty well! Yesterday I did my first big revisions of it after having let it sit for a couple of days. I've found that the start itself was actually REALLY good and it's mostly that second half that was feeling weird. One of the hard bits about this has been trying to write about the experience, and as someone who's never lived in that kind of closet it's been a bit difficult to strike that balance, especially for a book. How fast is too fast? What do I include and what can I just pass over?
Thankfully, I've been doing my reading, consulting the homies (shoutout Pluto once again), and while it might take a few more tries before I have something I'm confident in exploring more with the actual outline I am feeling pretty good about the progress!
You might have seen this in the tag as well but I created another draft chapter! You can read One Simple Question here. Zasp is transmasculine in this yeah. Slowly but surely it's coming along!!
READING SECTION
This week's been a pretty good one book-wise!
FINISHED THIS WEEK
The T in LGBT by Jamie Raines: Very much designed for people going through this process themselves but I got some nice information out of it. Notably, it very much reminded me that this fic should not be purely on Vi's misery, and a reminder to give them some moments of happiness! W happiness and shit
Gender Euphoria by Laura Kate Dale: Got this one after reading the previous book and it was actually the perfect book for the point I was at. Super broad in terms of experiences yet all of them were very insightful to opening. It's W intersex people forever and shit.
Melissa by Alex Gino: This one's definitely made for a younger audience but I thought it was really nice! It feels rare to see something written from a trans kid perspective and this one was super engaging all the way throughout. Especially like the bit at the end where it finally swaps to using Melissa's name after she's come out to everyone.
CURRENTLY READING:
Redefining Realness by Janet Mock: Admittedly I only did like 10 pages of this two days ago and then got sick and forgot BUT I plan on finishing this within the next day or two.
BACKLOG:
Yes, You Are Trans Enough by Mia Violet: I wanted to grab this one before BUT my hold came in late (why I picked up Gender Euphoria) so it's on the backlog. This one seems like it'll be VERY good for the outline.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes: You may be asking "Anom this not a queer book" and I think you're right? But I thought it'd be a fun read.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: I read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas before and that one was cool, and then I read up on Le Guin and realized this woman is fucking awesome! I heard this book was cool in how it questions gender roles, so I'm picking it up even if it's a bit incongruent with what I'm focusing on topic wise. My library didn't have a copy that I would get within the next decade so I'm getting a copy online.
Other than that, not much has been going on. Been enjoying my break from school, feeling good, eating well, sleeping with no alarms set ever. It's wonderful. Thanks for reading!! I have some high hopes for this work and it's gonna be freakin awesome.
PREVIOUS REPORT - CONTEXT POST
crazy af to say i'm almost a month into the creative process but we back. More transmasc vi READ BELOW!
Fairly productive week all things considered. Yesterday I was honestly not sure of how much I had gotten done, but looking back I've done WAY more than I thought I originally did.
Roughly 3.5k words in a week and 8 (almost 9) chapters done in a week isn't a bad pace! I've always been just a little concerned about how much I'm getting done for this, especially as I get busy for the last stretch of this school year, but I think I'm just stressing about it more than usual. My plan is to get the full outline of this done before finals as it'll be a nice way of getting some time away from it and I'll be able to come into it again with a fresh mindset after I'm free!
To be real I've been feeling quite stressed about just time in general lately. I'm still trying to find the exact words to describe what I'm feeling, but right now I think it's just the worry that I don't have enough time to do everything I want to do. It's a bit of an unfounded fear given the fact that when I'm focused I can do a ton of things, but I have to admit it's a bit terrifying and paralyzing to think about all the stuff I've not been able to do, the stuff I'm not doing right now. There's far too much on my plate for me to reasonably finish all at once, and I guess my worry would be that the leftovers will rot away before I can get to them again. Whether a food metaphor for this is #Feastmode behavior is still unknown but it makes sense to me.
It's not even the fact that what I do work on isn't enjoyable--the main stuff I've been focusing on creative-wise, mostly this fic, has been awesome! I've learnt a lot about my friends and the world and I am having a great time, but at the same time there's so much more I want to also get to before I potentially don't have the time to do so anymore. I want to develop my OCs, I want to practice my art fundamentals, I want to write some different oneshot ideas and smaller longfics, it's a bit paralyzing to have so much I want to do and not enough time to put as much effort as I want to into them.
I think I just have to remind myself it'll be fine. I've been trying to just improve myself in general lately, and one of the big things I've tried to find time to implement is having a more structured schedule and routine. Having so many things I want to do isn't such a big deal when I have a set time period to get things done, and it's just a matter of getting motivated enough to put the effort in to both make it and fulfill it. Still working on it in that regard.
One thing I am for sure about is that this story will be finished! I'm very mad that I had so many failures in the past for longer stories and I so badly want this to be the one that finally makes it out of the weeds. It's the most effort I have ever put into planning a work out. I plan to treat it as if I was writing a real ass book in the writing and editing process. Whether it's finished during the summer like I intend it to be, or sometime after that, either way it will be here some day for people to read. I'll definitely be trying to write some smaller stories as breaks for myself, but this is essentially going to be my project for the summertime.
It'll be in your hands soon, and I will raise hell and earth for it to happen.
READING SECTION
STILL READING THIS WEEK
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes: I got about halfway through this book in like two days and then forgot to read Oops lol. I plan to finish it before the weekend as I've been really enjoying it!
BACKLOG
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: Still here. I gotta read this one so bad man oh my goodness
That's it for this week! Bit more personal but I hope it was at least a little bit insightful. My pace for this week is going to try and be 1 outline chapter per day, and I'll try and set aside an hour or so in the evenings to get it done. I'm getting more into the actual 'being transmasc' parts of the story so it's been a little more research/asking for help heavy, but nothing I don't like doing.
Another small week in terms of actual news but stuff been getting done... peep further if interested
I've been able to roughly maintain my cadence of doing 1/2 chapter a day for most of the week! Since last week, I've added on 3 chapters to the work (5, 6 and 7) and have gotten some work done on the 8th chapter.
As it currently stands, I am roughly 1/4 of the way done with writing the longfic! Obviously there's still far more to be done, but this is the first semi-big milestone I am proud to celebrate. I'm still projected to be on pace to get this done before my pseudo-deadline of August 17th, as long as I keep this pace of 1/2 chapter a day going.
On the writing side, I've definitely noticed there's been a little more friction between me and writing this story in particular. While I am still absolutely in love with this project and how it's came out so far, there's a couple of reasons I've noticed that have slowly shown the signs of being a bit of a problem.
1. The schedule I was on for the first weeks of writing has definitely been thrown out of wack ever since I got back from Schaumburg. I find myself sleeping in more, going to sleep later in the night, all that sort of thing. I had a much more controlled schedule before, which I think was good for my writing ability.
2. I've gotten hopelessly addicted to Geometry Dash again, an activity I accidentally dropped like, 5 hours on it yesterday after re-downloading. I fear for my productivity quite hard, as I'm pretty prone to clocking in disgusting amounts of daily hours on these types of games, at least for a couple of weeks.
3. It's gotten much easier to just scroll the internet rather than sit down and do stuff. I attribute some of this partly to the fact the internet is crazy good at making you do that (happened as I was writing this update, infact!), and partly to the fact that I like procrastination a little too much. It's a bit harder to just sit down and write compared to earlier in the production of the longfic. I think this is because I've gotten a little too into thinking about how this will turn out once it's done.
There's still an obvious level of consistency I'm maintaining right now, but I am trying to not fall into the combo of missing a day -> going on a break -> never writing it again like I have found myself prone to many times before.
I still want to get this done, but there's definitely some things I should try and start implementing now so later down the line it's easier for me to work on this. I haven't actually done any writing outside of this fic for almost a month, and so I'll be trying to add in some extra, non-longfic writing into my schedule to tide me over (including an OC piece for Pride Month, stay tuned for that). Once I can make sitting down to write a habit easy as breathing, it'll hopefully make it feel less committal to get my daily writing in.
I'll also be trying to course-correct my sleep schedule! I'd rather not be writing at 8-10pm again when I could be waking up early instead. And hopefully, this Geometry Dash addiction fades out into a hobby instead, so I don't cut into my writing/drawing/whatever time.
That's all for this update. The plan is to get at least 3 more chapters done before next update, and perhaps speed it up once I get more into the groove. Thanks for reading!!
big week 2day... also new title for these progress reports for accuracy. although it was probably obvious before LMFAO
Well, we're at the 10th progress report, 70 days in, and I am proud to say that A Mind I Knew's finally on its feet! Since last Thursday, I've been slowly but surely beginning the process of writing this absolute behemoth of a work.
It's already been both an incredibly fun process to work on this, and also one that I am attempting to remain vigilant about being consistent for. It's easy to maintain a schedule for a week, but a month and beyond is where things start getting tricky! The fact that I'll be going on a vacation starting tomorrow afternoon also throws a bit of a wrench into my plans. I am considering putting some hours into writing, but I feel like going on a once-in-a-decade trip just to be on my laptop all day feels like a waste of an opportunity. (If anyone reading is going to be in Schaumburg, Illinois from the 22nd to the 25th, please let me know!!!)
It's also fun to see how much I deviate from the written outline as I write. While no major plot points have been re-made so far, it's about the little details: things like where Vi goes in a given chapter, how they end up talking with someone, stuff like that is cool to notice and see add up over time.
While I will save the most important snippets for when it's actually released, consider enjoying this bit from the third chapter:
And to perhaps give some tiding-over for those who are interested, I've gone out of my way to make a cool spreadsheet which tracks my progress!
It's nothing too complex, but I am tracking these metrics for two reasons: one, it's fun. And two, I think it'd be cool to have a graph of these sorts of things for when I finish the work! Perhaps these aren't the most important things to keep track of, but seeing a number go up (that I'm responsible for!) feels really nice progress wise.
So far, I've managed to maintain a cadence of 1/2 of a chapter done per-day, give or take. Assuming the rest of the chapters fall into that range of ~3000 words or so, this gives me a ~completion time of some time in mid July, not counting things like being sick, or doing other stuff, or whatever else. Given the time I have available to me (summer), I might end up trying to speed the creative process up: however, it's no rush to get this done ASAP, given my schedule.
Other than that, my week's been mostly creative work-focused. I've been trying to figure out a consistent schedule to get everything done, and fitting in all the things I want to do (gaming, sleep, exercise, eating, drawing, animating, writing) is an exercise in time management that'll most definitely be difficult to navigate.
When I first got started plotting out this work, I always envisioned myself BEING here, but the feeling is still a bit surreal. Most of my recent writing has been one-offs for fun, short stories that start and end like that. To take on my first large-scale writing project in multiple years, with as much forethought and planning that has gone into it, is exciting and also just a little bit anxiety-inducing.
Either way, I hope to keep on working. Thank you again for reading, and here's to another week of progress!
