don't fear the sun.

With some nice encouragement, I got started. THE YEAR OF THE WOLF is now on AO3, well, the first ten poems are. I'm filing away at the sheer amount of days as we speak and will try to get the rest of January up tonight, but can't make any promises. There's a lot.

This is the one fic where I will really encourage people to note the warnings. Although it's not as such a graphic story, it works with some themes that could be triggering, so please keep that in mind.

This is the first ever novel length project I've written. It's honestly my baby. I'm proud of it and would love comments and kudos, of course, but I'm also very open to constructive criticism, so if there's anything you've got thoughts on, please let me know!

This has come such a long way.

And NaNoWriMo was kicked into motion.

I had a good, but busy and long November 1st where I got the first 2000 words written and finished my first scene! Generally happy with the writing, but can feel I'm clinging a bit to what I know, Claude as a character being a voice I'm very used to working with. Next section is from Anatole's PoV and I'm nervous on the verge of apprehensive about getting started on that, so there's a hurdle I need to get over.

I was also at a write-in yesterday, meeting up with other local WriMos, which was anxiety-provoking but also exciting. They all knew each other already, which made some old bullying traumas rear their ugly heads, but I actually managed to temper it down and enjoy myself regardless. Stayed for two hours, then had to get home in pouring rain. It was almost eight pm. when I finally made it to our front door, soaked. K. had a late day as well and we met for tea and chatting before I went to bed early.

I've signed up to host a write-in at the same place we did it yesterday, the local library, on the 9th of November and hope some people will show. If not, I'll take it as an opportunity to just get a few hours of writing time by myself, that'd be okay, too.



I finished As We Exist by Harchi and actually cried at the last few pages of the book. It's very moving, was very touchingly written. Her perspective is so tender and yet, unforgiving. She points fingers where they need to be pointed. This is one of those reads that I'm extremely grateful to have spend time and energy on and I'll remember it for a long time to come.

Next up, "Towards a New Socialism" by Thomas Piketty, whose other works I saw randomly (or not so randomly, really, I just recognised the name and went: I see you) featured in a scene of Lupin which I have started watching. Really amazing series. I know nothing about the source material, but just the production quality of this series is so good on its own? I love it. I also ship everything. I'm halfway through season 2.



Tomorrow I'll try to take a day off, as much as I can with therapy around noon. No staying in town for too long, just directly home.

K. and I are talking about RP'ing in the evening as well as writing, so I need to collect spoons for that before she gets home. I've got a head start at my NaNo wordcount, so if I don't manage to write anything tomorrow, that's fine, I won't need to catch up too much in the coming days and over the weekend. At least, K. has said she's going into town to write my Christmas calendar on Saturday, so I might go with her and we can both work on each ours. I love those mornings we spent in cafés, writing.



Also, did my check-in with smallfandombang, so all that is taken care of!

I'm not dead, there's just been a lot. I'm not gonna get into it. Important point: I'm not dead. Let's have a fresh start instead.



Because November is approaching, just two(-ish) more days to go and there'll be kick-off writing parties both at my local library and online in the evening. I've been through a lot of ideas and ended up discarding them all, having now landed on a (surprise) original idea - as in, not fanfiction, all ideas are, of course, original to some extend - for the first time in a couple of years.

New default icon thanks to that.

( About loving the France I know and being indifferent to the France I don't... Also, a lot of writing talk, feel free to skip. )

Anyway, that is my plan for November. I am going to "pants" this novel into fruition, which means I'll write the start I have in mind, not worry too much about planning the rest and just write stuff as it occurs to me. It'll probably be messy and unstructured and the first draft is no doubt going to be chaos, but that is a learning experience, too, and it's not like I'm going to show this story to anyone except my girlfriend anyway, haha. She is forgiving of my messes and I can afford not to be too perfectionistic or pedantic with her. She can take it.

The question is, can I?



I've picked this icon by bemybrokenheart for this post, because I hope the Arc de Triomphe will spiral me to NaNo victory and triumph with this story. If not, well, it's a very pretty icon.

That's it, people. This is me, being back. Hope you missed the endless rants about writing and story-developing and character gushing. If not, I don't know how to help you.