nerdism

Strange feels and juggling projects.

Firstly, Happy Easter!

I decided to marathon X/1999 (an anime from CLAMP; it’s from over a decade ago) instead of being social. It was a pretty good decision.

In between glancing up at X/1999 and typing in MS Word, though, I reached my goal for my new manuscript. I outlined it…10 days ago? I wanted to hit 10K words before this weekend was over; I hit 10,451 words about twenty minutes ago.

I have a lot of things to say. One, I’m loving the authors on twitter. It’s actually really cool– writing has always been really solitary for me. Of course, you can interact with readers, but the process of writing has really just been me on my own. So, if I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to write, then that was the end of the game for the day.

I just discovered all of these fun hashtags like #1k1hr, which is for people trying to write one thousand words in an hour. Really awesome to have people to struggle with, haha.

But, as I write my second MS, I’m actually trying to deal with how I feel about it in relation to my first. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m tired of revising my first, but my second feels so much stronger. I feel like it suffers from none of the problems my first has/had– pacing and tension, primarily. And maybe that’s natural: I’ve gone through a lot of critiques from folks and I’ve learned a lot over the past few months. I feel myself increasingly wanting to shelve the first in favor of my second. 

I remembered reading on the QueryTracker forums that someone had recommended only pitching one MS at a time. And I can see why they’d say that– Lord forbid you get multiple R&Rs on the MSes! It’s sad, because the first MS is quite special to me, but I don’t feel as confident about it as I once did. To be fair, I’m still going through critiques with writing partners and, after I did another round of edits on the first MS this morning, I remembered what I love about it.

This is a long way to say I’m still trying to figure out how to love both MSes. I think I need to remember that they’re really different– different pacing, different characters. That doesn’t mean the second is better per se (though it might be). They’re just…different.

Anyway, realizing I have a lot of respect for folks working on multiple projects. I have some short stories I’m planning to finish (eventually…), so I thought it’d be easy to juggle MSes. Definitely not.

Would love any thoughts! And please bear with me as I try to get this blog together.

Salut.

Advertisement

Blog Topics.

Here is some introductory info about me and what I will write about.

I’m a mid-20s Black gay lawyer.

I care about pop culture– novels(from fads to classics), TV (trashy and otherwise), and movies (to some extent).

I care about LGBTQ issues, especially those unrelated to marriage equality (ie. how American evangelists have contributed to offshore homophobia).

I care about being  Black/part of the African-diaspora and all that that means.

And I care about law/policy.

I’m also a big nerd. I’m addicted to the internet– this is my fourth blog? I started blogging in high school and am finally coming back around.  I have been into anime/manga for over ten years. I speak Japanese and Chinese (both to different degrees of proficiency), so there may be some of that here. (Yossha!)

I’m based in Boston. I find Boston to be a strange place, especially to be a Black gay man. I’ve seen a lot over the past six+ years I’ve been in Boston. Some of it has been unfortunate. There’s a lack of organization here and a strange…something about being here in comparison to other American cities. (NYC, DC, Chicago, etc) So, some of what I post may be Boston-specific.

I’m also writing larger projects and that is bringing a lot of joy (and pain) to my life. I have one manuscript and am 5K words into another. This will likely form a substantial part of what I blog about.

Those are the hot-button issues. Anything else is extra.

Cheers. 🙂