Hey! What’s Going On? Update!
Posted on October 26, 2024 by Aywren
It’s been way too long since I’ve wrote a post here – my apologies! I wanted to at least write an update as to why, and where I’ve been lately! Hope you’ve been well!
Not blogging isn’t due to a lack of stuff to write about. In fact, it’s the opposite. There’s just been so much going on. I’ve been jotting down in my blogging notebook topics I want to eventually write about, so I hope that this might be the thing to nudge me in that direction.
Real Life Fun
Yep, I have a case of The Real Life.
The past few months have seen me take on a fairly large and significant project that’s in the spotlight at work. As most folks know, if you’re tired from work (and work = writing, like mine does), that means there’s less room for just-for-fun writing.
That’s been the case, but it’s not been the only thing.
Wayrift
Some know that I work on a webcomic project with Syn called Wayrift. Usually, I have a set schedule for when I work on Wayrift stuff so that it’s balanced with my other creative projects.
Lately, though, this hasn’t been the case.
I decided I wanted to put focus and time on moving Wayrift’s wiki content from where it used to be hosted on Fandom to the official Wayrift website. Essentially, I was recoding all the existing wiki content (which was a mess coding-wise) into a cleaner HTML format.
This was partly because it was just one of those projects I wanted to finish this year. And partly because Fandom hasn’t had the best name in wiki hosting communities as of late. In fact, when I went to log into the Wayrift wiki on their site, they started popping me up with warnings that my wiki could be scheduled for deletion.
I wasn’t having that, though, and did something about it. Namely, took control of my content and put it on my own website. This was quite a bit of work, but in scrawling through old info and content I’d not visited in a while, it worked up a block of inspiration for the Wayrift characters and project I hadn’t had in a while!
Syn and I had scripted out chapter 88, which includes introducing a number of new characters – some which I’m particularly fond of. So, I got the bright idea that I wanted to increase the pace of webcomic posts from one page a week to two.
Funny thing is, back in college, I was able to knock out three pages a week, no sweat. Now days, two pages a week is a real trial. I don’t know if it’s because I just don’t have the time, or if what I expect out of my webcomic art is that more than I used to.
Either way, in order to do this, I’ve had to buckle down and work on Wayrift during times outside of what I normally would have. Not only did I need to make one page more a week, but I also wanted to build up a somewhat solid buffer so that I could meet that goal with lower stress (eventually).
I’ve done pretty well with this, and have maintained a two-page-a-week pace for a few weeks now. But the buffer I’d hoped I’d build isn’t quite comfy just yet. I have a lot more time and work to put into this to get it where it needs to be.
Aside from that, I also have put in a good deal of time tweaking the code on existing Wayrift chapter pages. This is another long-term project that I’ve tried to chip away at over time. Basically, I’m adding new features to each chapter page such as – table of contents, a back-to-top button, lazy loading images, and just basic code clean up.
I’ve been poking at this a page at a time, but that does take away from creative time for other web projects. Happy to be doing this though, because once it’s done, it’s done. I just have to get it there.
Elftober
I typically do a yearly October event called “Elftober” for my Amon character in FFXIV. This year, I almost passed on it because of everything else going on. I didn’t know if I’d have the energy to maintain 31 screenshots over the month.
Turns out, not only did I do Elftober for Amon anyway, I also did it for my FFXIV main, Aywren, whom fantasiaed into an Elezen for Dawntrail. So, crazy me – I did double this year for Elftober. You’ve probably been seeing those posts on my socials, and I’m using several of them here in this post as well!
Mogtome Event
Speaking of FFXIV, the newest mogtome event has rolled into town.
Sometimes, there’s not a lot I want from the event. This time, I wanted two mounts, a ring, some cards and… yeah. And Amon got a mount, too.
Basically, I’ve been doing a lot of ocean fishing.
This is good, because both my main and Amon needed the nudge to get from 90 to 100 for their fishing level. But I decided to go beyond just fishing for tomes, and started to learn about the intuition fish and the bait and all the stuff that I didn’t know about, but sensed was happening every time I ocean fished.
Here’s a great resource that I overheard others talking about, and now use on every ship!
Bluesky
With everything going on with Twitter/X, Bluesky has really started to take off in the FFXIV community – and other communities, too. I’m most familiar with the FFXIV community, though.
I’ve run an account for Amon there for quite a while now, because I didn’t want to double up on my Mastodon accounts.
With the dissatisfaction of Twitter users who have made their way over to Bluesky lately, it’s been a huge influx of content, interaction, and followers. Amon went from under 700 followers to over 1K in the space of a week.
Well, I decided this was a good time to launch my Aywren Bluesky account. I was thinking about doing this anyhow, because Tumblr activity has been pretty much nothing for my Aywren account. I’m doing all this work on Wayrift, and hoping socials will spread the comics to new eyes… but Tumblr (aside from a good couple of dedicated friends there – you know who you are, thank you) is crickets for me.
I’m not building up a Bluesky just to send out Wayrift updates, I also want to connect with other FFXIV players, gamers in general, writers, and webcomic artists. Strangely, Amon’s account has always eclipsed my main account no matter what I try, but I do now have a little over 200 followers (thank you!) at Bluesky, and I continue to work on developing that account.
Posting Elftober prompts there has helped this. It’s keeping consistent content that’s letting me meet other FFXIV folks. While Wayrift is FFIV-based, there’s enough FFIV in FFXIV now days that I hope that can be a bridge to a few new readers somewhere down the line.
Novel Gauntlet Challenge
As if I don’t already have too much going on, I’ve signed up for the November Novel Gauntlet Challenge. One of the things I was inspired to revisit when in my Wayrift kick was the old story of Runne that I wrote over several NaNoWriMos, but never finished posting or writing.
It’s been over 10 years since I’ve posted new chapters to the story (though I have lots of them in Word files on my PC), and 7 years since I’ve written anything new.
When you go back and revisit an old project, sometimes you cringe… but sometimes you look back and realize the possibility and that hey… actually… there’s some good stuff here. I did a bit of both with Runne, but was mostly enthralled with a story that younger-me was building but had left behind.
SO.
I worked on updating the code on the Runne website a little bit. I’m trying to currently read through the old chapters since I’ve completely forgotten most of it. Getting old is a pain.
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to catch up before next Friday, but I did sign up to try to write about 25K for it this November. And with that, I also want to start updating the story there, again. There’s so much story I’ve been sitting on but have never posted.
I heard that NaNo has fallen out of favor for several reasons, so when I discovered the Goblin City Writers group, I did join their Discord and started to explore what that’s all about. It’s very impressive, and if you’re an indie writer, I highly suggest checking into it.
As for if I’ll be able to get any creative writing done next month, I just don’t know. But I do know there have been Novembers where I wait until the first day to even hop on that boat, and I still manage to hit my goal every time.
All this to say, I’ve been busy! This isn’t counting the little bits of gaming I’ve done around all of this coding, art, and social media. I do have a list of posts I want to share eventually. Just thought I should clear the air first and write this novel of a life update!
How’s it going for you this fine October?