Well, friends, it’s that time of year again: the month in which I attempt to write 50,000 words of a thing. I wanted to prep enough blog posts here to post throughout November while I take a hiatus off of most social media, but I spent most of October completing a draft of another book. So that said, I won’t have any new content here until December.
But don’t fret! I have plans, outlines, and/or partial drafts for several posts, which include the following:
- Peridot, “defective” Crystal Gems, and Homeworld’s -isms
- Personal sin, systemic sin, and Ragyo’s Westernism
- Scream Queens & Kill la Kill
- Scream Queens’ Denise & the strong/nurturing black woman trope (but I want to read Fierce Angels first to better inform my analysis). I saw the author on a panel at a book fest last month and she said how somewhere in the process of writing this book, she was asking people about/coming across this trend of a lot of black women being security guards and how that ties into this notion of black women having to be/do everything. I immediately thought that Denise Hemphill in Scream Queens might be an embodiment/exaggeration of that idea, just as everything else in Scream Queens is an exaggeration. So I want to read this book to get a better sense of this.
- Something about The Facts of Life
- Perhaps something about RWBY
- Perhaps something about Akame ga Kill
- Perhaps something about the recent Hearthwarming episode of Pony
So, there’s a lot to look forward to!
Now, ever since I graduated from college and started working full-time, I’ve never finished NaNo. Actually, I’ve only won twice in all of the years that I’ve done it and both of those times were during college. One year, I actually did all of my November homework in October so I would have as much time as possible to write (it helped that most of my homework was reading books and writing papers that my profs had already specked out in the syllabi).
But I can’t work ahead like that anymore. Work is work and I’ve also got church commitments this year. I’m on two committees and there’s an association meeting I have to go to. That’s one of many reasons why I’m cutting out a lot of social media for the months (and TV too). However, it also feels great to step away for a set time, which is why I make similar cuts during Lent.
At the end of the day, you make time for the things that are important to you. I’ve been feeling more strongly about this lately, mostly with church and the excuses I hear people make about not having time for it or any missions or growth activities, but also in general. For me, writing and church life/work are not merely extra curricular activities. Though my commitments to both will sometimes conflict like they will this month, I do take them seriously, so they get first dibs on my non-working time and cutting out watching my shows or playing on social media helps with that focus.
And that about does it! See y’all in December!