Pixie's Chronicle: Story Stress

Yeesh, and I thought last week was chaotic. This has been another one of those weeks where it just feels like there’s one thing after another. However, I was able to face it much better this week since I’ve been able to sleep better now thanks to my new earplugs. I can still feel my brain trying to make me have a depression episode, but for the most part, I’ve been able to fight it off despite everything.

Unfortunately, I have had a lot of drama to deal with this week, which I can’t really go into too much as it’s incredibly personal. However, that was one of the main reasons that I couldn’t get the next Madness Within chapter out by the weekend like I planned. Once again, it was released on Wednesday. But that was also partly down to the fact that this chapter took longer to write than normal as I had to re-organise it a few times. I’m glad that I still managed to get it out within a week of the previous chapter though. If you haven’t already checked it out, you can read the latest chapter by clicking here. 

That chapter certainly got some interesting responses which caused me a bit of stress. Whereas most people seemed to understand what was going on in the chapter, there were a small amount of people who were completely lost. One person thought I had posted the wrong chapter to the wrong story (though I have to wonder if they posted this review before reading the whole chapter through), another accused me of not sticking to what really happened that night (which isn't the case), while others were just plain confused. 

While this chapter was intended to confuse people at first, I’m pretty sure I had made it pretty clear by the end of the chapter that it was a flashback dream. But those comments made me doubt this fact, and I began to worry that this chapter was badly written on my part. But then I thought about how the vast majority of my readers did seem to understand what was going on, so does that mean it wasn’t badly written and that maybe these people just didn’t read it properly? 

I have no idea.

Maybe these people are just easily confused, and if that’s the case, I have no idea how they made it this far into the story, because Madness Within is a story that is designed to mess with your head. It’s one of those stories that makes you think, and you constantly have to try and piece together what’s going on. I thought most people understood this, so I don’t understand why some people are only just now getting mad at me over being confused over what’s going on. 

If they just didn’t understand that it was a flashback, then I’m sorry, but I’ve already explained multiple times that I blur things on purpose, to a point where if you’ve made it this far into the story, surely it’s obvious when a flashback or hallucination/nightmare is occurring at this point. I don’t like to treat my readers like they’re stupid and constantly have to spell everything out in black and white. I don’t want to put *flashback* above a scene that’s supposed to be one. I blur things on purpose because it’s supposed to represent what mental illness and trauma is actually like. Your brain doesn’t politely tell you that you’re having a flashback, so this story isn’t going to either. I want you guys to experience things as the characters do, and feel their confusion and fear with them. 

Not only that, but I’m pretty sure one of the main rules of writing is show, don’t tell. Like I said, I like to have faith in my readers that they can figure things out without me having to constantly spell it out for them. I like to leave things up to your interpretation and imagination. 

Maybe I could have explained things better, I don’t know. But it does seem like most of my readers did enjoy the chapter and managed to figure out what was going on. So as a result, I really don’t know what to make of how I did with this chapter. I’m confused as to whether I did a good or bad job. Only one person clearly explained to me what had them confused and suggested a way I could have improved that area of the chapter, so fair enough, and thank you to them. But I’m hoping the next chapter will clear things up for them. As to why the other select few were confused, I have no idea. Please guys, if you have an issue with a particular chapter, please explain to me what it is. That's the only way I can improve things and learn. 

So yeah, I’ve been stressing over that for a little bit these past few days. 

My messy notes from this week

Overall, despite being stressed, I have been feeling really productive and inspired when it comes to my stories at the moment. As some of you may already know, I do have some other fanfictions planned for the future, and there’s one in particular that I’ve been feeling really inspired over, and that’s A Cursed Blessing. This is an idea that I've had in the works for a while now. I always love writing medieval fantasy AUs, so it was only natural that I would come up with an idea for Miraculous Ladybug set in one of those types of universes. I pretty much have the main outline of the plot of that story now, I just need to work out the details. I mainly became inspired due to listening to Amethystium, which is music I highly recommend if you're looking for fantasy inspiration. So hopefully this story will be out at some point later in the year. 

Speaking of inspiration, I've been quite high in demand lately. My fellow writer friends TLOS21 and ChibiRinni have been planning out their first Miraculous Ladybug fanfictions, and have been coming to me for help over it. I'm always super flattered when people ask me for writing advice, and I'm always more than eager to help. The ideas that these two have for their fanfictions are amazing, and I highly recommend you guys keep an eye out for their stories being published in the future, especially if you love love-square fics.

However, there’s one particular story and area of inspiration that’s causing me a lot of problems at the moment. You guessed it: Immortal Bond. I swear, it’s like this story is cursed or something, which is ironic since the story is about demons and stuff. I got myself into a bit of a state earlier this week regarding this story, because I just keep looking at my notes and freaking out because something still doesn’t quite feel right about the story. It still doesn’t quite feel alive yet. I’m getting worried that I definitely have tried to over-complicate everything, so I think I need to go back over my notes and see what I can tidy up. However, I’m hoping that a lot of the problems can be fixed when I start writing as my ideas tend to flow more then. I’ll see what happens. I am working on it guys, I promise. It’s one stubborn story, but I’m slowly getting there. I’m still aiming to have it published by February at the latest. 

I'm also still undecided as what exactly I should do with the old version of the story. Some people have suggested just deleting the chapters and uploading them onto the same story again. However, that means if someone has already reviewed, they won't be able to review again, so I really don't want to use that option. I was leaning more towards keeping the original version, especially after some much needed and appreciated advice off LycoRogue. However, there's always that high risk that FanFiction won't let me have two stories with the same name. I don't want to put 'new version' or 'old version' in brackets next to the title, because to me, that looks really scruffy, and it will drive me nuts. So I'm starting to panic a bit over what I'm going to do. I guess I'll just see what happens and how I feel closer to the time of publishing the new version. 

In the meantime though, it's Madness Within that's getting the most attention at the moment. We're half way through the story now, and the second half is the most crucial stuff that I need to get right. I know how the story will end, but I'm still undecided as to whether to write an epilogue. I guess I'll see how I feel the closer I get to the end. Things are going to really pick up and heat up now, and I'm super excited to write it all. These are the chapters that I've been dying to write since the very beginning, especially one that I know is going to have you all squealing in delight at this point. A lot of you have speculated and asked the question, but I've never answered it. But it's finally going to be happening very soon. Can you guess what it is?

Chat Vert at the moment is more my casual story that I have to think about less as the storyline is pretty simple. It's a nice thing to go to when I want to write something more light-hearted. Because the story is more short and simple, updates for that story kinda take a back seat, however, I do aim to update that story at least every two weeks or so. And speaking of updates, the next chapter will hopefully be released some point next week. I had been hoping to do it today, but I haven't been feeling the best today. I will be posting it on AO3 at some point as well, I just want to get more chapters out on FanFiction first. I'm hoping to take a few days soon where I can try and write as many chapters of this story as possible, just to try and make sure this isn't one of those short fanfictions that takes forever to be completed. But at the moment, it looks like that story will have between ten and twenty chapters.

Chapter five of Destiny's Dance has now been cleaned up and posted onto FanFiction. It has also been uploaded onto AO3, which you can read by clicking here. The same goes for chapter nine of Madness Within, and you can now access it on AO3 by clicking here. I also uploaded Ladybug's Lullaby onto AO3, and you can read that by clicking here. It seems that my stories on there are following the same trend of popularity as they are on FanFiction, though my readers on FanFiction seem to be more responsive and more willing to review. Though I imagine that it's because more people use FanFiction than AO3.

If you're interested, I also posted a new poem up on my FictionPress account. It's called Ticking Time Bomb, and you can read it by clicking here. Though viewer discretion is advised when reading that one. It is about a dark topic and includes some strong language.

Apart from stressing over my stories and real life drama, I haven’t really been up to that much else this week. I’ve mostly been locked in my room when I haven’t had to go outside or attend meetings and commitments. I’m still addicted to playing Sims 4 and Animal Crossing: New Leaf so that’s been taking up a lot of my quiet time. My favourite game of all time, Stardew Valley, keeps calling me back, however, I’m still not quite over my disappointment over the new multiplayer version. My boyfriend and I were so excited to play the game together, however, since I’m an annoying perfectionist, I kept having heart attacks over the way my boyfriend organised things, and I always found that I was left with nothing to do in the game. 

I had another existential crisis this week, but luckily this week’s wasn’t nearly as bad as the one I had last week. Is it possible to have a mid-life crisis when you’re only twenty-one? I just feel like I need some sort of sign to point me in the right direction, however, I very much doubt I’m going to get one of those. I keep thinking about going back to university because I’m just so unhappy at the moment, but will that really solve anything other than further delaying me choosing what to do with my life? It’ll just get me into more debt, and I don’t really feel like going back to study history again. At this point, I’m sick of writing essays and just want to get out there into the world, but I just don’t know where I want to go. 

As a kid, I was always so sure about what I wanted to do. First, I wanted to be a hairdresser, but then I became obsessed with the weather, especially tornadoes and hurricanes, and I was then desperate to become a meteorologist and maybe even travel to America to become a storm chaser. Unfortunately I never had the maths skills. Then I fell in love with performing and wanted to become an actress, and thought about going to university to study media. But then, my social anxiety started, meaning that I couldn't perform anymore so I chose to study history, another subject I loved and was good at, while at sixth form instead of performing arts. 

Of course, then it became time to decide what I wanted to do at university. I changed my mind about doing media and decided to study history instead, thinking that it would be more interesting. However, I really wish that I could go back in time and shake myself now, because looking back, I really think that I should have done an English Literature and Creative Writing degree instead. Ugh, but I guess there’s no going back now. But when studying history, I had always envisioned myself as a museum curator or something, but now, I have no idea. I’m stuck in this weird limbo at the moment. 

Of course I want to be a novelist and publish my own original work one day, but I want to do something that keeps me happy in the meantime. Plus, there's no guarantee that I'll ever be able to get my work published, or that it will be successful. I need a back-up plan. And that's what I'm trying to figure out at the moment. But as of right now, I have no little to no ideas.  

My mind is a mess at the moment essentially. But the other day, I was listening to some soothing music to try and calm myself down and maybe help inspire me with my stories, when the idea of trying out meditation came into my head. I’ve only been able to meditate successfully once in my entire life, and that sure was a weird experience. Meditation is nice, but weird. But it sure did calm me down and make me feel better about myself. So I’ve been thinking about maybe trying it again.

Going out for walks has been helping me slightly, but not enough. Not to mention, I once again nearly got run over again a few days ago, and this time, it most definitely wasn’t my fault. The moron didn’t use his indicator (blinker? I don’t know what it’s called in America), so how was I supposed to know he wanted to use the road I was crossing? He just turned the corner and kept driving, and I managed to jump back just in time. If I hadn’t, he would have hit me straight on. And he didn’t even seem to care. I have no idea how some people can go through life not caring about other people. I would have slammed on my breaks and been full of apologies, or better yet, used my indicator! 

I also got a really weird phone call the other day. Since a private number kept calling me (annoyingly at times when I couldn’t answer my phone), I assumed it was my therapist since they have to use private numbers for obvious reasons. However, when I finally managed to answer, it was this random guy, and I could barely understand a word that he was saying. I’m scared of phone calls enough as it is, even more so when it’s a stranger, and for some reason, I’m hard of hearing when trying to listen and understand someone over the phone, so that makes things even more awkward. I tried to find a quiet place where I can sit and try and understand this guy better, when halfway through him saying something, the call just randomly ends. 

So yeah, I have no idea what that was all about, but he hasn’t tried to call me back since. I’m a little bit suspicious over the fact that it was a private number, but I guess I’ll never know what he wanted now. I really hate phone calls. I’m socially inept at the best of times, even more so when someone surprise calls me out of the blue. In my opinion, if it’s something that can be done or said by email, then use email. That way things don’t get awkward because I won’t have to ask the person to repeat themselves a million times. I don’t know whether it’s just me that has these problems. My hearing is usually fine, but for some reason when listening to someone on the phone, my ears decide not to work. 

I finally started my Taurus Pixie Twitter account this week. You can go ahead and follow me if you want to, and visit my page by clicking here, and there will also be a link available on the right side of my blog homepage on the web version, so you can always access it. I thought creating an account will help me interact with you guys more, and will be especially good for people who don't have time to read my blog. I already have my first followers which is exciting! It's always cool to see the wide variety of people who read my work.

My Tumblr is still slightly abandoned at the moment, and frustratingly, there's still no sign of the second episode being released in English. It's really starting to look like that we might not get it until spring which is annoying as hell. If this is the case, then I'm just going to have to deal with spoilers, because I'm not neglecting my Tumblr for that long. I really miss browsing my feed, and I'm hoping that if enough time passes, I'll be less likely to see any episode ruining spoilers. I hope.

Anyway, I think I've gone on long enough at this point. I hope that you guys all have a lovely week and I'll see you all again in next week's post. Don't forget to look out for my 'In Defence of Marinette' post which should hopefully be coming out on Monday. See you all again soon.

Pixie out.