Writing Accountability, Day 33

A year-end update on my original novel concept

Hey friends, it's been awhile since I've been able to put in any work on this! But I've been doing some world building and altering a few things, and thought it might be nice to send you an updated summary of my original novel. It is tentatively titled "The Pilgrimage", but who knows, that might change as well.

Alays Webster is a weaver in a small town on the edge of the Barrens in a country called Codor. Life in her hometown is pretty sedate, and more or less ruled by the country's religious hierarchy and its tenets, observing festivals and attending service and what have you. It is expected that everyone will go on pilgrimage to the capital at least once in their lifetimes, to witness miracles and see the Sleeping King himself, where he lies in state while battling in the spirit realm against false gods and keeping them out of Codor. Alays, though, was always a sickly child, and still has occasional bad days now that she's grown. So she’s put off making the pilgrimage until her childhood best friend, Vezian, now a priest, comes and cajoles her into making the journey with him.

The Barrens are a dead wasteland that surround Codor on all sides; as far as anyone knows, no one can live there, and the area is considered to be forsaken by everyone, even the Sleeping King. On her pilgrimage, Alays learns that her proximity to the Barrens causes others to look down on her, and she encounters concepts that she had never considered before, everything from how criminals are treated to “witches” and “demons”, from whose magic the Sleeping King's priests promise protection.

Alays's ill health improves the closer she gets to the capital, and this is touted as a miracle from the Sleeping King himself. It turns out, however, that Alays is sensitive to magical energies, and her health is improving because she is traveling through healthier land that has more magic available for her to draw from. Magic is secretly but strictly regulated by the priesthood, and anyone who tries to use it outside of their purview is labeled a witch, and sentenced to a terrible fate: either death, or “alteration” into Misbegotten monsters. Alays is now in terrible danger through no fault of her own.

Vezian’s mentor, Father Marcellus, explains this to Alays, and arranges for her to escape to the Barrens via airship, piloted by a man named Lucas. In my original version of this story, Lucas is a shady fellow who almost certainly can not be trusted, and Vezian is exiled along with Alays. In the updated 2023 version of this story, I want Alays to go to the Barrens alone, taken there by Lucas, while Vezian is left behind without even the first clue what could have happened to his childhood best friend. In that case, Vezian has to hunt for Alays himself, and learn a great deal about the secrets the upper echelons of the priesthood have been hiding from him. Though Vezian doesn’t know it yet, Lucas will be instrumental in helping him find Alays once more.

This is, incidentally, a plot that I write over and over again, no matter how hard I might try to to get away from it: “Character A is separated from Character B and they must reunite,” except that once they do reunite, Vezian discovers that Alays is dying, and with Lucas's help must go on a dangerous journey across the Barrens and into the unknown in order to save her life.

What follows is a tale of adventure, exile, betrayal, and trust, that tests not only their faith, but everything Lucas, Vezian, and Alays thought they ever knew. There will be magic, and gods, new lands not seen in centuries, and old tales not heard in just as long.

(My worldbuilding for this is extensive, and highly distracting. Now if only I could get the story itself to be half as interesting.)

hit me with your class 1-a thanksgiving headcanons

who’s in charge of deserts? who’s been exiled from the kitchen by 8am? is anybody wearing hats that look like turkeys? who’s starting drama? did todoroki misunderstand the holiday and in what way? and/or anything else you can think of

do you ever feel like an awful writer who shouldn’t pursue the craft and then you take a breath and walk away, drink some water, take a shower, sing your heart out, and come back thinking ‘yeah this is scary but it’s mine’ ?

some more mhas

December writing log: week one

1- fic- serokami, childhood friends to lovers, genderqueer questioning kami

-had this idea on a whim but thought serokami fit it well. i wanna focus on kami’s internal journey and family/friend relationships for most of it. princess bride references snuck their way in

2- original & fic- a short, nonsensical poem and rough planning for a new fic (bc planning is part of writing even if it’s not what im focused on this month 👍)

-poetry def helps get my creative juices flowing and honestly i forgot how much i enjoy it. had a nice convo w a prof today abt poetry that inspired me to pick it back up

3- fic- working on my first December prompt response! Deku + chronic pain + deku/bakugou/todoroki relationship

-poly seems really tricky to write but it’s a fun challenge and def outside my typical wheelhouse. i’m really happy so far with the decision to include Uraraka in the scene (and to have her dialogue do a lot of the work implying the background info and framing things). love my girl ochako :)

4- original- a six page script (aka the final for my ecocinema class)

-today was pretty busy so i only had a little bit of time to mess with my draft but i made a change to the intro that I think will help make the setting clearer and also sets up for the main theme a little better

5- fic- prompt response again!

-im def over 500 words rn lol but it’s really fun to work on. decided to take the route of romantic situation but deku’s lowkey oblivious to the intent until it’s spelled out crystal clear. so far it’s very sweet. uraraka = #1 wingman

6- fic & original- prompt response & six-pg script

-polished the prompt response and double checked the wc before uploading (very exciting!) and submitted the final version of my script. i'm not 100% satisfied with it at a creative level but i think i'll get a good grade and my prof liked the concept, which is nice

7- fic- serokami again

-only wrote abt two lines today but that's still progress. imposter syndrome go brrr

I want to write at least a little bit every day in December so I’ve decided to keep a log and post it here to keep myself accountable! I’ll list whether it’s a fic or original, what it’s about, and a few of my thoughts about each project. posted weekly, I think :)

HEY YOU 🫵

Yeah you

Yeah you're very cool

Have some glitter ✨

(eat it, find out if it's edible)

thanks so much :)

I think that there's a feeling that, if you start writing something and don't finish it, it's a failure.

As someone who has far more unfinished pieces than finished pieces (sorry to anyone who reads my stuff on AO3), here are a few good things about doing this:

First, all writing is practice. Just like there are reasons to sketch and do practice drawings, writing even unfinished pieces builds your skills in drafting sentences, characterization, voice, tone, and even working in a variety of styles. If you start a story in a new style, even if you never finish it, you have some experience in that style now.

It can also tell you what you love or hate about something. Sometimes you don't finish something because you realize you don't like it. That knowledge is also valuable.

Second, you can always go back to unfinished work. The main novel that I'm querying right now is one where I wrote the first couple thousand words and then didn't touch it again for probably at least a year and a half. It's now a finished novel.

Sometimes you need space away from a story to make it work. Sometimes you need to improve your writing skills to be able to accomplish whatever you were trying to accomplish then. Sometimes you need a mental or physical health break or you just need more time in the day before you can finish something.

Third, writing is fun and you shouldn't hold yourself or your sense of success at writing to how many stories you finish. Did you enjoy yourself even for the period of time that you wrote whatever you wrote? Did you end up with something cool, interesting, fun, exciting, weird, or different? Great, that's all a victory.

personally, i definitely think that these phrases stand out a lot more to the writer than to the reader, but if you feel like those comparison phrases are adding up too much or getting a bit clunky, I’d recommend experimenting with metaphors rather than trying to look for replacements for “like” or “as”

to a reader, something like “her smile was like the rising sun” is super easy to read and can do a lot of work communicating theme and mood and details about the character (or narrator, depending) but switching it up to something more complex like “her smile was akin to the rising sun” can make a reader pause and go ‘huh that’s a little awkward’ unless that’s the style of language you’ve been writing in the whole time

that said, i think the simplest way to cut down on similes if you have too many (or don’t enjoy how they affect the flow of your sentences) is to use metaphors. they can help cut down that barrier between a character comparing two things (e.g. her smile & the rising sun) and instead appeal directly to a reader’s senses or their understanding of the world, so that the comparison just becomes part of the scene itself

for example, I was reading Sally Rooney’s Normal People during the unit on comparisons for a writing course I took and some that stood out to me were how she described “rain silver as loose change in the glare of traffic” and how that rain “[whispered] on slick roof tiles”

the first quote is a simile while the second is a metaphor, but both of them are making comparisons (the first comparing rain & loose change, leaning on a readers visual reference for shiny coins and implying that the narrator thinks these two things are alike) while the second one compares the sound of rain to the sound of whispering by making it part of the scene description directly. rather than say “it was as if the rain whispered on slick roof tiles” Rooney broke down the barrier that similes sometimes put up by directly appealing to the reader’s senses instead (sound here, instead of sight) and that’s effective bc a reader can very easily understand what it means for rain to whisper without the author having to put in a lot of work looking for a natural way to say “the rain seemed as if it was whispering on slick roof tiles”

and sometimes similes just work better than metaphors. it really depends but, as the author, you get to choose what works for you and what doesn’t

these kind of considerations can be hard to remember when you’re in the middle of writing, too, but the editing phase can be a great place to turn some similes into metaphors (or to decide that you like all your similes and to leave them be!)

i know a lot of my writing involves me writing exactly what I mean, and then scaling it back in the editing phase so that I’m showing what I mean instead of stating it all outright- and in that process a lot of similes end up incorporated in different ways (either by using metaphors instead or by dropping the comparison altogether and leaning more on body language and or theme to draw out the ideas and impressions i want a reader to get) so maybe that strategy could work for you too?

i got a little long-winded here but I hope this helps!

As a newer writer, I'm struggling to use similes in more ways other than by phrases like "like", "seeming as", "as if" or other versions of these three.

What are some of the other, if any, ways to compare something to something else, to avoid a book turning mundane?

Hard for me to get an exact count but I'm around 4,000!

Some of that includes words that I wrote and then scrapped but its still nice to see that im making steady writing progress so far :)

Reblog/comment how many words you've written since the new year! I'm at 2263.

Hate it when I’m writing a first draft and have to focus on Getting Words On The Page and not Making The Words Pretty And Perfect, I’m actually in hell

-someone who enjoys writing very much