Man-in-crowd-4

Alright. Time for a change of scenery. I updated my journal twice in 2017, good grief.

Truth is, I never left dA at all. It just probably looked like it. I know people aren't that fussed, but I would like the record of why I didn't write very much last year-and-a-bit to be visible for anyone who wishes. Partly, it's cathartic for me. It turns out there was more to it than 'dA doesn't interest me anymore', and I want that to be shown:


Autumn 2016 - February-ish 2017:    I decided old chapters from Perception needed re-writing, and so I needed to work out what they should be changed to. This was surprisingly difficult. I then had a go at actually rewriting them, which also took a long time. One of the things that caused a lot of what happened this last year or so was that I hated trying to work on multiple things at once, and so planning took out any writing that could have happened in tandem.

February to Spring:    After talking with my parents a bit about stress, I realised that my approach to writing was very unhealthy. I had been trying to do a bit every day, but between mounting degree work and more general everyday commitments this was becoming harder to do. There was nothing wrong with that, but I was taking it very badly because I felt it was a personal failure  every day it didn't happen. On their advice I completely nixed doing any writing at all, and I have to say it did me a lot of good.

Spring to June:    I wanted to ease myself back into writing - I wanted to get back into it naturally, rather than making myself do it again (which would have defeated the entire point). And so that's what I did. This being a new phenomenon for me, it was pretty slow going and for a lot of time even after I technically allowed myself to write again I didn't, simply because I didn't want to force myself. This, also, was a good idea, but it was a good idea that affected several months. Also, this was when I did manage to write two chapters of Winner Takes All. Given the nature of that series, I think I can safely say that some behind-the-scenes stuff needed adjusting for those chapters - this, of course, required some time working out what to change them to.

June to August or so:    You'll likely have seen the journal for this one - this was when I decided I didn't want to write Perception anymore and wanted to replace it with a different series. So I started planning one. As mentioned, I didn't want to plan and write at the same time, so I focused on planning. I had a bunch of ideas, and I started making a new story. However...

August or so to October:    I realised I was doing with my new series what I had been doing with Perception - I was including things that didn't really belong there, just because I was throwing them in. I knew that if I did so, it was going to go the way Perception did. To make sure it didn't, I dropped that story idea completely. So technically, all that time was 'wasted' with regard to producing a new story - or writing a chapter of an old one -, but it kind of had to happen that way. So I started considering ideas for a new one.
It was around here that for some reason, I decided that I wanted to produce a new plan and that I could save it up as a surprise in some way. This somehow lead to me deciding to not post anything beyond comments - not even a journal - to dA until I had the plan for the new series all sorted out. In retrospect, this turned out to not be a good idea, because I still don't have one and trying to maintain a 'radio silence of work' just made me forget partly what I was doing this for in the first place.

October to mid December:    Uni work returned with a vengeance. Seriously. A lot of it was a project of the kind we've never had before, which then threw all my lecture notes and general revision out of whack. That lead, for someone like me, to a lot of doubt and self-blame for not being on top of things, and a lot of time being eaten up (though not as bad as before. Might not sound like it, but I was much better this year than I was in previous equivalent situations with work. Yeah). I also had quite a thing this semester about worrying about the 'correct' way to use my spare time - should I read a book? Should I do some planning? Should I watch Netflix? Something else? This isn't an important question to most people, but for the kind of neurotic person I am this was actually a really big deal. It lead to me feeling like I was spending a lot of time 'badly' in some unspecified way, which has a pretty big effect on your willingness to get stuff done if you feel like you've lost before you started. Even so, some planning of my new original story did make it through. Part of this as well was working out how I plan stories. It turned out that I did it best by the way I had been doing it before anyway, but it took trying various stuff out to discover this.


TL;DR version: Planning stories, and working through personal stuff.



And now here we are. My current frame of mind: It doesn't matter as much what I do with personal/leisure time, so long as I'm not doing the same thing all the time. Getting behind a bit of work is understandable as well if that was because you were keeping up with other parts of work - part of it is being able to do a solid day's work and be satisfied with that. I'm going to ditch the radio silence as well, hence this journal. I thought it would be helpful, but partly I thought I'd be able to 'burst down' this story plan and get it done really quickly. That was proving a massively counter-productive idea. So with a bit of luck, I'm going to let myself swing in and out of planning this story vs. actual writing - basically, I'm going to do more of what I want to with my writing and less of what I feel I ought/must do. I do have a lot of ideas for my new story, and a really encouraging amount of progress has been made with it - but I also want to enjoy writing more. And part of that is in not holding a gun to my head over it. 

Heh. Quite a message. I am aware that a lot of this probably won't make sense if you're not me, but I just wanted to say that I have avoiding dA for a reason lately - but not a very good reason, which is why I'm letting it go and taking a more lax approach to writing. This will probably take a while and won't be gotten right on the first try, but hey, that's called being human. I look forward to seeing more people around and about.

I'm feeling a lot better about my writing at the moment, and indeed in general, and a massive thank you to everyone who waited patiently for me. This journal is primarily to say that I am officially cancelling my original fiction series, Perception. I um-ed and ah-ed over this, but I realised that I just don't like it as a series. Having spent roughly November to February rewriting large chunks of the plot (if you're wondering why I didn't submit anything within that time period, that's why), there were still things I really wasn't happy about with it as a series. This wasn't even small details, this was things in the nature of the setting and in solid, fundamental characters - ie. things that would require rewriting the story universe itself, let alone this episode of it. The other thing, and this is what really got me, is that I realised I was thinking of it as something I needed to get past in order to write stuff I was really looking forward to. 'In that case,' I thought, 'why not just write that?'

So the plan is; Perception will go back on the shelf. At some point in the future - distant, don't hold your breath for it -, I will come back after I'm done with the things I'm hyped about at the moment and will really get the pliers out to remove every last thing I don't like. And then write it again, much better. Either that, or I will allow myself to pillage all the concepts I like from it and put them in other stories, so that nothing of actual value is lost. I apologise to anyone who was waiting on the conclusion with baited breath, but I just found so many things I didn't like about it. I've learned a lot about the writing process from this, though - it hasn't just been a wasted experience, I've learned about how to (and not to) plan stories in an effective, fun way. Already I'm bandying about plot ideas in my head that I'm very pleased with, and I hope the next original story will be much more fun for both me and you guys.

And besides, that series name was bloody stupid.

No changes have occurred with Pokeumans stories, or with larger Pokeumans projects (people are asking about a potential return for Things Not To Do - well, maybe. I mean, if there's interest, right?), so no worries if you're just here for that. I think I'll upload the edited versions of the chapters I've redone for Perception, because I was rewriting a lot of them anyway to accommodate for the canon I had to change. Also, for those who wonder if not updating one of my stories in months means it's over; this is what me cancelling a story looks like.

Onward to much better stories! I shall let you know how progress is getting on as it happens.

It's simple, really. It was much too stressful.

I'm keeping this simple. I had taken, for some time now, a very unhelpful approach to my writing. I wasn't really enjoying it that much. I felt obliged to meet non-existent deadlines to maintain the interest of people I had projected my own impatience onto. I felt the need to be involved with every admin discussion in Pokeumans, to be reading as many things as possible, to re-create what I still feel were my glory days of having read the entire Pokeumans gallery and every new member having known my face. And I can't do that. It's changed. I'm at uni now, that makes me busy. But even just writing chapters got this - I felt the need to work on them as fast as possible even when people told me there was no rush, because if I didn't I feared people would lose all interest. I wasn't writing when I wanted to, I was writing as much as I could. And while my series themselves were what I wanted to be writing, the way I was writing them in terms of sitting down and typing was unhealthy. And, it has to be said, I was investing a lot of mental and actual effort on relationships with people that I barely knew on here. The idea was to build up that relationship with them and try and make more online friends, which I don't regret, but even so it was disproportionate in some cases. And, well, I have friends in real life too. I love you guys dearly and sincerely call many of you my friends, but I also want to get close to people who live in the same city as me as well.

Now I've got a lot better at these. This is me having actually made a lot of improvements over the last few months, and maybe dredging a little. But it still stands. So I'm taking a break from writing. If it's that stressful, I'm going to turn it off, go away a bit and then turn it on again in a more default setting (good analogy for it). I will still see posts. I will still leave comments. I will still talk to people. I am not quitting DA in any sense. And mark my words, I will start writing again at some point. It's my favourite hobby. But I need to straighten out my approach to it first, so I'm leaving it be for now. Once I've worked out how to read posts and write for fun, rather than for pressure, and as a hobby rather than something that I feel needs I will be back. But if nothing else, I have exams coming up for the next two weeks.

This also means I am taking a break from the Pokeumans Admin Area, until I figure out how to approach that well too. Again, I will be back.

I think this is what I write the majority of my journals about lately, but I like to keep people posted.

In a sentence, uni work has been trying to very, very hard to rob me of all my free time ever, mostly attributable to two solid weeks of assignments knocking my revision note schedule out the window.
In two sentences, my planned re-work of some of the plot elements for Perception is also taking a lot longer than I thought it would (see above), but I still want to do that before I write anything Pokeumans-y because I'm not good at parallel processing this stuff.

Yup. The good news, though, is that I'm in more of a lull period of assignments at the moment so fingers crossed for catchup, and I'm very close to finishing the stuff for Perception - just need to sort out one character, do a little extra world-building and make a handful of edits. Then, as promised a long, long time ago, I will be gradually submitting those chapters to Wordpress. During that time, Pokeumans is going to be my main writing focus again. Once I have time to give, I'll gladly give it.

Just to let you all know where I'm up to atm. We shall persevere!


Oh, and also: I haven't been Pokémon Sun/Moon yet (I'm thinking Sun, but I'm not quite sure), because I have a load of half-finished games at the moment already. This is the first Pokémon game literally since Gen IV that hasn't been spoilered for me before I started playing it, and I know next to nothing about it right now. I want to keep it that way. If anyone gives me a spoiler I will Bullet Punch them.
Also, my laptop now apparently automatically adds the accent into the word Pokémon. And auto-capitalises Pikachu. What a world we live in.

Ok, so new things are going on in my creative world (I like that phrase). Firstly, my new laptop finally has a drawing program - Paint Tool SAI, which I actually first heard about on here from you guys. As always I'll only ever be doodling on the sidelines, but since I enjoy it there's a fair chance of there being some new art from me at various points as well as writings.

Bigger now: I'm thinking of getting a Wordpress account. I'll use it for, well, uploading everything that isn't fanfic on another site - stuff like Perception and that short I posted earlier today. Since you guys can read all that stuff on here already - this is NOT me leaving DA, this is me posting my stuff to other places as well -, that won't make the biggest difference to you, but if anyone I know on here has a Wordpress account of their own I'd like to connect with you on there as well.

So while I'm uploading various one-shots and the nine-or-so chapters of Perception so far onto Wordpress, what am I going to be doing here? Answer: Pokeumans. And nothing else. That's right, I'm coming back to hang out with my old favourite series again. It's been far too long since I've updated Winner Takes All, and I'm just generally looking forward to coming back to these. So don't worry - all my old stories are about to get some loving. Enjoy.

Man-In-Crowd-4 out. Have a nice day.