Kind of a random post, but I have been doing a practice called Morning Pages more-or-less every morning since 17 October. It's been an interesting experience, so I thought I would write up some of my experiences and findings so far having done this for about six months.

I first heard about Morning Pages on the getyourwordsout Discord server -- someone mentioned The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and wanted people's opinions on it as a writing advice book. A lot of people either didn't like it or said they gave up once it started getting a bit too religious/Christian/spiritual, but multiple people said they liked the Morning Pages technique and that was their main takeaway from the book. I was intrigued at this universal approval for Morning Pages, so I looked up more information online.

( More info on Morning Pages )
( Other miscellaneous observations )

Conclusion

So yeah, basically, I quite like doing Morning Pages, although they can be hard to fit in my schedule sometimes, and I'm honestly still not sure if they are overall worth it/helpful. They're not a cure-all -- for example, there are still hard/intimidating tasks I get avoidant about and even with Morning Pages and my awareness of my avoidant attitude toward those tasks, I am not sure I have been able to get any closer to tackling them.

Even though Morning Pages ARE time-consuming, I would ordinarily take some time in the morning anyway to make a to-do list for the day, and the way I do Morning Pages is basically to do that but in a more extra way, and sometimes they also come in handy to just vent out some feelings or frustrations or try to figure out where my stress is coming from. In that sense, I think they are kind of similar to a sort of mandatory two-hour meditation exercise at the beginning of the day. It's not always clear that that meditation time would be better spent doing something else, but it does help to focus me, and 90% of the time, my meditation time is spent on something productivity-focused (just a reflection of the kind of person I am -- I don't think Morning Pages has to be like this for someone else).

And already that mandatory reflection has helped me understand things about work/productivity, so I think those insights have been one good thing to come out of these Morning Pages at least (even if the insights might have been obvious to other people!).

This is just some behind-the-scenes notes on the process of writing my fic, Mission to the Dominion. This post contains spoilers for the ending quite early in the post, so I recommend not reading it unless you've finished reading the whole fic itself. (n=2769)

( Commentary on Mission to the Dominion )

And here's the fannish and personal updates post. I think I'm also going to use this as my last Snowflake Challenge post this year too.

For February/March/April, I've been taking it pretty easy in terms of fanworks, focusing more of my time on nonfiction writing and trying to prioritize pushing out overdue Dreamwidth posts. Most of my efforts the past couple of months have gone into ( running events and modding stuff )
( Current creative projects )
( Reading )



Challenge #11: In your own space, create a fanwork.

I'm going to count this as checked off. I've made some art for Quodo Mini-fest and also for phoenixdown_ex, I wrote a Quodo fic, I made a Quodo vid, and I've also been making graphics for the various events I'm running, so yeah, I'm tired. XD

( Vid and graphics under the cut )

Challenge #12: Tell Us about a Personal Win.

My personal win I'd like to talk about is that I have already been doing really well on the goals I made this year (friendslocked).

( More on this )


Challenge #13: Make a rec list of fanworks!

I'm going to skip this one. I AM intending to make a Quodo or DS9 rec list once I'm caught up on the tag, but I'm still very behind and I don't think I'll catch up anytime soon to want this challenge hanging over me.


Challenge #14: Try something new.

Done. As I mentioned above, some things I've tried out for the first time this year include:

- Making a vid.
- Making a Carrd website.
- Writing an HTML-scraping script (it's the first time I've done this!). Also, trying out a lot of Excel and/or Google Sheets functions I've never used before like XLOOKUP, FILTER, and IMPORTRANGE.

Hell yeah.


Challenge #15: Fandom Snowflake Challenge's 2023 Fandom Wrapped!

I'm skipping this one because I've basically already done this / already do this each year independently. Friendslocked: 2023 Fandom Retrospective and 2023 Writing/Fanworks Roundup.

A behind-the-scenes / commentary thing for my Quodo comic (n=5366).

( Conceptualization and prep work )
( Drawing the comic )
( Notes and various easter eggs )

Challenge #9 - In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year.

I mean... It's got to be writing a complete(!) novel-length(!) Quodo fic.

It's true that I have definitely gotten more confident in my writing each year since joining getyourwordsout (which is especially true when it comes to Quodo, which for some reason has consistently been easier for me to come up with longer plots for and draft than any other fandom/pairing I've gotten into ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). But... at the same time, it is still a bit difficult for me to believe I pulled this off. First, while my writing skills HAVE gotten stronger since 2019 when I first joined GYWO, it must be said that I joined GYWO because I specifically wanted help finishing off two multichapter WIPs... and noticeably, NEITHER of those fics are finished yet, and both of them are STILL shorter than that Quodo fic (they're at ~27k and ~20k).

So basically, I am very aware that writing multichapter fics (especially with a plot) is hard. So I am really surprised and proud of myself for pulling off a finished fic WAY longer than anything I've ever done -- and it is a fic I like a lot too!

(Of course, now that I'm aware I have it in me to write novel-length Quodo fic, I find that I'm eager to write more this year. I have one Quodo idea that could easily be novella-length (20-30k words maybe) and another that will definitely be novel-length if I finish it (it's currently ~24k words and maybe 1/3 done).)

Challenge #10 - In your own space, create a fanwork.

So I decided to make some icons, of Bravely Default (a fandom I was hoping to get some icons for in fandomtrees but didn't, so need to go make them myself) and also icons from my own art. Oh, also I finished up an old Trials of Mana icon I started.

( Cut for images )

Feel free to take any of them if they are relevant to your interests! Also, I've finally archived these and a whole bunch of older icons I made for requests at my icon journal:
- 48 drawn art icons (video games, animanga, my fanart)
- 46 live action icons (TV and film, mostly Star Trek)

Challenge #11 - In your own space, Talk about your favorite trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

Okay I swear before I even saw hamsterwoman's entry, I was also going to talk about Five-Man Bands.

( Five-Man Bands )

Continuing to experiment with putting my Quodo meta here instead of on Tumblr. This is a "behind the scenes" piece for my fic Every 16 Hours. As always, I talk too much. (n = 6516 words)

( Commentary on Every 16 Hours )