thursday.

[sunfright]

I've finished my initial read-through of The Year of the Wolf, my Omina fanfiction. All 12 chapters. All 365 days in poetic form. It took me a couple of days, because I'm a slow, untrained reader - even with my own stuff - but here I am. I just reread the ending again, just to make sure I liked where I took it all. And there are definitely parts of this story that could need a brush-up, though I'm not entirely sure what exactly it is that it needs, and I am happy to have dedicated betas to help me with this, but overall? I am happy. I am happy and I am proud. This work is like one long, constant meditation on themes like trauma, like guilt, like change and loneliness versus togetherness. I think, if it had been an original work, it would have been "worthy" (and worthy's the wrong word, because every single piece of fanfiction out there deserves its audience and its existence just as much) of getting published the traditional way. As it is, at least technically, a fanwork, it won't go that way and that's fine, but I think it's the scope it has. It feels like mine. I'm not even sure how Naja Marie Aidt and Mette Moestrup who wrote Omina would recognise the world and the character I have shaped out at the end, which might say something of its value as a "fanwork", but it takes its basis in that poetry collection and I am not sorry to call it a piece of fanfiction at all.

It's what it is. And a bloody good one at that, too!

In the wake of having finished that aspect of editing work, I'm left a bit restless. It doesn't help that I have to go home to my parents on Saturday which I very much don't feel like doing, but mostly it's this sense of being done and the rest, for now, being out of my hands. I never liked that feeling. Like handing in your exam paper and having to wait for the feedback and the grade? I also have some very practical questions I need to ask myself, my betas and maybe you guys about how I go about posting this fic. Originally, I'd meant to post it one month at a time, so all days/poems of January go up together, but for layout reasons I'm beginning to consider whether just to put one day up at a time, so one poem per chapter instead? Any thoughts? I guess what I'm asking is whether it would be more readable like this -



JANUARY (CHAPTER TITLE)

January 1st

Text text text...



January 2nd

Text text text...



January 3rd

Text text text...





OR




JANUARY: DAY 1 (CHAPTER TITLE)

Text text text...



JANUARY: DAY 2 (CHAPTER TITLE)

Text text text...



JANUARY: DAY 3 (CHAPTER TITLE)

Text text test...



Not sure that's the easiest way to explain it, but it's late and I'm tired and possibly a bit triggered, so it's the best I can do, lol.

I have tried getting started on other writing projects, but for now the only thing that's pretty consistently working for me is roleplaying, so I do that a lot. Right now, it's Teresina which is a lot of fun and overall pretty light-hearted which is just what I need. Have a couple of books I'd like to read/re-read before starting on the piece I want to write for her for the Seven Wildflowers challenge, but other than that, I'm just having silly fun in RP land, since that's what works right now.

And I'm just having a general come-down kinda feeling, a real drop. The last couple of months have been my version of mania and this is the price I pay. I've stopped, mostly, feeling bitter about it, that I have to pay for every high I experience with such a downer, because - as a kind lady in group therapy once said to me - maybe every high you experience is the reward you get for survivng a down.

It doesn't always feel like that, but I like to remember that word of wisdom as a general thing, too.

Maybe it's the reward that counts, not the price.

Anyway, that was my update for tonight. Hope you're all doing okay out there.