Weekly Accountability

Hi, everyone! It’s that time again! Weekly updates delivered every Saturday!

Completed Projects

• 100% Finalise book proposal draft

Goal Updates

• 0/3 chapters of Promises 2
• 7/14 books read

Writing Updates

This Week’s Fiction Wordcount: 7,851

This Week’s Non-Fiction Wordcount: 2,525

Stabby Cinnamon: I had to backtrack a bit on Stabby Cinnamon, so most of those words are a second draft, but I’ve got past the point that was bothering me, so it should be smooth sailing (ish) and it may even turn into a shorter draft than I feared!

Life And Other Such Important Matters

My bramble has flowers now! Well, one flower. And my small dice tray has fabric lining inside! And… beyond that the week wasn’t too exciting, really. We did some weeding. Well. I did some weeding and tried to get people to do things I couldn’t and failed at the latter. [sigh] But yes thing are quiet. A friend and I are trying daily productivity check-ins and seeing whether and how those work for us. I need to find out where the seam ripper went and then I can get started on my sewing projects. I have three: a warm and cozy scarf and two pairs of pants that need a… gusset? I don’t sew a lot. One of the reasons I’m wanting to do this myself is so I can learn. Presumably adjusting clothing is a little easier to get the hang of and you can get better from there. (Besides I already can’t wear them. I can hardly make them fit worse.)

I also got roped back into my Finally Watch All Things Ghibli project. So of course this week is the one where there’s a lot of discussion about ‘Ghiblicore’ (which is totally a visual aesthetic, less so a genre denominator), which honestly my main reaction to it was to cry for joy because clearly I am not the only one with that particular “let’s ignore the BITE and heavy topics because wholesome, comforting fluff” and I will never tire of seeing examples of it.

Stand-out Positive Moment

My bramble has a flower! Not only did it survive until today, IT HAS A FLOWER. GO LITTLE BRAMBLE GO!

This Week on Patreon

All the Patreon posts from the past week, collected in neat and tidy lists, divided by tier.

Free

• Week 15 Round-up

$1+

• Lynn rambles about… Star Trek: Deep Space 9 Season 7
• Let’s Play Rise of Tomb Raider: Extra #6
• Discussing “Frigidity, Curses, and Imagination: Thinking the Absence of Male Desire in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” by Marion Philip

How about you? What have you been up to lately? Has anything awesome happened?

Weekly Accountability

Hi, everyone! It’s that time again! Weekly updates delivered every Saturday!

Completed Projects

• One short novella
• season 3&4 of The Legend of Korra watched

Goal Updates

• 0/3 chapters of Promises 2
• 6/14 books read
• 0% Finalise book proposal draft
• LP of Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Writing Updates

This Week’s Fiction Wordcount: 23,745 (I’m sorry what. No wonder I was out of spoons.)

This Week’s Non-Fiction Wordcount: 0

Glitter: This is a weird little novella, just, that Patrons will be able to read (partially) at the end of the month and then the conclusion next month. Have fun with it! I don’t do silly stuff very often and this is very silly. (Yes, Becca, this is exactly what you probably suspect it is. Now with less actual song lyrics and more incessant nattering!)

StabbyCinnamon: I blame Aliette de Bodard for this. Entirely. But hey I have my own stabby/cinnamon combo now. It’s fun! And very odd in a way since it’s just so different from what I normally write. If you all still respond to this (when it’s available) with “It’s so cute and wholesome”, I will attempt to give up. Nothing will convince you all that I put content warnings in for a reason. (Seriously, though, ILU all and am honoured people think my writing is soothing even when dealing with hard stuff. It’s largely just an endless source of amusement.)

Life And Other Such Important Matters

I am almost done with PT! Which is… interesting because apparently PT has maybe had the side effect of being good for my feet? At least I’m finally able to wear a less worn-down pair of sneakers without first putting a bandaid on my heel. (It… was a thing. And yes it was necessary.) I hope that stays, to be honest. I also spent Thursday and Friday mostly collapsed. And wondering why because surely the past week had not been that intense for my doing and. Well. [gestures at wordcount] Apparently it was.

Beyond that, though, life goes on. We’re wrestling background checks still, so joy not knowing if I need to plan a move on a nonexistent budget. My plants are doing all right, surprisingly. The strawberry seems to have forgiven me for thinking it would be fine without wire to protect it. We’ve had a cheeky robin fly into the house twice now. Because cheeky birds. And… yes. Things are quiet as they usually are for me.

Stand-out Positive Moment

My  dice finally arrived! I ordered some dice from Firebolt Dice during their clearing of Magical Girl dice and they took foreeeeever to arrive because mail. I’d seen them before and assumed they were sold out and then was alerted to a clearing sale on the non-perfect-but-useable remainder. And I pounced. I’m absolutely delighted with them. I think Neptune is the only blue die colour of the set I’m missing? (Also Venus.) But they’re so pretty. And they have a 1/7 difference I can actually parse quickly! I can work with the star/dot for the 6/9 one, though a bar at the bottom would’ve been better. (I think the issue is largely on the d20. Where they’re right beside each other. Whoever decided that the 1/7 and 6/9 numbers on dice faces needed to be directly beside one another? WHY DO YOU HATE PEOPLE, PERSON WHO DECIDED THAT?!)

Anyway! So I… had not thought I would get a chance for shiny magical girl dice, which you have to admit are extremely me, and then I did! And I got a set. And they promptly got stuck in the postal services for a month or so. Usually things arrive in a week or so, so I was a smol ball of anxious. And then I was a smol ball of anxious no more!

And I know this might seem silly to people, but these dice really do just make me happy.

This Week on Patreon

All the Patreon posts from the past week, collected in neat and tidy lists, divided by tier.

$1+

• Let’s Play Rise of Tomb Raider: Extra #5
• Discussing “Asexual Affects: What Abjection, Anxiety and Shame Have to Do with Asexuality

How about you? What have you been up to lately? Has anything awesome happened?

May Newsletter

Hi, everyone! It’s that time again! Monthly news and accountability!

Life And Other Such Important Matters

Life continues, as it does. We’re just puttering along as best we can. I’m trying to get back into actual updates, which so far has been going swimmingly. (It has not.) I’ve adjusted to a cat-less life for the time being. It still feels weird. I blame this for my sudden acquisition of a strawberry plant. My bramble has survived the winter and seems to be doing fairly well despite my fears. I’m… impressed. I have no green thumbs whatsoever and am used to killing everything green I attempt to care for.

Big changes may or may not be on the horizon. I may not know until the end of the month. And… beyond that honestly life just goes on and we do our best to function.

Completed Projects

• He Must Go Walk the Woods paperback
• Rerelease Fairytale Verses & Rapunzel, Rapunzel
• Rerelease Among the Glimmering Flowers
• LP of Rise of the Tomb Raider

May Goals

• One novelette/short novella
• 3 chapters of Promises 2
• 14 books read
• season 3&4 of The Legend of Korra watched
• Finalise book proposal draft
• LP of Shadow of the Tomb Raider

April Goals

• Stay on track (or at least don’t fall further behind where I wanted to be)
• Sort out the print proofs of FBF and Woods

Hey, look, I mostly succeeded at this! I’m not sure how clearly I’ve stayed on track, but I certainly don’t think I’ve fallen behind where I wanted to be. At worst I’ve rearranged a few things that needed doing. Still! We’re aiming higher for May! I think I’m at a point where I don’t have a bajillion admin aspects running through my brain and may actually manage to focus somewhat sensibly.

Writing Updates

This Month’s Fiction Wordcount: ???

This Month’s Non-Fiction Wordcount: 0

April was largely taken up with prep for book 2 of Promises, as I’d decided that the best way to approach it is to reread book 1 and try to actually organise my notes so I can find things easily if I need them. (Spoiler: so far it turns out I did not need them, after all.) It also saw me finalise the paperback for He Must Go Walk the Woods So Wild, rerelease Among the Glimmering Flowers, and relaunching the verse novels under a more streamlined author name. (I’m nothing if not fickle. I know.) So I actually got a lot of necessary admin and book-related things done. They just ate into my writing time a lot. But since all that is out of the way now… May is looking optimistic.

Stand-out Positive Moment

The moment I got to hold the He Must Go Walk the Woods So Wild proof in my hands. EEEEEE!!! FINALLY! I’m so happy people seem to enjoy that collection. I wasn’t entirely sure how it’d be received since I combined extremely fluffy and soft stories with some extremely dark ones, but people seem to like them and appreciate the balance between them.

This Month on Patreon

Free

• April Newsletter
• Week 14
• Week 15

$1+

• Discussing Chapter 11 of ACE
• Let’s Play Rise of the Tomb Raider #26
• Let’s Play Rise of Tomb Raider: Extra #1
• Discussing “Opting Out: Anorexia, Asexuality, and Early Modern Women” by Simone Chess
• Let’s Play Rise of Tomb Raider: Extra #2
• Discussing “Unconventional Uncles: Queer Father Figures and Avuncular Relationships in Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith” by Christine Johns
• Story: The World Works in Sevens
• Let’s Play Rise of Tomb Raider: Extra #3

How about you? What have you been up to lately? Has anything awesome happened?

Weekly Accountability

Hi, everyone! It’s that time again! Weekly updates delivered every Saturday! Actually on a Saturday!

Completed Projects

None! (It’s the first week of January and it’s been… a week. Already.)

Goal Updates

• 0%/Finish Kel section of essays of DOOM
• 2/14 books

Writing Updates

lolno (see below)

Life And Other Such Important Matters

CW: pet illness, discussions of pet euthanasia

January actually started off on a positive note for me in that I have a (temporary but largely full-time) job to go to! YAY! The downside is it the commute is a total of 3 hours back and forth, so it’s more like a 12 hour day and I’ve had to spend the week trying to adjust to that and that just takes me a while, so this first week was largely a bust. I managed to read two shorter things and… that is is it. I’m writing this today wanting to curl up back in bed and sleep. For the entire day. Next week will be better because now that it’s weekend I’ll have actual time to work out how to make the hours work without overtaxing myself. And because it’s temp work on a flex basis, I can actually just leave whenever. (This is useful because it’s work that definitely requires you to be awake and able to pay attention.) It’s really interesting, though, and not one I can say too much about because it deals with people’s private details. Beyond just having trouble adjusting to the workday, though — and, ngl, I feel like the main reason I need adjusting is because COVID means I can’t get any dinner on the go, so I get home after what is effectively a 12-hour intense day and still need to sort food — I’m really enjoying it. Also, yes, it is the kind of work that absolutely cannot be done from home. It’s… very surreal if I pause to let myself think of it. The trains I take should be packed full with people because rush-hour and they’re virtually empty. People largely wear their masks properly. The social distancing is harder because you’re all moving through small aisles and, frankly, while there have been plenty of changes to make travel as safe as possible, “Give people more time to get on/off so they can keep their distance” was not one of those changes. Presumably it’s because I’ve seen, at most, five people exit or enter a rush-hour train in one go. It just feels strange.

And then the day before yesterday we took Twi to the vet and got confirmation that her ear is infected and, well, the world is what is it in general. Twi, you may recall, is my remaining elderly kitty. She’s going on 19 this year and she already had a health condition. They are now doing the thing where they make each other worse. According to the vet, we’re not at the threshold of “Consider what is best for her” yet, but I want to have that discussion sooner rather than later given the likelihood that these conditions don’t play nice together and… yeah. I was a ball of useless this week. I may be a ball of useless next week too. I just want this cat to have as much quality life as I can give her for as long as I can, that’s all.

In… somewhat brighter news. I have two awesome covers for short story collections made by the Amazing Sarah from The Illustrated Page Book Design, that I’m really looking forward to sharing with you all when the actual collections are ready and I can start thinking about promo. One is the collection of (almost) all the shorts I’ve been posting monthly since I started Patreon, so this year in lieu of a yearly collection of pieces, patrons will be getting an ebook copy of that when it’s all done and finished. (I have one story left to write that’s exclusive to the collection and I can dive into formatting etc, so I’m aiming to have it ready for patrons by February and out and available in general by the end of March.) The other is for a collection that… I need to write from scratch first. Well, rewrite from very old drafts the ideas of which are worth salvaging even if little else is anyway. So that one will be a while yet, I’m afraid. And then I have a third cover for the Covenant stories I’ve been sharing last year and aimed to have a collection of published, er, already, but wow cosy fiction is hard to write when your life is a trashfire. Who knew. That one’s my own design and I finalised it… last weekend? Very recently anyway. So at least the cover for it is all done and ready. It just needs something like 5-7 more stories to go with it.

So. You know. We’re making slow progress and this year may see more than one release. Gasp! (If I get really well-organised and find a way to handle the part where I just want to fall asleep foreever, I may actually finish a novel on top of all of that!)

Stand-out Positive Moment

[points at temp job] Definitely that.

How about you? What have you been up to lately? Has anything awesome happened? (Please say yes. I would love some good news.)

Yearly Happenings

Wow. 2020 was… a year. Simultaneously over so far and lasting forever. I don’t think it was kind to anyone I know and I don’t think I need to go into too much depth why. Suffice to say the pandemic made everything a thousand times harder. I was doing so well at the start of 2020. Ahead on most of my must-complete goals, and then saw myself struggling to get everything finished because of the stress and uncertainty.

But, in writing this, I am grateful that we’ve made it to the end of 2020. I’ve had good things happen this year too, largely in the shape of new friends and staying in contact with old friends.

As always, though, my memory is just utterly abysmal and I’m still playing catch-up on… everything I’d intended to do during the year and, to be honest, my holiday. (All right, my break from reading academia.) I’m also surprisingly tired still. I felt like I was finally getting somewhere with that, but you know. 2020 was 2020.

I got some things published! Surprisingly! Though not as much as I’d hoped to get done. I have one academic paper to my name now! Well, my pen name. Which I suppose I will eventually have to poke at.

I put out one small digital-only collection of soft short stories for people who wanted or needed some gentleness and fluff this year. Just put them all together in a small volume and hopefully it’s helped people out. And.. beyond that I’ve just spent the year trying to deal with everything it’s thrown at us and at the very least not falling further behind on things.

2021 will see me still playing catch-up on a lot of things, so… I guess we’ll see how it goes. I aim to publish at least one collection, but beyond that? Who knows what the year will bring. I’m certainly not up to making any plans right now. I’m barely keeping up with everything I need to do before 2020 is truly over.

Publications

• “Aromanticism, Asexuality, and the Illusion of New Narratives” in Ties That Bind: Love in Fantasy and Science Fiction
• A Little Gentleness and Other Stories

Weekly Accountability

Hi, everyone! It’s that time again! Weekly updates delivered every Saturday! Please remember that Let’s Read Academics will be on hiatus from December 21^st to the start of January!

Completed Projects

Nada

Goal Updates

• 6/12 books
• 0/50% essay
• 0/chapter reworkingThat darned chapter reworking
• 0/collection-exclusive short story
• 0/RotTR LPs

This is a sliiiiight lie. I actually have more of the short story done than this. I just failed to track how much. So! Starting the count from scratch!

Writing Updates

Writing happened? No, I kid. Writing did happen, a very little of it because my brain’s been rubbish still. 🙁 And like I said above, I failed to track it properly.

Life And Other Such Important Matters

In this year’s long, long list of “Oh, you thought things were improving?”, we are now officially in household quarantine for at least until testing results are in. It took something like five minutes for someone to go out to the shops. I cannot even.

Personally, though, I’m all right, I think. Anxious and tired, but that’s nothing new. I’m still pondering how to rearrange the furniture sensibly, so nothing’s changed, but I’m trying to get back into my lists because organisation really helps. I just need a way to pick myself up and keep going after I fall off.

So this weekend has lists! We’ll see how it goes. This is technically the first item on the list, though not the one I’ve done first. It’s not a fancy list, but that’s okay. I find it helpful to start small, even if it makes me feel a bit sad looking at the list and noting all the things I could add.

See, the thing is: I could add them, but then they wouldn’t get done. For me, anyway. So starting with a small list that I can add to actually works out better because it has multiple functions: If I finish it, I can feel good about finishing it. If I don’t finish it, I feel less bad because there were fewer items on it and thus I have failed less spectacularly. And anything else I get done and add is just an awesome bonus!

And the idea is obviously to build that up since it’s only so small because it should make it easier to get back up if I trip. Then, as I manage to build things into routine more, I can add things. At least that’s the theory.

I really hate the fact that I fell off making the lists, though. I used to have them every week and they were super helpful, but somewhere along the line depression meant I stopped completely and since then most every attempt to get back to it has failed. But I can do it. Eventually. We try and try again and, honestly, even if I fail again I will have made progress for a little while and so can make progress again.

Stand-out Positive Moment

I got ear gunk out of Twi’s ear! I think. It may have been nose gunk, but I don’t think so? Twi’s been having issues with her ear and we can’t really see what’s wrong, but I know that cleaner and my frankly rubbish ear massages do seem to help her feel better. So the vet said to give that a try and come back if there’s no improvement. So getting to a point where I seem to be better at massaging her ear and likely getting some of the gunk out? AWESOME!

This Week on Patreon

All the Patreon posts from the past week, collected in neat and tidy lists, divided by tier.

Free

• December Newsletter

$1+

• Let’s Play Rise of the Tomb Raider #9
• Lynn rambles about… Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 8
• Let’s Read Academics: Discussing Several Letters from the Recent Past

How about you? What have you been up to lately? Has anything awesome happened?