Whenever May rolls around I’m always reminded of Justin Timberlake’s pronunciation of ‘me’ in the song ‘it’s gonna be me’. It’s so over the top that even Blink182 should probably take notes. But it’s also the time of the year where change is in the air. The rain and dark clouds disappear and it’s time for sunny spring, right? Well, the weather so far has been dreadful. I’m writing this a few days ahead of May 2nd, so things can still change for the better, but the forecast says clouds and sub-16 c temperatures for at least another week. That’s a really bad forecast for my long awaited May break, but unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it. Things must go on, and one of those things is this blog. Let’s have a look ahead, shall we?
When 2023 started, I decided to write a post for five days out of every week. That went well for a while, and the pace was definitely good for my productivity. Unfortunately, I’m slowly running out of ideas. I have ideas left, but a lot of them take some research or take time consuming the media to then talk about. With the end of my internship in sight and some of my assignments at uni being due in the next few months, I don’t believe it’s wise to keep going at this speed. So for the next few months, the content on Monday and Tuesday might be a bit more sparse than before. But hopefully this means that the quality can go up. I think there’s still a lot of room for improvement and I can write much easier to read posts with more practice.
The Thursday anime weekly recaps are coming back when Bungo Stray Dogs comes back. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing them after that, since the final quarter of this year is going to be very busy for me. I’m hopefully starting a job for three days a week while also studying the other two days of the week. Those who’ve been keeping up with my blog for a while know that this is a lot for someone as autistic as I am (to put it bluntly). My thought process is that I can get the remainder of my university courses mostly done in the first semester next year. That way I’ll be done with most of it by February and I’ll only be left with some leftover courses/assignments for the second half of the year. By the time summer 2024 rolls around, I’ll hopefully have my degree and then I can either keep the job I’ll have or keep searching. Either way, It’ll be nice to finally get properly paid for work as opposed to the countless unpaid / low wage internships I’ve had to do over the past decade. If internships don’t turn you into a borderline communist I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I want to seize the means of production pretty damn bad by now.
Political leanings aside, let’s talk about stories. I do a lot of writing on this blog and I enjoy all of it, but my main love is still the weekly and monthly stories I post here. The Necromancer’s Daughter will hopefully continue at its current pace. As of writing this post, I’ve already finished chapter 5. I rewrote most of it, but it stayed similar in content, just moved some things around and switched up the pace of the story. As of posting this it should already be up, so go check it out here.
The Hesitant Hero is in an interesting spot right now. I’ve gotten to write some great chapters – in particular the one in Fitseren and the walk and talk with Lady Diana Vadier – but where I’m at now in my initial draft is nothing but boredom. I write these volumes over the span of a month for the NaNoWriMo challenge and it’s a great way to force myself to keep writing, but it also means that not everything I write is any good. The first volume was better as a draft than the second volume is. I have learned a lot from writing it though and I know which direction the story is headed. I’m just trying to figure out how to get there without boring my readers. That’ll be my challenge for the next couple of months.
And last but certainly not least; let’s talk about short stories. I did a bunch of them in the early days of this blog and then more or less stopped doing them. I’ve had ideas, I just haven’t taken the time to sit down and work them out. What I’ll do sometimes is just write a scene or two and leave it to sit there while I think of more coherent routes for that story to go. I initially wanted to finish four such stories this year, but I’m thinking two or three is a lot more reasonable. I’m doing one that’s kind of a character introduction for another story I’m writing. I just wanted to explore a character (That already made a brief appearance in my story Uncovering the tomb of Danahsereth) before she makes an appearance in a story that’s been on my mind for years now that’s been dubbed Zodiac Ascending for the time being. But I digress. I’m hoping to finish that story by July or August. Ideally I’ll write one more in the meantime, but we’ll see about that.
And there’s your May update. I hope you’re all having a wonderful time and I hope the weather gets better soon, I could use some joy, fun and seasons in the sun. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 