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

I meant to update in the middle of the month but so many things have been happening that I kept postponing the update until… well, now. 😅 It’s the end of the month, and also Lunar New Year’s Eve — so this is a great time to do a quick round-up of what’s been happening so far in 2022!

• • Auld Lang Syne update: Chapter 15 up!
    
    
    I finished writing Chapter 15 in the first two weeks of the month and even made a little quote video for it. 😆 It was fun — I might start doing these videos more often.
    
    
    
    
    
    Read the chapter on FictionPress and Wattpad, and watch the video on Instagram Reels and TikTok!

• • Been working on the rewrite of Something Better (the link still leads to the old draft) and I was stuck on Chapter 13 for the longest time. I did manage to get a new idea last week for how the final scene should progress, though, and need to tweak it a little more before I’m done with the chapter.

• • Started reading Writing Down the Bones (Natalie Goldberg) as part of my 2022 reading goal to read a writing craft book every month. I haven’t finished it yet, but I am more than half way through and will continue later today. 🤓 It’s an easy read and I’ve picked up some ideas from it, which leads me to…

• • Started the habit of doing writing practice in the mornings (also called ‘morning pages’).
    I’ve dug up my old planner from 2020, which I absolutely love. This is how it looks:
    
    
    Goethe’s Der Erlkönig is one of my favourite poems of all time, and the front cover showcases Schubert’s musical adaptation of the poem. Since I started working from home at the beginning of 2020 and no longer needed the planner (I moved to using a digital one instead), I had the idea last year to handwrite little blurbs in the planner as part of my project to handwrite a story, but that fell through. Now I’ve decided to start using it again, this time as a notebook for my morning pages. 😄 I still don’t manage to write every morning, but I’m trying!

• • Unearthed some quotes from my morning pages in 2021 that I then turned into a post: 

• • Rewrote the first scene of an old story I started years ago just for fun. One of the main characters in this story is a friend of Dylan (the Love Interest) from Fades In The Summer (read on FictionPress | Wattpad | Inkitt). When I wrote Fades, I had the vague idea of making it a series of 4 books. This story is one of them, featuring Caleb and Irish. ☺️
    Here’s a snippet:
    
    
    I might or might not continue with it — we’ll see. It’s almost pure fluff and it turns out that I already have 36k words written for it, so it’s fun to read but I feel like there are so many things I’d have to change if I went back to it, which makes it a bad idea when I already have 2 stories I’m working on right now.

• Got myself a pinched nerve about 3 weeks ago and it caused a constant pain in my neck and shoulders, which was really impeding my ability to write (or to sit at the computer for more than 10 minutes at a time…). But after 2 weeks of suffering and lots of pain relief patches, the pain seems to have subsided somewhat, even if it returns whenever I sit at the computer for too long. I did end up rearranging my desk at home to give myself more room to work and type. I also broke out my a keyboard I’d been stowing away (because I didn’t like the way it felt) to help with my posture when typing. It eventually grew on me and I love the lighting effect. 🙈
  
  
• Some personal news: I’ve been taken off my antidepressants! 😎 It’s been 5 years (or rather, 4+ years) since I was diagnosed with depression, and I’ve been working on recovery this whole time through medication and therapy sessions. Last year, I ended therapy, and this month, my doctor and I discussed it and decided that I was ready to go off the meds completely. 🥳 We’ve been tapering off the meds since last year, which hopefully makes this process easier, but we’ll see. I’ve already had a bad episode two weekends ago, so it’s still in the early days, but things are going pretty well so far. Fingers crossed that the side effects won’t hit too hard!🤞




• And some work-related news: It turns out the boss I was expecting has turned down the job. 😂 Which means I am still stuck alone in the department holding up the fort. But I also had a long discussion with the director last week, which… went better than expected. Hopefully he delivers on what he’s promised, even if I’m still feeling cautious because I’ve been burnt before. Oh well — there’s been some upheaval in the company lately with more than several people leaving, so I’m hoping they realise it’s important to show some appreciation for those of us who have been working underpaid for so long. 👀




It’s only been a month, and it feels like things are brewing. 🙊 Just gotta wait and see how it all goes, I suppose! I’m hoping everything works out, but I guess even if they don’t, there will be new opportunities coming up. I also have an idea for a new story that is more Fantasy than the usual Romance/Drama I write, which excites me a little, even if I have no idea how the story’s going to go. I only have a few vague ideas right now; other than a couple of notes I jotted down quickly, I haven’t done much else for it yet. As usual — so many things I want to do, so little time to do them. 🥲

Not to mention: Pokémon Legends Arceus just came out, and I am having a blast playing it.If only I could have more free time. 😅 Anyway, a Happy Lunar New Year to everyone who celebrates and I am going to try to update a little more frequently next month. 🤭