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MONTHLY WRAP-UP | February 2023

3/6/2023

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          This was another wildly successful month! I'm still not back to the place I was pre-pandemic, either mentally, financially, or productively, but I am so much more stable in my progress towards that these days than I've been in literal years.

             This semester is definitely a lot more demanding than I thought it would be, but part of that is that my job-role is in upheaval due to the departure of not one, but THREE, yes, three (3), full-time coworkers (one of whom was on my team directly). So, I am now solely responsible for supervising 40 student staff and overseeing the design, coordination and execution of around 1,000 events a semester. On the upside, I get full control of a lot of things, like this Fashion Show I ran for Homecoming:
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        Pic is from the rehearsal, total attendance was somewhere around 1,500. We used 3 sub-woofers, half a dozen speakers, and around 50 light fixtures. It was a FANTASTIC event and I'm super psyched about being able to do more things like it while personally being the main driving force behind the designs.

       Beyond that, my semester is mostly reading. SO. MUCH. READING. I have 3 separate Norton Anthologies to read this semester. Fortunately, it's a class that doesn't involve too much writing, so if I miss a reading one week it's not a huge crisis and I can catch up the week after with very few consequences. Unfortunately, it's not a class that involves a lot of writing, so my word-count goals aren't getting boosted by my school work like the usually are.
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        Still, I'm more than on-track for getting back to my old usual of 50k a month without blinking. By summertime, I honestly think I'll be in a legitimately good place on all fronts... Which, considering it's been literal years is something to be truly appreciative of.
Anyway, this past month was almost evenly divided between work emails and school emails for the Astyle Anything Misc category (ignore the 2022 I just noticed in the name, I made it a repeat goal and didn't realize that I named it by year when I first set it up, it'll be fixed for March). And the rest of it was entirely new material for the Dal Segno Star Wars Story!
I'm SO excited about where that story is going and Year 1 of it's timeline is within 3 Episodes of wrapping up! And, startlingly, I'm actually in a good enough place of attention and focus that I think I'll be able to jump right into writing Year 2!
Goals wise, February more or less met the goals I'd set.
I finished out with 37k, so not quite 40, but still way above my minimum, and I got a chapter posted to Patreon and at least 5 to Ao3, so 10 points to Slytherin there. The rest of it wasn't quite up to what I'd hoped for, but I vastly underestimated the time commitment of my class this semester, so I'm not too worried about.
We're gonna keep it just as simple for March: 
  • - 40k in newly drafted material, 50k as a reach goal.
  • - 2 fanfic chapters posted to Ao3.
  • - 1+ chapter fic posted to Patreon.
And hopefully, we'll be in an even better place by the end of it!

GOOD LUCK to you guys in whatever you're hoping for this month!

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Monthly Wrap-Up | November 2022

12/10/2022

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  Well, the boom predicted by the magical end of October managed to sustain itself pretty conclusively through November. I actually managed to get a helluva lot done this month, far more than I would've imagined possible back in September.
      ​On the chart, it looks like the month took a steady downturn, but that's kind of misleading. Much of the confusion lies in just how astoundingly good the first few days were. My average across the month, with that first week removed from the data set, still had me at about 1k per day, which is about 400 more than in the last few months previous. 
             Also, when making my outlook for November, I conveniently forgot about the existence of Finals Week, which put a huge damper on my writing productivity due to a massive load of research projects and presentations. And those last 4 days of nothing-ness were sick-days. I even called out from work due to the absolutely killer migraine I had... I barely left my bed for 3 days.
             Regardless of those seeming tripping points, however, I managed to have my 2nd best month this year so far (the best was August, and I only missed passing that by about 3k, so one more decent day of work without a headache or a pressing research project to take precedence). I got over the 40k line with my word count this month, which, in a normal year would be a slight disappointment, but in a year like this is absolutely glorious.

Goals-wise, I also did pretty good.
             I did not post any new chapters of the original fiction story I've been working on, but that's more because I've been forced to recall that, wow my first drafts are rough, and less because I don't have the material. I want to make the stuff I post here at least kinda decent before I subject you guys to it.
             I have chapters, and I'd like to get one or two posted in December, so I'll probably give them a quick edit and post them with notes and caveats so you guys can get a peak at my process in the next few weeks!
             I successfully posted 2 new chapters of fanfic, as I'd hoped I could when setting my November goals, and I even drafted a little bit more to extend my queue so I still have some material near-ready to post for December!

             Additionally, I have done some work on the potential Podcast/YouTube thingy, but wow is that more labor intensive than really viable for Finals Period...
             I may have something solid to post in December, but that's a reach-goal.

For December, my goals are simple:
             - 30k in newly drafted material, 50k as a reach goal.
             - 2 fanfic chapters posted to Ao3.
             - 1+ chapter original fic posted with notes to Patreon.
             - Symposium Paper draft* (more info to come).
             - Master's Capstone Project Outline* (also more to come).
             - 3 media reviews.We'll see what happens, but that all seems moderately doable to me.


I hope you guys all have some fun things planned out for the Holiday season and that all your goals get met!

GOOD LUCK!
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Monthly Wrap-Up | October 2022

11/4/2022

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          So. September's big backslide resolved into a solidly successful October. I rounded out the month with 25,055 new words written, but it's about 3k more than I got in June, which is when I started to feel like my recovery was at a positive turning point in rebuilding after my absolute collapse at the end of last year. I'd had that little relapse in May, but I'd gotten through it and was getting better.
          September was a combination relapse / huge world event distraction issue, so I felt alright with where I was despite the keen awareness that it could, at any moment, tip into something worse. And the start of October was terrifyingly close to that Bad Ending tipping point. I'd gotten my homework in, which gave me a decent buffer in terms of word count, but I'd only managed by the skin of my teeth and hadn't written so much as an email without direct supervision and dire necessity prompting it... So, I was worried.
          But I kept trying.
          Getting up, going to work, doing the readings for class, writing the essays, and sending the emails...
          And then something happened to prompt me to go on a musical research bender: I had a comparative cultures / effects of Imperialism assignment from class, and had to work 2 very different events that weren't so different after all.           Did you know that Irish / Scottish reels (both the music itself and the practical function of the dances within communities) bear a startling resemblance to the music and dance-functions of communities across the Hindustani regions of the Near-East and Asia? Because I didn't, but now I do and for two solid weeks I got to investigate that, the reasons behind it, and the practical takeaways of it.

          While that was happening, Halloween was approaching.

          I LOVE Halloween.

          The freedom to dress up extravagantly for days on end with exactly ZERO negative consequences hitting within the Establishment system? Bloody BRILLIANT.
         AND I got a day off, a legitimate day when no work, school, or family obligations (or disagreements) tainted my mood or impinged my activities. Which happened to, almost magically, coincide with a party being thrown my one of my dearest friends. 
          I was listening to MUSIC again, and I got to play in COSTUME again, AND I had time enough to rest and breathe that I had the energy to go be SOCIAL.
          And then, while driving out to the middle of nowhere farmland VA where my friend lives, I had a spooky playlist going on Spotify. I'd only managed to make myself do it because it was misty and the leaves were gorgeous and I was on twisty roads and all dressed up like a glittery, magical pirate... and that deserved a suitable soundtrack, but I hadn't personally curated one in years and listening to an old playlist would just make me sad about the present state of my life... So, Spotify.
          And one of the songs in that list was Paranoid by Palaye Royale... 
          And that changed everything.
          It's been a long damn time since I've gotten hooked on a new band. Too fucking long...
          ​But now I am and it's magical and, GUYS, I've got a STORY to work on now, and original fiction story that might actually go somewhere. It's only been 3 days yet in November and I've already written as much, in that story alone, as I had during the entirety of September across all my projects.
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          So. Goal-wise in October, I did alright. I managed to post my Vampire Essay as promised. And I did update more than 1 of my fanfics. I only did exactly 1 more than 1, but 2 is factually and qualifyingly more than 1, which officially meets that goal for October.

          And then last, but not least, October was just plain BETTER.

          ​SO. MUCH. BETTER.

         ​So yeah, October was successful.
              I'm in the best place, mentally, than I've been in a helluva long time, and that is something to celebrate.
          For November, I've got a project investigation on the evolution of Sub-Cultures in relation to the forces of reification and resistance to the Ideological State Apparatus and I'm using the rise of "Glitter Punk" (and Emerson Barrett of Palaye Royale's 'Glitter Slut Pirate' schtick) and my focal point / main case study.
              I've also got that original fic project that I'm working on and WILL be posting chapters of up here for Patrons Only. And there's the Star Wars fanfics that I will also be posting at least 2 new chapters of for readers on Ao3.
              Hopefully, I'll also be posting a new one for Patrons here, but Patrons are already so far ahead of Ao3 that I'm not sure that's plausible just yet.
              Additionally, I'll be doing some work on a new Podcast / YouTube thingy! I'm not quite sure I'll be able to record / edit enough to actually post anything in November,  but I'll almost certainly be able to post something solid by mid-December (for Patrons, at least).

              My writing goals for the month are nebulous in terms of word count.

         I'm already at the level I'd set as my minimum, but I'm still very wary of putting the pressure of too-high expectations on myself...
              Still, I'm gonna set the bar pretty high and say that my previous default of at least 50k in newly drafted work is gonna be my minimum.
              My reach-goal is 75k.
              Which would have felt absurd to me even a week and a half ago, but now feels entirely doable.
              We are edging into Holiday Season, which is always hard, so we'll have to see what happens but I'm hopeful. SO hopeful. So much more hopeful than I've been in... well, really since I even started actively plugging this Patreon account at all...

              I hope you guys are doing alright and I want to say a sincere and heart felt THANK YOU for sticking with me through this stretch of low points and pitifully inadequate content creation.
              I want you to know will be personally thanking all of you by email in the coming days! Because you mean SO freaking much to me.
              You have no idea how significant it has been to my mental state to think that there are people out there who believe in me enough to actually spend money on asserting that I'm worth supporting, regardless of how nominal the contribution might seem.
              It has meant the WORLD to me.

              So, THANK YOU. For everything.

              And I hope that your November goes even better than mine has gone thus far!
              ​<3 <3 <3 
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Monthly Wrap-Up | June 2022

7/5/2022

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           Okay. So. June did not go as planned, but it didn't go badly.
         It kind of looks like it went badly from the chart, but that's actually fairly misleading in this case. A BIG part of what makes my word count so low this month has been the fact that I've honed my ability to copy-paste / modify slightly so that my form-letters of job-application type correspondence is hyper-efficient.
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       I've applied for a lot of new positions this month, and been in significant discussion with a good number of industry professional. A lot of those conversations have been Zoom / phone calls rather than my usual email / messaging sort of communication, so that's another factor in what's made the word count look so low this month.

           And honestly, it isn't even all that low. It's a solid 6k better than last month and easily hits my default baseline-goal of 20k for the month.
          It's true, that I didn't hit 30k, as I'd hoped to, and it's certainly not slanted more towards the creative side than not like I'd been aiming for, but it's not actually as bad as I thought when I first looked at the summary.
            For July, I'm gonna keep things simple again.
           30k main goal, 40k in reach, ~50% creative, and at least 1 query letter / 20 job-contact communications (either new apps or follow ups or some such in-between).

           Nothing overly complicated, and all very plausible. 
           Nothing too specific, everything still serving as a contribution to progress.

          We'll have to see where the summer goes!

GOOD LUCK!!
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Monthly Wrap-Up | May 2022

6/5/2022

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            Well... the world certainly took a turn there didn't it? Both in terms of tragedies out in the wider world and complications in my own life at home, this was a month.
           Not all of what happened to distract me from my theoretical 'goals' was bad, however. I do have a few potentially really exciting things in the pipeline, career-wise, some of which  may be posted here as soon as I get clearance to do so (assuming the project gets the green-light I'm waiting on). 
             The main thing that distracted me, however, was my final paper for my Fairy Tales class, and that paper almost certainly will be going up here in the next few days. It was nearly 30 pages on the Taxnomic Effect of Corpse Embalming on the Pop Culture Vampire, via its Influence on the New England Vampire Panic (i.e. from about the 18th Century). Seriously. I got to research the pants of that nonsense and then had a captive audience to present my findings to... God, I love Grad School sometimes.
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​          That paper has been fully finished and graded (I aced it), and even though it took an alarming left turn through Irish History research at the last second, it was honestly the most fun I've had writing a paper in a long time. It was the most fun I've had doing straight research since starting a Fic in the 
Old Guard fandom.
                Anywho... aside from my paper, all I did was admin stuff related to job-hunting and securing funding for my next-semester of research. And like 10 minutes of add-a-scene-to-say-I-wrote in one of my ongoing Star Wars fics...
Basically, that means that none of my goals from last month got accomplished. I technically did make it over the 15k line in total word count, but that's not even up to my emergency fallback word goal. This is the first month in 2022 where I didn't make it over the 20k line and I am genuinely disappointed in myself for that.
           Still, if the thing I spent time on instead pans out the way I hope it will, I'll be able to get over that disappointment pretty quickly. I'm hoping I'll have an answer on it soon, but it might have to wait for confirmation one way or the other for another month or so...
               Which means that I still should put down some goals for June 2022 in writing.

               Like my goals for May, I'm being very cautious. All I'm aiming for is 30k, hoping for 40k, with more than half of the word-count leaning towards the creative side of things. (I'd like another query letter to go out, but I need a couple more job apps so as long as I get those, the lack of a query isn't a deal-breaker on calling the month a success.)
We'll just have to see what happens...

             GOOD LUCK to all of you in your endeavors! 
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             And, as always, feel free to drop me a line about anything YOU GUYS are working on!
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Monthly Wrap-Up | March 2022

4/3/2022

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            Well, this month might not be one for my record books, per se, it's still the best month I've had in a LONG while. It's the most I've written period since July of last year, and the most original fiction I've written since March of last year. I didn't quite tip the balance over from writing mostly school / admin stuff and reviews over to writing fiction, but I got pretty dang close (I'm only like ~300 words off the mark).
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     The bulk of what I worked on, fiction-wise, is the Star Wars Fic I'm currently publishing weekly, both here and on Ao3. I'm quite pleased with how well the writing is going and, as always, I am stunned and thrilled by the reaction I'm getting to it!

        The original fiction project is one I'll eventually tell you all about, but not until I get a little further along in the drafting process. I'll sit with this story a little while longer and then give you all an assessment of it and let you guys in on how I go about crafting such stories
         If you've ever attempted writing a story before you'll know that sometimes, no matter how good the idea is, writing this story now is just not in the cards. I've always found that it's not so much an aspect of writer's block so much as a fundamental misunderstanding of what the story needs to be that will be cured, almost magically, by time and open-minded-ness in processing new media. Sometimes the book / show / song you need to figure out a critical piece of your story just hasn't been published yet and until you stumble across it, you're just not going to be able to make that last bit click.
           Honestly though, between midterms last month, finals prep and the scholarship scrounge of this month, and the frantic rush to prep for the upcoming 'busy season' for both of my main jobs... I'm in a bit of a chaotic lurch. Good chaos, though, mostly.
       That said, I'm not gonna go over the goals I set for March today (because I do not wanna kill my current productivity buzz) and I'm not gonna set any real ones for April.
          All I'm demanding of myself for April is that I draft at least 30k, aiming for 40k, and that more than half of what I do end up writing be something story-related.
          (I'd also like to get at least 1 query letter out, but that's not a deal-breaker...).


         Anywhoo, it's Spring and Things are happening and most of them might very well turn out to be not-awful. There's still plenty to be hyper-stressed about, but I'm trying to fixate on the positives. It's really not any healthier (or potentially less life-destructive) than fixating on the negatives, but I'll at least feel slightly better about all of it.

           I DO have just a little bit more time to figure things out before they go nuclear, and I'll tell you about them once I either get them settled or start my final approach on the point of no return... In short, I can currently cover my financial bases, in no small part thanks to my amazing Patrons, but there's a bit of well-timed juggling involved that doesn't look like it's going to be able to maintain its precision over the summer...
           But that's not a critical problem for today and for the moment I'm okay.
           We'll have to see what happens in the next 6 weeks or so.

          In the meantime, I hope everything that YOU GUYS are up to goes swimmingly!

          GOOD LUCK!
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Monthly Wrap-Up | January 2022

2/5/2022

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January was a month full to bursting of time-heavy demands on me and my meager reserves of energy and attention. I am in the process of transitioning to a new role at one of my jobs and also of shifting course within my COVID de-railed academic career, so I've been hella busy (in a GOOD way, something way better than any other sort of busy, over-worked-ness that I've been subjected to in the last few years.)
That said, I still managed to get within a negligible distance of my word-count goal for this month. With respect to the fact that I am still recovering my creative groove after the past summer's burnout, I aimed for simply not backsliding. I've been slowly getting back to the 50k a month I usually produce, but in small spurts (ie, 5k in October, 15k in November, and 24k in December). So my goal this month was 25k
I didn't quite make it to 25, but I made it to 200 words over what I did in December 2021, so I'm still counting it a success.
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Especially because the bulk of that word count came from new creative work rather than from analytical writing or administrative drafting. This is the first time that balance has tipped towards where I want it to be since July of 2021.
I'm gonna take that win.

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Not great, certainly, but also not too bad.

I have plenty of room to improve, but I'm trying not to beat myself up about anything here because I'm still doing better than last month and since progress is not a destination but a trajectory, and as my current trajectory is still pointing in the right direction, this month is a success. It's important for me to keep focused on that part of it.

And to start looking forward towards a brighter future, because next month is full of particularly amazing promise.
It's more exciting for me in the immediate future than it can be for you, but I am embarking on the production of a short-vlog sort of new content! It's part of a semester project and will be posted on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, but only after I post it here, of course. It's hopefully going to be part opinionated media-review and part informative cultural/historical analysis, and I'm very excited about its potential!

I probably won't finish scripting / filming / editing any of it until at least March... but I'll likely start up with posting in-production pics and teasers almost immediately after I get the pitch approved by my professor!

Aside from that, I'll almost certainly be able to finish up with posting the Multiverse Mishap story (both the BatFam version and the SPN one). And I should even be able to gear up for posting a brand new story, but that's a secondary goal and won't be at all plausible until at least three weeks yet...

So, LOTS of stuff in the pipeline and it's all really exciting!
But, as always, we'll just have to see how things play out.
In sincerely hope it goes well, so me, and for whatever you guys have on all your plates at the moment!

GOOD LUCK, EVERYONE!!
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Year in Review | 2020

2/5/2022

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Honestly, while 2020 was a raging dumpster fire of a YA dystopian novel that hit everyone hard, 2021 turned out to be the personally tragic and gut-wrenching set-up found in the first 5~10 minutes of a classic Disney movie. I can only hope that 2022 turns out to follow through on the rest of the movie and the theoretically inevitable (but deeply implausible) happy ending...
2020 was a literal disaster, and involved a significant number of personal setbacks, but I still managed to accomplish things on a personal level.
2021 was basically abject failure on a majority of counts and it was so particularly awful that I can own up to that without embarrassment or shame or anything but weariness.

Here's my 2021 summary report:
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Okay, so the first half of the year wasn't awful exactly, but it did start out with a failure, even if it was a predicted one. I've never been able to write anything with a particular holiday theme, though I keep getting an urge to try. And since it was only a slight distraction from continuing to draft AG4, I didn't see it as any kind of portent of doom.

However... following that small, reasonable and predicted failure...
​I proceeded to not finish anything...
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      Yup, that's right, I pretty much didn't finish anything at all. Technically, I've finished the draft for both sides of the SPN/BatBros Multiverse Mishap story, but I haven't been able to get the remaining chapters prepped for posting yet. Nor have I got a new story situated to begin posting at a reasonable moment post-completion of Multiverse Mishap...           Soooo, yeah, I don't quite count that as finished.
       And everything after July is just an aberration of personal collapse.
      I DID get 3 months with over 75k written, and 6 months with over 50k, so I do count the first half of the year as not-horrifically offensive, even if I didn't managed to get anything wrapped up. Progress isn't only measured in finished projects, after all, it IS really more of a trend-line trajectory than any kind of destination, so I didn't get much finished but I still got stuff done. If I hadn't collapsed into a black hole of awful, I'd probably be able to count that a win and even with my backslide, I'm still walking away from a year where I do have something worthwhile to show for my labors.

Here's the breakdown of how focused I stayed each month:
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​Again, the first half of the year was honestly  solid.


I managed 6 months in which I got over 40k drafted in a single project. That's not as good as I managed in 2020, but it's still nothing to sniff at. I totally would've been able to just call it a solid try and leave it there if not for the disaster of Aug-Dec...
Still, I managed to meet my Year End Word Count Goal, squeaking out just enough in Nov and Dec to really make it over the finish line: Final Count = 573,470.
Not bad at all, to be unbiased about it. I'm still leaning towards being harsh on myself because until August, I was on a trajectory to hit near a million words, and I'm still not entirely out of my slump (so the weight on self-criticism is overdrawn), but I'm forcing myself to focus on the bright side:
I DID actually accomplish the official goal.


Which isn't something I can say about any of the other goals I set for 2021...


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2021 Accomplishments vs Goals:
- Finished drafting (if not posting) 
Multiverse Mishap, both the BatFam Version and the SPN Version. I should be able to finish posting both stories by mid-February. 
  • It'll be nice to have it fully finished, not gonna lie. I'll probably be taking a few weeks away from posting (especially on Patreon as that schedule was preset, so the Ao3 story is definitely behind), but hopefully I'll have something new to post by Spring!
- Land Publishing Agent Contract.
  • Nope... I did try though. So, yay for that?
- Query at least 12 Literary Agents.
  • Yes! By my count I sent 15! Not that it amounted to much, but still, I did also revise my letter significantly, so hopefully future queries will work out better.
- Finish Drafting Assassin's Game Book 4.
  • Not even close. I didn't quite brush the halfway point, but I still got that far, at least. It's more that I'd gotten done on it in years prior.
- Finish Drafting & Posting Sun & Stars.
  • Nope. I gave up on this story all told. It's not entirely abandoned, but it's no longer pinned in my quick access either...
- ReDraft Duchess & the Dragon .
  • Nope, same deal as with Sun & Stars. I have summarily left it to rot. It's not entirely abandoned, but it's no longer pinned in my quick access either...
- Draft 1 New Batman Fanfic over 50k.
  • Yes! Is it fully finished? Not exactly, but it's getting there.
- Draft 2 additional New Fanfics over 30k.
  • Yes! Technically. Neither are in any shape to really begin being posted or anything, but they technically exist and are at just over 30k each.
- Draft 1 New Original Fic over 50k.
  • Nope. I think I wrote 20k of original fiction at all outside of AG4. And most of it was in Notes for random not-yet-congealed story possibilities...
- Finish 2 more Semesters with 4.0 GPA.
  • Yes! It was a close thing, but I did scrape out a pretty dang lovely final paper.
- Gain a following of 30 more Patrons.
  • Nope. I actually backslid pretty dramatically on that front, for the obvious reason of not really being a creator that was producing any content worth following for a substantial portion of the year.
- Acquire more appropriate employment.
  • Technically no, but effectively, kinda? A Thing has occurred. It's not a Great Thing, but at the very least, I'll be starting 2022 by doing something different with my life. New starts can lead to other new things, right? So, even though I'm not getting much out of the change immediately, I'm hoping it'll lead to better things eventually. I'm giving it 6 months, 1 more semester, before I start to pushing hard for other avenues of potential.

Which isn't a great showing for 2021, but it's a better result than could have happened. It sets up 2022 for a reasonably auspicious start and I'm gonna run hard with that lead...
Goals for 2022:

- Land Publishing Agent Contract.

- Query at least 12 Literary Agents.
- Finish Drafting Assassin's Game Book 4.
- Draft & Post 1 New Fanfic over 50k.
- Draft 2 additional New Fanfics over 30k.
- Draft 1 New Original Fic over 50k.
- Finish 2 more Semesters with 4.0 GPA.
- Experiment with vlog, podcast, tiktok, etc... expand to more dynamic review platform in some moderately measurable ways.
- Gain a following of 30 more Patrons.
- Acquire more appropriate employment.
- ReDraft Duchess & the Dragon or Wirewolves... ? (Bonus Goal?)

It's another rehash of 2020, more or less.
I've culled a couple projects, moved one to being on the table just for bonus points, and added one more about expansion potential that I've been thinking about for a long time.

We'll see what happens. I'm putting a lot of faith in the concept of new beginnings (even ones that aren't what I might've otherwise wanted) pushing hard on the motivation to make other changes too.

Here's to a fantastic slice of potential!


GOOD LUCK, MY LOVELIES!!!

​​
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[Write Life] June Wrap-Up & July 2021 Goals!

7/1/2021

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           Whelp, June did not go as planned. I definitely felt very rushed and cornered because I bout of depression-based executive disfunction caught me by the throat (this whole post-pandemic job-search thing is really starting to get to me...). Beyond that, Star Wars has kind of taken over my life a bit, which is a new obsession that I've allowed myself to dive headlong into because it was something to be excited about (while everything else I've been attempting to work on was feeling like it was predetermined to end in failure).
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       At the very least I can fall back on the lovely knowledge that I easily more than met my goal for the month's general word count...

           I wound up with a final daily average of 2,608 and a final count of ~78,250, which is technically a better result than last month, but I got less of the goals I'd set for myself even half accomplished... It means I'm both mildly pleased and disappointed in myself for it all, but here's how it breaks down:

​            Literally all I worked on this past month. at 
all, were my job applications and my new Star Wars obsession story... It's not even a single story, it's a hodge-podge of like 3 potential stories that all have the same theme (and currently the same title) that MAY eventually take shape enough to be posted on Ao3... Basically, I just wanted to run through a head-space hop-scotch game of the Clone Wars characters as Ahsoka Tano proves herself to be rather more grown up than the others would like to think of her.
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                    I am quite fond of what I've come up with for this Star Wars thing, but the stories will need a lot more work to be even half presentable as legit fics. And I'm mostly focused on whipping the BatFam / SPN crossover story into shape for posting. If I get a bit more of that finished and polished up, I should be able to start posting 2 chapters per week (so each story will get a new chapter once per week instead of how I currently have them alternating)... But that's a thing I won't be able to manage until at least August.
                  Also, Sun & Stars unfortunately is slipping off the table, because it is just too difficult to keep up with all the research when I can't pass any of it off as classwork. When I had a class focused on material objects and how human culture builds itself around them I was able to pick the Crusades as my area of focus, but now I'm in a fairly intense Linguistic seminar and this fall I have Literature, Ethics, and Human Rights course that's gonna be mostly focused on the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries... So yeah, that Crusades research is just gonna be a lot harder to keep up with. Especially, if I don't get a higher-paying job and need to scrounge for extra shifts like I have been so far this summer... It's tragic, but it is what it is, and I would like to come back to it eventually. I do still have a few unedited / not-fully-fact-checked chapters in my word doc, that I'd like to finish cleaning up at get posted, so I'll hopefully be doing at least one of those this month, but that's about all I can offer for this story for the foreseeable future.

               For now, I want to reaffix my focus to getting Assassin's Game published, so I'm aiming for another big push in query letters to lit agents. And of course, that whole getting-a-decent-job nonsense...
               So, those are my two big focus-points for July.

July 2021 Goals:
 ​     - Query 9 Lit Agents
      - Post 1 Chapter of 
Sun & Stars.
 
     - Post 4 Chapters of Multiverse Mishap.
      - Post 8 Media Reviews
   - Make 3 other kinds of Post (special release, culture crit, write life, etc)
     - Submit 12 Job Applications

    **- Draft ~30k in [Star Wars] No
t a Kid...
​July 2021 Schedule:

​​Monday: Post new chapter of Multiverse Mishap. (Bats Vers.) 
Tuesday: Post new chapter of Sun & Stars. (Hopefully) 
Wednesday: Post Media Review. 
Thursday: Special Access, Write Life, or Culture Crit posts. 
Friday: Post Media Review. 
Saturday: Post new chapter of Multiverse Mishap. (SPN Vers.) 
Sunday: No Post.
                It's not an excessive amount of work, at least not in terms of accomplishing the main, normal goals, but (as evidenced by the tacked on extra goal) I am also quite sure that I'll be posting a lot of new words as being part of the [Star Wars] Not a Kid semi-story, so hopefully I'll get at least one piece of that sorted out well enough to being posting it as a current project on Ao3... We'll just have to see what happens.
                ​So, hopefully, we'll see something happen that shifts things towards a brighter future. But if not, I've at least got a handle on myself enough to know I tried... (It's really difficult not to feel like a lazy piece of shit when like 80% of my day often involves sitting on a couch, and then just a short bit of shift work... but I absolutely cannot focus on anything like a job app after a shift at one of my jobs... ADHD brain says when the shift is over the day is over... even if I get out of work at like 11am, which means to compensate and actually get shit done with my days I've been waking up at like 2am on the regular...).

              We'll have to see how it all works out.
              I hope you guys have a great July, a FANTASTIC 4th of July Weekend, and as always, if you think of anything you'd like me to write about, just drop me a line and I'll work it into the schedule post haste!

GOOD LUCK, Y'ALL!
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[Write Life] May Wrap-Up & June 2021 Goals

6/1/2021

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          It was an odd month, not least because of how my A/C died on me... We honestly think it was sabotage... We had a couple of people come out to give estimates on getting it replaced soon-ish (because it was old and would need replacing soon so we wanted a ballpark on its cost), but it was working fine after 2/4 people checked it out and then the 3rd guy left and immediately it crapped out... And dude #3's company called us 26 times in the next 30 hours...). ​
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            ​I even stayed nice and focused on just a couple of projects this month: 

           The Gatewatch blip is an original fiction plot bunny that wouldn't leave me alone last month and still wouldn't quit this month, so I gave it a few more hours of note-making and free-writing, but it's probably not going to evolve into anything very exciting (at least not for a long while yet). The Star Wars story may continue into something worth watching for a future story to be published, though. It's focused on Ahsoka finally proving herself and developing a grown-up kind of respected reputation before & during her time as Fulcrum. (There may be time-travel involved... and or de-aging... ) XD
            But the bulk of what I worked on this month were job applications, query letters, and (most substantially) the revamping THIS WEBSITE!
            SO, lots of drama, but I squeaked out my word-count goal right at the end there! I actually managed to stay on track for most of the first half of the month, only falling off the band-wagon for about a week in the middle there. After a few days of basically nothing I got back on track with my normal daily-count, but it wasn't quite enough to make up the difference until I had a few good days at the end.
            I wound up averaging ~1754 per day, which is actually just about perfect (the requirement for average daily count to meet my monthly goal is usually about ~1680-ish in a month with 31 days). I was worried because it kept hovering around the ~1430 mark for most of the last 2 weeks, but that last burst of awesome was just enough of a boost.

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            I'm actually really excited it because I like at lot of the formatting possibilities better than what Patreon offers and I can link certain posts through Patreon to ensure that they remain Early Access or Patron Only. No real changes will be seen in my posting schedule here, but I do think the website will be able to help me get more exposure. ^_^
        Anywho, I wasn't really able to meet... well any of my May goals writing goals outside of word count, but technically I did send my query letters, make my job apps, and post my chapters / reviews on time (thank goodness for prewriting and substantial queues!)
            But all that aside, I've got high hopes for June:
June 2021 Goals:

​     - Query 3 Lit Agents
     - Post 2 Chapters of Sun & Stars.
     - Draft 1 full chapter of Sun & Stars.
     - Post 4 Chapters of Multiverse Mishap.
     - Post 8 Media Reviews
    - Make 3 other kinds of Post (special release, culture crit, write life, etc)
     - Submit 12 Job Applications
June 2021 Schedule:

​​Monday:
Post new chapter of Multiverse Mishap. (Biweekly)
Tuesday: Post new chapter of Sun & Stars. (Hopefully)
Wednesday: Post Media Review.
Thursday: Special Access, Write Life, or Culture Crit posts.
Friday: Post Media Review.
Saturday: Post new chapter of Multiverse Mishap. (Biweekly)
Sunday: No Post.
           Unfortunately, the Sun & Stars story has caught up to me in terms of being a little too difficult to research / write on any kind of schedule and since the BatFamily story is both easier to write and receives more audience enthusiasm... I'm transferring my focus to Multiverse Mishap. It'll likely be a best-choice option even if it currently feels like giving up. (I always hate leaving WIPs as WIPs, but sometimes it's inevitable).
           We'll see what happens, but I've got a very good outlook for it!
           I hope you guys have a wonderful June!

GOOD LUCK!
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the Calamity of 2020: Where have I been & Why am I back?

5/17/2021

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I'm ALIVE! And back from the Abyss...

           It has been a long time since I updated this website. I vanished into the ether with extremely little warning or any belated notice and for that I sincerely apologize. Life is an extremely unpredictable river to ford and sometimes we just get swept away with the current.
           I have spent the last few years trying to gain a footing in various avenues into the media industry and I am not too proud to say that I've been met with more failure than success. Between a disheartening lack of genuine career prospects, a critical change in the landscape of my priorities, and a health-crises in my Family that has caused both significant financial distress and emotional strife, I simply didn't have it in me to maintain a website of any sort.
           Even when my personal life began to calm down, my professional life was... unpleasant. It had stabilized enough for me to suffer through in silence, but it wasn't a good situation. So while I had finally come to a sort of equilibrium, I still was in no shape to be working on any kind of unpaid passion project that required time and effort and research, no matter how professional the tone I created for it. To escape my woes, I began writing Fanfiction under the name PrettyMissKitty on Ao3. My work received tremendous praise, right from the start. The Fanfiction was almost effortless to write and easy to post with some regularity. It was enough industry and praise to keep the demons of depression at bay, and it motivated me in both my less than exhilarating retail work and my writing (ranging from my original fiction and fanfiction to factual dissertations on the state of media and culture as we know it today).
        Things had begun to calm down and I was on the cusp of something great. I had a job offer from the Smithsonian and I was literally ~2 weeks away from giving my notice to my retail position when COVID struck. The offer from the Smithsonian evaporated with the department's budget. The retail position laid me off. The side-gig of tutoring I had scrounged for nearly dried up as well... It was not a good time.
           At the suggestion of a reader who deeply enjoyed my work and knew of my financial struggle, I created a Patreon account. With this account's paid membership services, especially in wake of 2020's mass layoffs (of which, I was a victim for the better part of the year), I've been able to subsidize an effort to return to school in pursuit of a masters and hopefully a PhD and the endeavor has made an astounding difference in my outlook for the better.
           So now, I'm back here and delighted to be so.
           I am now able to return to the upkeep of this website as part of my coursework, or at least validate the effort I would like to put into the upkeep as being tangentially related to my coursework, so I will definitely be updating this site on a very regular basis. It will be maintained in combination with my Patreon and, as such, there will be a Members Only section with special updates and material from my original fiction projects (which I will hopefully be getting set up and open to Patrons within the next week).
           That said, I would still like to work on this site as a passion project and allow the public to make use of the majority of material I create. Reviews will go up early for Patron-Only Access, as will new chapters of Fanfiction and new editorials, but 75% of what I produce will be openly available for anyone to peruse. This includes my Parental Aide commentaries and resources on how to understand what's happening inside your kids' brains as they grow and interact with media. It also includes commentaries on cultural engineering and how to make use of it to create a more equitable society with all members of a community developing a mutual investment to maintain it, be it on the scale of a single family, a neighborhood, an institution like an art museum or a university, or on the scale of states and nations and our new, globalizing world..
           I have three main goals for this site:
                      - Create a professional online presence to support my developing writing career.
                      - Educate the public from my perspective as a PhD candidate to create an informed community.
           
           - Facilitate a vehicle for creating a Consulting business in concert with my volunteer speaking.

           My goals may change, but for now, I think they suit my ability to commit time and effort while still allowing for flexibility in following up on career opportunities.

Current Projects:

           ​I have four categories of content-creations project relevant to discuss here, all of which I hope will be things that I can discuss in greater detail in the near future.
Original Fiction:
  • Assassin's Game
- Querying for publication
- Drafting Book 4
- Creating an exclusive insider page for Patrons.
Fanfiction:
  • Multiverse Mishap
- Posting weekly chapters
  • Sun & Stars
- Drafting/Posting chpts.
Media Reviews:
  • Mainly books & the occasional movie.
- Posting twice weekly
Editorials:
- Split efforts between comments on Writing Practice, Cultural Shift, & Society at large.
​- Posting monthly.
           These goals essentially mirror my goals as listed on Patreon with each new month. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with these projects and ensure that my posting schedule remains in sync on both sites!
           Wish me luck! And I look forward to building something new with you!
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UMW Grad Weekend, 2015 Comencement, & Growing Up...

5/12/2015

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Here's to Good Times and Great Friends!

          Over the past few months, I've been sitting at home, wallowing in the fact that I am suddenly being swept away into the grown-up world with no maps or guidebooks to speak of. Actually that's totally not true. I've been thoroughly enjoying my post-grad period of unemployment. While it has been stressful for me to set out on the adventure of a lifetime, I've been waiting to embark of this journey for a long time now. I've been diligent in my applications and thorough in my networking endeavors and my efforts seem to be paying off. I can almost taste the sweetness of full-time employment in my beloved music industry and will continue to pursue every lead I can dig up until I secure my dream job. It's been a great few months.
          In the last few weeks, it has become a bit nerve wracking. I occasionally feel like I'm screaming into the Void and hoping that it will somehow manage to shout back. And yet, I've come so far recently, making crucial contacts and building genuine relationships with people in my industry... It's hard to see that progress sometimes, but I recently went back to UMW for my formal commencement ceremony and it really hit home that I have made genuine progress. I've spent so much of my life in Academia, where progress is measurable in grade points and percentages that it's sometimes hard to see forward movement that can't be quantified or accounted for by checking on a transcript.
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          At UMW, I have made great friends and fantastic memories. I developed skills that, before UMW, I never thought I'd ever want to have. I've run three different types organizations. I've acted as an independent liaison between politically charged fractions of students and administration. I've planned and pulled off massive cultural events and community-wide festivals, and I've personally orchestrated 4 separate events with dozens of caterers even more entertainers and budgets that make my tuition look cheap. I've run a radio station. I've been the technical adviser on two dozen outsourced presentations, and the audio engineering assistant on at least as many concerts. I've played cards with Nate Ruess from fun. and I've shared a bag of Cheetos with Matt & Kim. I've spent time working one on one with the creator of the light-show that completed Krewella's Cochella extravaganza. I've spent an after noon with the Jonas Brothers. I've hung out with a dozen more epic artists; back stage at concerts, on music video sets, and in University Fitness Centers. I went half way around the planet with no one but myself to rely on to make sure I made it back. I have done a hell of a lot.
          Since coming home, I've played Dragon Age Inquisition and watched literally everything there is to see on Netflix... It's made me feel like I'm not really doing anything important, you know? Especially in comparison to my undergrad... But that's not true. The way I feel is based on the fact that it seems like the bulk of my day is spent on movies and video games, but it really isn't. I'm email friends in the music world, contacting people on the edges of networks I'm already in and using the relationships I'm building with them, to join new and even more expansive networks. I've learned how to do taxes. I've spent hours on the phone with executives in the industry I adore. I've gone on real business trips and learned how to catch a cab in three different cities. I've learned how to call Triple A for a flat tire. I've figured out how my health insurance works. I've managed to gain an understanding of my student loans and how I can use them to build up my credit score rather than having them stand as a black mark against me. I've perfected the art of the 30-sec perfect first impression, and I've had interviews with some amazing people who have become genuine allies in my quest to join the music industry.
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           This past weekend was my formal commencement ceremony. I walked across the stage on Ball Circle and it sunk in that I'm done with college. I may go back for an MBA or something in the future, but for now, I've finished with the thing that has made up my entire life so far: school. I'm in the 'real' world now and I honestly feel like I can make it here. I'm gonna get into the music industry, it's just a matter of time. I have something big in June to look forward to and I'll be moving to a new city soon. I have a lot that I still have to do, but I've actually come pretty far.

           I'm still living off my parents. And my student loans are looming on the horizon, but I'm doing okay. I have a plan, I know where I'm going and I know how to get there. Maybe I'm not sprinting up the ladder of success just yet, but Music has always been an industry of "hurry up and wait". I'll get where I'm going soon enough, and I will definitely be getting there. I'm already well on my way.

So here's to US, Class of 2015. And here's to being AWESOME.

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Welcome!

1/10/2015

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Here's to A New Step

I just graduated from the University of Mary Washington!
That means I need to get a new system set up for recording how my career goes and publishing all the epic projects that come with it. That would be what's happening here!

If you were looking for the other page with all my pre-graduation projects, that can be found HERE. I'll be getting this page spiffed up with news as soon as there's cool news to share. ^_~
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