Nah, the latest oligarchs to be assassinated in Russia was killed using rare toad’s poison. Like, that was a news headline. In 2022.
Thanks for the response. I didn’t know that stories got a few weeks’ boosts at the start. And yeah, making the lists seems hard, unless you are actually getting a decent amount of traction as you progress. And having it fit their actual themes. A lot of my stories could contain “Mature Themes” (not just talking about sex here).
When you say “frequent updates while you are boosted” would you say every day or every 1-3 days? People still say there are better days to upload. Or does it matter, in your experience?
Yeah, the clubs sound like a good idea. Making time for them is important too. Know any good clubs, or do those vary by the genre etc?
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Well, ngl, I look for books with good book selection and the vibe. I am with Dreamland and do Exchange, Rush and Workshop with them, but I also enjoy Sunflower BC and I just joined Pride BC. Workshop is for serious feedback, Rush is for the heck of it, and Exchange–for discovery of new authors. I also do reviews (selectively) with Dreamland which helps me to meet interesting writers. Some of them I just keep following till their book is finished.
Every 1-3 days or at least 2x a week is my understanding. I never really figured out time of day/week thing.
In terms of Mature themes, well, I think the trick is to write them without making a reader uncomfortable. I am reading @pixelmum story right now, and she is acing that. But, say, another book which was nowhere near as dark, I backed out of last week, because it managed to make things way, way uncomfortable. I think it was Maass who had a great discussion of it in one of his books (Emotional Craft iirc). …
anyway, I digress.
I really need to get my kid back to the hospital, edit a little, then do gardening.
I kinda wasted my morning on caturing the outline for Book 3 of Lone Werewolf just in case
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It is fun when you get something right. It may have shocked the dude who wrote about the Titan when the Titanic sank. Also think that Krakatoa’s eruption was published the day before it hit the west, newswise? If I remember correctly, he was writing what he thought would be fiction, and they ran it because they thought he had a scoop…but that story was strange and I’ve only come across that one once, so I’m iffy on the details of that weirdness.
But it’s not too uncommon.
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Hmmm
Interesting.
Could Wattpad be wanting to show me decent books?
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Fair enough. I might check out dreamland and try to enter it. I’m on their discord server somewhere. So I will probably join workshop later if it’s serious. Exchange sounds good. I might do that for discovering authors. Exchange still gives alright feedback yeah? I’ll do that then.
Alright, thanks. Time to get to work then. Pre-add some chapters to my chapter bank.
That’s a good point. Making your reader feel comfortable but you still have enough creativity and autonomy to do whatever you want your way in regards to this. Yeah, so it doesn’t matter how dark it is as long as you write it in a way that doesn’t alienate the reader.
Good luck. I hope your kid gets better soon.
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Possible.
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I am really conflicted on what to do. Should I tell Pharaoh’s story or not?
I feel like I should because he is the antagonist of the story. Yet I really want to get started on the true novel version of the anthology. It is going to be a long one too.
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I feel like squealing.
Just wrote a tiny moment between my characters where one is clearly flirting and the other is oblivious and it’s soooooo freaking cute.
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Done with part 5 and now I am onto part 6…of chapter 3.
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My story is having a serious identity crises.
I guess I’ve been aware of it for a while but now it’s hit me so much stronger and I’m having doubts if I can pull it off. I need to get it out of my head and into writing because I think better in writing.
I’ve touched on the subject here before. I watched a trailer of Arcane and thought, hey, I’m writing a story with a world just as cool as this one, and then I started having all sorts of doubts if I’m conveying my cool setting well enough. If I wanted my story to have as cool factor as Arcane, I would have to crank up on my descriptions to show more setting because as is, it doesn’t compare. All these cool things exist in my world but I don’t show them (because so far the story didn’t have a need for it).
That in itself is not a huge problem and it’s something I could address in edits but then comes a second part of this: the conflict between the story I think I’m writing vs the story I’m actually writing.
I set out to write this cool tale of time travel gone wrong, a world with tensions between humans and cambions, a poignant tale of self-discovery, cracking down on what defines identity and seeing past the lies to see the truth.
But then I sit down to write and I’m producing this cutesy slow-burn romance, a minute-by-minute play of my characters getting to know each other because they’re adorable together and I guess I’m just in the mood to write that. I binged watched Heartstopper on Netflix twice in a row and I’m in love. I’d love to write a wholesome adorable story like that. And as I’m writing my story, I realize that those adorable moments are my favorite moments.
And this isn’t the only time that their relationship overshadowed the story I was trying to write. The same thing happened in the first draft. There wasn’t supposed to be a love story in it at all, not a gay one definitely. But as NaNoWriMo pushed me to write like the wind, the scenes I wrote centered around them, overshadowing everything I had planned. And I let it because I was enjoying writing that. Every draft of this story I’ve written, their relationship always broke my plans.
So, with their romance taking up so much time in the book, I fear that I won’t have the space necessary to add the cool factor. When it comes to arcane-punk genre, my story will fall flat, won’t rise to the expectations. I can’t bring up Arcane as a comparison.
A thought occurred to me, should I extract the romance out of this setting, write it as a contemporary and rewrite the cool factor story? It would allow me to focus just on my characters without the pressure of not reaching genre expectations. But without the setting that I’ve created, a lot of the story would be lost. I don’t want to write a story set in high school or whatnot. I’ll likely accidentally add some speculative element to it anyway because I can’t help myself. Real world bores me.
So I scrapped that idea.
And so the only choice left appears to be to keep going as is. Write it as if Heartstopper took place in an Arcane world. 
Then the only change I’d have to make is to switch my own approach to the story. Instead of having all these cool things happen on the surface and a love story subplot in the background, I would need to treat this as a love story with all the cool things in the background. That might be the answer to why I’ve been struggling with every draft of this story. I kept thinking romance wasn’t the global genre.
I hope there’s a market out there for a gay romance written in a bonkers arcane-punk setting.
And it will be bonkers because if I can’t spend enough time letting the reader acclimate to this setting, every fantastic thing that pops up will be a surprise. Oh, well.
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Tapas might like that. Yeah, I had the same problem with Werewolf, balancing the love story and the world and the adventure. It was fun in the end though.
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I would say Exchange is 100% depends on your pairing, so if you have to be prepared to reading 4 chapters of someone’s stuff you have no use for and still comment on it, and try to pair in a perma pair when you hit it off with a book. I mean, I pretty much read all of my current partner’s books while she is making her way through Lone Werewolf. Which I am very grateful for!
Thank you. My kid will be returning home next Wednesday, and then it’s fingers crossed.
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I’ve worked on Chapter 2. It’s been one hellish storm of a week for this chapter.
- My characters almost had me writing the dialogue for a scene in the fourth book.
- My protagonist had me basically a god based on Hercules, who looks like the character from the Disney movie. So Alcyde is mentioned to describe my male lead even further. After that, I went through 24 hours of thinking the Disney character Hercules was sexy, calling him my fantasy boyfriend, and yesterday I almost wrote a lemon about him.
- I Got my couple to stop stalling the smut by Googling for a PDF version of a novella I don’t currently have with me (it’s at my previous location) (I’ll have a physical copy on Monday).
- Today: I discovered stuff about myself by reading a scene in the novella.
- Today: I decided my side project will be a slow-burn lemon/romance fanfic of the ACOTAR series.
Part 5 was so good yet mediocre at the same time!
I love it truthfully! I can not wait until I until I finish it and can do some editing!
Onto part 6 then I am done with chapter 3.
Oh my gosh! I am done with part 6 of chapter 3.
So, that means I am done with chapter 3.
I have to start part 1 of chapter 4 tomorrow because I am physically drained.
The total word count for chapter 3 is 17,160.
However, adding chapters 1 and 2 with chapter 3 far as the word count, it equals up to 52,435 in total.
I am still not done either. I need to finish chapter four the contemplate whether or not I should do chapter five.
If I don’t do chapter five and somehow finish chapter four on a good note, then I am done for good.
Now, I can rest because my neck is cramping. 
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Congrats!
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Ah yeah, that depends too. The perma pair sounds interesting. So, it’s basically pot luck in that aspect?
No problem, I hope all goes well.
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Thank you so much!
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Oh, boy the suspense… will I actually get to writing this weekend? 
I am keeping up with my reading, but between the gardening (the weather is beautiful, finally!) driving my kid there and back to the hospital and going to see Stars on Ice yesterday (I finally got to see Keegan Messing!)… no editing/writing.
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