Kassie N (dear-llama) - Writer's Page

Week 2 of Camp NaNoWrimo and I’m right on track! 😎 Just got past the halfway mark today and I’m done for the week.

Quite happy with how writing is going at the moment — it’s going particularly smoothly with Something Better. I’m still at the first chapter, although it keeps getting longer because the characters have a mind of their own. 😅 I even have a brand new character (who’s from South Korea) who simply injected herself into the story. I can’t complain, even though I didn’t plan for her at all, but her presence is working well so far. I haven’t decided if I should give her a bigger role in the whole story or if she will simply be a classmate to Emi.

Though the new character being Korean might have something to do with the fact that I’ve recently been watching this Korean legal drama called Juvenile Justice. It is so good. It subverts my expectations every time and there’s something to learn from every case. Every single case seems to teach the characters (and with them, the audience) a meaningful lesson. Nothing is as it seems on the surface. Episode 7, especially, made me feel so many things. I could go on for ages but I don’t want to post any spoilers, just that I highly recommend the series! 😍

But anyway, back to writing. I finished Chapter 1 of The Rapihi Chronicles 2 as well, and tried starting Chapter 2, but it’s not going the way I’d like it to. I haven’t touched it for a few days now, since I’ve been focusing more on Something Better, but I will have to get back to it sometime next week.

I’ve also been on a reading binge lately! 📖 Not sure why, but after weeks and weeks of not reading anything other than my usual Agatha Christie audiobooks, I’ve gone back to reading eBooks. I’ve finished 2 this week (From Potter’s Field by Patricia Cornwell and The Unheard by Nicci French, both of which I enjoyed) and am currently in the middle of another 2 (Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell and Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller). I’ve also started (very little of) Story by Robert McKee, a writing craft book. I’ve fallen behind on my resolution to read a craft book a month and was hoping to catch up this month. Although I’m currently knee-deep in my crime novels again…

Something else that happened this week was that my upstairs neighbour (I currently live in an apartment) decided to toss something out the window again. They’ve done that a couple times now, one of which caused a packet drink to land on my window ledge and brought tiny red ants into my room. This time, it was an empty bag of potato chips. I can’t describe how much I abhor inconsiderate people. I got so angry that I started thinking of methods to take revenge, and halfway through I came up with a plot for a psychological thriller short story that I might or might not write in the future. 😆 I think it would be fun to write, but it’s not something I want to work on at the moment, since I’m already juggling all these WIPs. But maybe one day.

I am kind of amused, though, that all this anger could end up inspiring me instead.

I also spent the week thinking about how I’d like to revamp this website (again) and maybe change up the way I blog. I thought about starting a daily habit of journaling — short little posts instead of long ones like these that feel like more of a chore to type up. 👀 But my current layout doesn’t allow me to post things quickly and easily; I have to get on my computer and change the layout for every post. So one of the things I want to change would be to make things easier for myself, make it easier for myself to post short little entries straight from my phone. Or maybe I should do the daily posts elsewhere that is easier to access, and leave the longer posts (like this one) here on the website. I have no idea. I’ll have to spend more time thinking this over.

This idea of journaling, though, reminded me of my younger days, when I would use LiveJournal as a blog and post an entry about my life every day. So I went to recover my username and looked up my LJ blogs again. How nostalgic! 😆 I found so many old projects that I was working on back then. I found an old collaboration with my then-best friend from 2009, and a lot of other old stories throughout the years up to 2014 when I stopped posting there.

I found this as well:

I sure did write a lot back in 2014… 🤔 And funnily enough, Something Better, Auld Lang Syne, and Somewhere Else are all here. 😂 Imagine — 8 years later, I’m still working on these same stories that were conceived back then. Wow. Unbelievable. I feel so old. 😅 Life has changed so much since then, but I’m still working on these same stories. Even if they’re now different from what they used to be. Life is interesting that way, isn’t it?