i have finally opened up my dissertation document (and my non-fic book scrivener file) and must return to the Land of Academia

i know i said in my last post (on jan. 2nd—FOUR days ago) that i was going to go back to work, but then i accidentally wrote another 15,233 words of fanfiction, so. (i mean it, this time.) back to my other passion project!!!!

written january 6, 2024 @ 10:35pm

this post contains the following:

1. chapter update! | snow globe

2. milestone! | 100k words written since august 1, 2023

3. back to the phd grind (for real this time) + goals

before i delve into the “kris is actually working on her doctoral dissertation/master’s thesis paper for her second master’s degree/prep for dissertation proposal defense” topics, here are a final few updates to wrap up the winter break (i.e., fandom extravaganza):

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chapter update! | snow globe

to absolutely no one’s surprise, this two-shot three-shot story is now a multi-chaptered fic with four parts.

On July 1st, the lonely house at the top of the mountain was finally sold.

— In which Jack(son) Overland tries his best to befriend his neighbor, one woodworking project at a time. { neighbors-to-lovers!fic, modern-mountain-living!au }

Prompt from @aicosu: Three-word sentences: "Just say it."

ao3 ❆

part i: bushwhacking grandma (13,282 words | aug. 4, 2023)

part ii: barnyard peasant (11,550 words | dec. 20, 2023)

part iii: Scandinavian woodworking techniques (13,163 words | jan. 6, 2024)

part iv: [coming… later!]

thank you! for all of your beautiful comments, replies, reactions on both of the new chapters! 😭🙏

an observation. i’ve never wrote a fic in which the characters are experiencing time more or less the same way i am as the author (i.e., part i is set and written in july/august and published in august; part ii is written during fall and early winter, then published in december; part iii is written during christmastime and then published right after the new year… who knows what will happen with part iv 👀).

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milestone! | 100k+ words

click the image to visit the official word counter!

on january 5, 2023, i hit 100k+ words written since august 1, 2023! (5ish months)

• (80.13%) fandom: 80,264 words

• (16.42%) dissertation study: 16,448 words (does not include emails, grant applications, grading student papers/peer review/peer feedback, slide decks, or data coding and data analysis. 😂🫠)

• (3.45%) non-fiction/dissertation book: 3,454 words

fall 2023 was a time of data coding, data analysis, transcription, data cleaning, data annotation, peer feedback/review, grading student papers, and many many grant applications (money!!!!!!)

spring 2024 will be a full-throttle academic writing semester!! all my heaviest deadlines for career-related goals and benchmarks are january, february, and march... 💪🥲

between december 20th and january 5th (16 days), i wrote 37,074 words of fanfiction! 😭🙏

(in other words... of all of my fanfiction writing since august 1st... i wrote 46% of those words in the past two-ish weeks during my winter "break" 😅) CLEARLY, I WAS CRAVING CREATIVE OUTLETS for something squishier and freer than my rigidly structured academic register! and now i've left it all on the internet-table lmao and it is time to return to my ✨Professional Voice ✨

(to be fair, another 48% of fandom writing was completed in august, in the final weeks leading up to the fall semester 😂 the other meager 6% remaining percent was scattered throughout the hectic fall semester—to no one's surprise!)

TO THE DISSERTATION/BOOK, WE GO

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back to the phd grind (for real, this time) + goals

here are the things that i must complete by the end of march (though not necessarily in this particular order! 😂):

• master’s thesis (#2/in passing): finish final revisions on my (second!) master’s thesis then send it to my advisor for final feedback (if applicable) and approval, so that i can apply to graduate for my (second!!!) master’s degree for this spring

• prep hiring ad for potential research assistants so i can find my RA for the spring semester (last semester my RA was soo good and i got so spoiled, gah).

• write 1-pager invitation letters to my potential academic committee members asking them to serve on my dissertation committee, and send the letters to my advisor for feedback, approval, so she may send them to the committee invitees on my behalf and Cc me. (🤞 and hopefully they have the time and availability to accept! otherwise i have plans b and c, sigh.)

• prepare slide decks for my dissertation defense proposal and rehearse the hell out of it.

• schedule said proposal defense/oral exam

• update my docs for the ethics board re: data collection updates for round two of data collection.

• prepare and rehearse for conference presentation: present my preliminary findings at the Big Conference (which includes making sure i got all my grant money!!)

• pick which damn algorithm i will use for my cluster analysis

• update non-fiction book along the way based on master’s thesis and dissertation study and everything else that cannot fit in an academic paper or journal article

and then later:

• prep manuscript for journal article based on the master’s thesis paper once it’s published in the repository and

• publish a few mainstream articles for general audiences as well, to share some findings with the rest of the world and potentially generate some concrete interest for publisher connections about the ✨need✨ for my book 👀

• collect new data, transcribe new data, code new data, analyze new data, and write about it 😂😅 / dissertation

and i shall do all of these things while teaching two courses at two different institutions and writing letters of recommendation for my students and writing more grant proposals and doing other university responsibilities

and life! 😂😂😂

thank you for reading and following me on this journey!

i hope everyone’s januarys are off to smooth starts 💖💖💖🙏🙏🙏🙏 i’ll still be on and off tumblr over the next few months, but already i can feel the dissertation-dopamine cravings entering my bloodstream, i.e., suffering but being really happy about it 😉💖

thanks again, all, and happy writing!

she who has actually returned to work-work for real this time and has her diss!doc sitting open and ✨updated✨ in a browser tab,

kris✨

an??? update???? for atc???? // back to the phd grind

in which i wrote a bunch of snow globe, said “okay that’s enough fandom back to work now,” accidentally wrote two chapters of at the center and posted an update for the first time in nearly six years (and now i’m really going back to work now, i promise) + two utterly gorgeous pieces of freshly-discovered fic fanart for at the center by @neimykanani

written december 28, 2023 @ 1:43pm

my fandom writing flurry was short-lived 🥹

i finished grading all my students’ final papers on the 20th, so i cranked them all out in a week-ish, which is not bad, because i spent 2-3 hours grading each 40+-page paper 🥲👍 so from the 18th to the 23rd, i cranked out thousands and thousands of words for fic, they literally just flew out of me 😂 i NEEDED that creative writing outlet!

but then of course christmas eve and christmas day were quite busy, and then… i immediately and completely felt the compulsion to start getting ahead on the spring semester workload 😅😅😅

this semester, i will be teaching at two institutions (which i have not done since the spring of 2021!!!), so i would rather get a jumpstart on preparing all of my LMS course sites and syllabi now so that way i can look forward to the first day of classes with a clear head 🤞✨

january through march will be a really wild and hectic time, what with my dissertation proposal defense, my submission of my revised QP2 as my (second) master’s thesis paper, preparing for the big national conference, assisting with the prospective student day for our potential candidates for next year’s cohort of incoming phd students, and simultaneously teaching two classes at two different universities. 🫠👍💕✨ (but ya girl is trying to buy a second house, and publish a non-fiction book, and get her doctorate, so it is worth the packed schedule for a few months!!)

but, needless to say, i don’t foresee any chapter updates over the next few months, unless they’re drabbles or itty-bitty microfics, or if some writing just EXPLODES out of me amidst the hundreds of research articles. 🥹🤞

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*saved blog post to drafts, fully intending to post it later that evening*

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*instead proceeds to write 12,362 words in total over the weekend!

all for at the center! 😭😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏💖💖*

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written january 2, 2024 @ 6:44pm

yes, that is correct, i physically said, “welp, i guess that’s it for the rest of the year!” and then wrote:

• 3,911 words on new year's eve eve

• 8,451 words on new year's eve!

• = 12,362 words written in total for atc

(p.s. see the full interactive word counter here!)

WHICH MEANS that since i started vacation on december 20th (12 days in total), i have written 21,841 words for fandom-related projects!

(12,362 for atc and 9,479 for snow globe!)

I AM VERY PLEASED VERY CONTENT

and now i am done with data coding and cleaning for a bit, i have received my grant money.... I CAN ACTUALLY WRITE THE DISSERTATION ITSELF NOW

(AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH)

VERY PLEASED VERY CONTENT

and once more, because i CANNOT BELIEVE:

fic update → at the center

Legends and fairy tales, magic and myths, and—at the center of it all—a story of a young, future-Queen and her young, ageless-Guardian; a girl cursed with fear and a god frozen in time, and all of the reasons why seeing isn’t always at the heart of believing.  { banner cosplay: (x) (x) }

{ start here }

{ start with the latest updates }

• 12.31.2023 | chapter 222: - mirrors -

• 01.02.2024 | chapter 223: - hans christian anderson - 

#gasp i did it again #therentyoupay at the center #therentyoupay updates

227 notes

fic fanart → at the center

i found these gorgeous pieces a few weeks ago but haven’t had time to properly add them to ao3/share them yet! 😭😭😭😭 they are too beautiful!! this is your friendly reminder to always occasionally google your pseuds and story titles, because you never know what you’ll find 😭😭😭😭💖💖💖💖 TOO BEAUTIFUL I TELL YOU

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Neimy (@jelsa.art.edits)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Neimy (@jelsa.art.edits)

i hope everyone has a glorious marvelous new year! 😭😭😭😭💖💖 thank you all for your continued love, understanding, patience, and support!! ✨✨ WISHING YOU ALL A GREAT JANUARY AND BEYOND 💖

happy writing!

love,
kris 💕✨

i blinked and the semester was “over”

the semester has ended and all that is left to do is grade students' final papers (due tomorrow) and finish my dissertation proposal so i suddenly thought "perhaps it's time to update my word counter!!" and whoops i wrote 16,558 words over the past month THIS IS WHY I WANTED TO WORD COUNT OH WELL

HELLO ALL 💕

dissertation status:

• i received my feedback (full approval!! qualifying paper = passed!!) on november 1st!

  • on the one hand, the feedback was beautiful and helpful and inspirational and constructive. on the other hand, getting all the feedback on the 1st was not conducive to preparing a proposal defense (paper and slide deck) for the week of november 11th, which would have required formally inviting the tentative members of my hopeful academic committee to actually serve on my committee by sending emails out the week of the 4th… so my advisor was like, “yeah, no, let’s do early spring!” so my dissertation proposal is tentatively scheduled for mid-march and i shall formally invite my committee members to join my dissertation committee in mid-january!

  • this timeline is not the one i’d hoped for, BUT since i already have half my data collected, coded, and analyzed (which is what i’d partially done for my previous paper and what i finished doing this semester with my research assistant), i’m in a funny situation where half my dissertation is already written. so although i would have LIKED to have been “all but dissertation” (ABD) status by now, i’m still on track to defend my dissertation in february 2025. 👌💕✨ meanwhile, my ABD cohort member is only going to start collecting data in january and she joked like, “kris, of the two of us, re: our data collection and analysis progress, who is ACTUALLY ABD here?” and i was like, “you right, you right, i must CALM DOWN.” 😂 january 2024, it is!!

• tomorrow, i have my final meeting with my competent, astute, observant, organized, creative, enthusiastic, quick-learning research assistant. 😭

  • she was so good! i’m so sad that our time together is ending, but i’m so happy to write her letters of recommendation and help her update her badass resumé and see her move onto the next stage of her academic career!! i’m so happy to have been a part of her learning journey and i know we’ll stay in touch as she enters grad school and wherever she ends up next.

  • and NOW i have to find another one for spring. 😂🫠🤞TENTATIVELY OPTIMISTIC.

• the manuscript for my non-fiction book (based on my dissertation research but for a mainstream audience!) continues!

  • i’m so so lucky to have my advisor. all of our advising meetings revolve around three goals:

    • publishing my dissertation,

    • publishing 1–2 academic journal articles on said dissertation topics, and

    • publishing my non-fiction book for gen audience.

  • she is advising on ALL THREE PROJECTS. how would i possibly be able to do any of these things as well as i am doing them if not for a stellar, trustworthy, competent, long-term/endgame-planning advisor?? choosing a university and a department and an advisor is the number one most important part of picking a ph.d. program, i will die on this hill.

on that note, a few thoughts about completing a ph.d. program…

here is what i have learned about writing a doctoral dissertation during the first three or four months of writing said dissertation; some of these learning points align 100% with pieces of advice that have been passed down to me from friends, colleagues, advisors, mentors, and postdocs, and some of these are “things that i thought i knew but experience is the best teacher,” and some of these things are just Unexpected Pearls of Wisdom™ :

• not everyone finishes their ph.d. program. for the first three years of my ph.d. program, i felt like the foreboding statistics about ph.d. program attrition rates (e.g., dropout rates for programs in the u.s. across the fields of engineering, life sciences, social sciences, mathematics and physical sciences, and humanities range from 36–51%, young et al., 2019) was more urban legend than reality—something that happened at other schools to other departments with other ph.d. students.
  
  but as my cohort(s) cross(es) the bridge from “student” to “candidate” and inch closer and closer to “all but dissertation” (ABD) status, i have started to feel the truth in the urban legend: people leave doctoral programs for all sorts of reasons, including personal and professional, which is what you might expect—such as realizing that the current program (/advisor/area of interest/stage of life/etc.) isn’t the right fit for that person at that time in that stage of their career.
  
  i was less prepared, however, for people in my program—friends and classmates and colleagues i have grown close to over the last four years—failing out of the program due to failing their milestone requirements (e.g., qualifying papers, dissertation proposals), even after two attempts. i was not prepared for them to receive termination letters from the program director with heart-wrenching peer reviews on the limitations and flaws in their papers and with the departmental decision that, ultimately, they have failed to meet the requirements for continuing the program. just this past week, multiple friends have been terminated on the basis of a lack of demonstrated capability to complete a high-quality, rigorous, cutting-edge dissertation project that meaningfully contributes to the literature in a reasonable amount of time. it’s heavy.
  
  in the past year alone, i have seen five of my friends and colleagues—from multiple disciplines and areas of expertise—be asked to leave the program or choose to leave the program as 3rd and 4th years.
  
  some have viewed it as an opportunity for a fresh start and a “reset” to pivot to a different lifestyle entirely.
  
  some slip away quietly and avoid all calls and texts and linkedin messages, even a year later.
  
  some go out angrily and bitterly, and, unfortunately, burn down every bridge in the process, creating resentment on both sides, all the while sadly never realizing that the reason their appeal to the graduate school failed is, ultimately, at the core, for the same reasons they failed their qualifying paper in the first place.

• it is REALLY hard to finish a ph.d. program and write a dissertation, and it requires such a unique set of skills, not least of which is “you have to actually want to finish your ph.d. program REALLY REALLY BADLY.”

  so much of my ability to stay in this program and be on a trajectory toward successful completion of my dissertation and program has less to do with having any sort of Brilliant IQ™ and much, much more to do with having transferrable skills, like:

  • high emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills, particularly with faculty and advisors;

  • great public speaking skills and confidence and Presence with which to share my research with Peers and to Network the Living Daylights Out of Everyone, Everywhere, All the Time;

  • exceptional and adaptable and streamlined-to-utter-efficiency organizational skills, and more, of course… but these are absolutely the Top 3, in my case.

• writing a dissertation is actually fun, but only if:

  • you’re fortunate enough to be writing on a topic that means everything to you personally and professionally, and

  • you have a great relationship with a competent and resourceful and expert advisor who keeps in mind not only your academic and professional goals but also your personal ones as well, and

  • you’re really really really really fucking good at taking initiative and keeping track of 1000 tasks at once and thriving in a self-paced, self-driven lifestyle.

• The only person “Who Actually Cares if You Finish the Thing or Not” is you (and, if you’re lucky enough, your advisor), which, again, ties back to the earlier point that one of the most critical factors in deciding whether or not you finish the damn dissertation is “you have to actually want to finish your ph.d. program REALLY REALLY BADLY.”
  
  there are so many other demands on our time, and in order to actually work on the dissertation, you HAVE to carve out time for it. case in point: my poor ph.d. program soulmate is defending her dissertation in february and she has not touched her dissertation since october 31st. it is december 11th. for me, that’s horrifying to think about right now, but it’s so common everywhere. if we are not careful, the dissertation will consistently get pushed farther and farther back onto the backest burner, and suddenly you’ll blink and you’ll not have touched your dissertation in over a month. when i last made a post on this blog in september, it had happened to me for two-ish weeks, and that was scary enough.
  
  whatever i do now, i do my best to TOUCH at least one of my dissertation documents at least once every few days: the slide deck for the proposal oral exam, the dissertation proposal word document, the endless coding spreadsheets, the clickup task management portal for my research assistant’s assignments…
  
  TOUCH IT. TOUCH IT EVERY (OTHER) DAY.
  
  progress can happen in Big Surges of energy and productivity, but more often it happens in small, incremental steps.
  
  enter cliché: a dissertation is not (always) a sprint; it’s a marathon.
  
  enter second cliché: a good dissertation is a done dissertation.
  
  enter existential realization that writing a doctoral dissertation (like many other large-scale projects, other meaningful experiences, and other Hard Things) is a Metaphor for Life. ✨

fic updates!

what fic updates

100% i am CRAVING a fanfic outlet. i have been grading and reading and coding and grading and presenting and my head is full of at least ten relevant academic journal citations at any given moment. i cannot partake in a typical human conversation without saying, or at least thinking, “there’s actually this really cool study about that—” stop. kris stop. STOP, KRIS.

i had to perfect my 1-minute elevator pitch about my research for thanksgiving because anytime anyone asked me about it and, god forbid they asked me follow-up questions, I DID, INDEED, TELL THEM ABOUT IT. INDEED. thank you to all the patient souls at various friendsgivings who asked me questions (and then more questions) because even though i had to REEL IT BACK, i basically perfected my conference presentation pitches and here i am again, this section is supposed to be about FIC UPDATES. FIC.

back on topic: there is a mountain!AU jelsa two-shot requiring its second shot and i am salivating over the wintry “COMPLETION” status update, so that is ✨forthcoming.✨

i have been tentatively brainstorming with the gloriously creative @callimara over a collab 👀✨ i am DESPERATE FOR THAT TO COME TO FRUITION WHILE WINTER IS UPON US.

HOPE YOU ALL ARE DOING WELL THANK YOU FOR READING LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU

happy writing,
♡ kris

doing “everything and nothing”

just some quick low-key panic.

about two weeks ago, i asked my phd program soulmate 'how is your dissertation going?' and she said, “i am doing literally everything and literally nothing”

and i thought, “huh. what an interesting vibe.”

and then IT HAPPENED TO ME AND HAS BEEN HAPPENING TO ME FOR TWO WEEKS

needless to say, i am ready to go back to taking care of my OWN STUFF again this week

and not putting out everyone else's fires!!!

speeches, meetings, emails (oh my)

when the onslaught of emails is so much that you project the experience onto fictional characters

(specifically, the newest chapter of that one night)

the initial start-of-semester race has… calmed?

part of me almost wishes i were actually keeping a word count of the emails i’m sending for academic + work purposes. i wouldn’t be able to sustainably track that kind of data, but i would love to know very seriously how many words i am sending out into the email universe—particularly because i work really hard to make my emails as clear and concise as possible. BUT OH WELL. i don’t dare track that data, so other data points (e.g., papers, book manuscripts, dissertation proposal) will have to do.

dissertation status:

• still waiting for feedback on the most recent paper i wrote! once that comes back to me, i can incorporate that feedback and submit a shorter version for publication (e.g., research journals)

• trained my new research assistant!

• doing a deep, close read of the literature to know everything inside and out (and to catch up on any new articles that dropped in august while i was taking a bit of a break)

• started my manuscript for the non-fiction book (based on my dissertation research but for a mainstream audience!)

• had my first meeting of the year with my advisor and potentially have my official shortlist for the other two members of my academic committee 👀

• currently ✨on track✨ to defend my dissertation proposal in november 2023

website & fic updates!

had a very inspiring conversation with @sunshinemellow-fic over the weekend about writing and revising one’s writing vs. yeeting unbeta’d word vomit out into the tumblr- and ao3-wilderness, which resulted in the opening of 1-sentence fic requests!

after i fulfilled a few prompts, i was like, “oh shit, this moment is probs a good opportunity to start transferring old 1-sentence fic over here.” lo and behold:

• added a new (non-linked) page for 1-sentence fic

• added a button for the 1-sentence fic page to the fanfiction page

• added this week’s newest additions of 1-sentence fics [butterfly, acupuncture] — although you can see i still need to fix the dates

• started adding a few older 1-sentence fics from Olden Times but then once i felt like i got to a good stopping point, i decided to leave the older ones for Later™ (i have to clean up that fic-only tumblr tagging system anyway!). therefore, i will leave this project for a Later™ treat when i need to engage in mindless organization and order 🔥✨

x-posted a tumblr-prompted drabble into ao3 (because we can’t trust tumblr 🥲🫠🙃)

find the woman in white on ao3!

in other news —

• 🍺 many adventures this labor day weekend (many cocktails, many lagers, though not necessarily together)

• 🦋 PURCHASED AMC TICKETS TO SEE THE ERAS TOUR IN THEATERS; this has, clearly, moved up our plans to create 1989-inspired flower crowns and friendship bracelets, i must PREPARE

• 🍇 i picked fresh grapes straight from the vine on vast farmland (and later made homemade grape juice) and now i can never go back to grocery store grapes, what have i done

thanks, all! ♡ and good luck with the rest of your week!!

back to “school”

except my nine years of taking higher ed classes are OVER and i have entered the promised DisserLand ✨

back to school-ish

this week was a ‘soft launch’ back into the semester!!

emails, preliminary planning, prepping for some events… it’s like the calm before the storm, except it’s already sprinkling. 😂

i think everyone just collectively feels like we have to “go back to work” two-ish weeks BEFORE we actually have to go back to work because the anticipation is too much.

also, for the first time in my entire phd career, i actually feel properly rested after this summer (since i took a break from phd stuff for most of august and just focused on making as much money as possible the whole summer through OTHER non-academic channels). so like. I’M EXCITED TO GO BACK?

and it’s so refreshing that i will only need to commute only once every week or so. that’s the main game-changer. i can be excited about going because i will only go so few times this semester, so it’s a TREAT rather than a SLOG.

I AM READY, LET ME GO BACK. ✨ i want to finish this dissertation as soon as possible!!!

writing progress ✨

officially have written more for snow globe this month than what i wrote to finish frosted sea glass! such is the nature of writing two-shots, i guess!

• ✨ it's also very cool to see that on good days i tend to write ~3k words on the days in which i write! i'd never formally kept track before.

• 🔥 on a REALLY good day, i wrote 7500 words.

• 💪 on other days, i squeaked out only like 100-300 words, haha.

• 💤 and then i have let myself take some solid breaks after finishing frosted sea glass. on those days, i reread my favorite fics!

also, yesterday was a bit of a soft launch for me with getting back into the swing of the semester. (i will not, however, count any words written in emails. 🤣🫠🙃🙏 oof.)

you can also follow along with the word count (‘23-’24) tracker! i update it most days!

i’m not sure yet how much fic i’ll be able to write in the next few weeks as the semester ramps up, but i hope to be able to squeak out at least 100-200 words fo writing for fandom each day! a little bit is better than nothing! 🤞

hope y’all are doing well and whatever end-of-summer stuff you have lined up is going well. ✨ happy writing, all!! ♡

eternal summertime sadness!fic = complete

🌊✨just desperately trying to finish 8+-year-long WIPs

this was one of my tumblr sidebars back in the 2010s! 🥲✨ in honor of frosted sea glass!

eternal summertime sadness fic = complete ✨

IT IS DONE.

even though frosted sea glass was actually lower on my “to write” list (behind finishing the snow globe two-shot for @aicosu and doing another chapter update for that one night), i was able to crank out TWO chapters (roughly 15-16k words) in like a matter of days this past week… and finish the thing once and for all. 💙🩵🌊✨

frosted sea glass was completed on august 10, 2023. 💪✨ roughly 8 years after it was first posted (to answer a tumblr prompt)!

i took the day off from writing yesterday (friday) to grab lunch with a friend/former co-worker from japan, who’d moved back to the states last october, and we spent the whole day out, so i didn’t add anything to the word counter. instead, i just basked in the satisfying glow of the specific vibe that can only come from completing an 8+-year-old WIP 😎🪭✨

up next —

my next project will be to finish and post part ii of snow globe and to post another chapter of that one night, especially in honor of the semester starting up in just a few weeks! 😉☕️✨

(also, i cannot believe it but pumpkin spice lattes are already available???
blasphemous.
i don’t even want to smell a PSL until >50% of my tree leaves are multi-colored and the air is less than 60°F, please)

dissertation —

i’m not allowed to collect any data for my dissertation until after my proposal defense (which is currently scheduled for november-ish), and i’m still waiting on a round of feedback of the most recent paper i wrote (from which my dissertation is launching), so i don’t have anything critical for my dissertation process just yet! in the meantime, i’m still putting together my academic committee and staying apprised of the literature, but most of my focus is on seeing all my colleagues and friends and cohort again as everyone returns from summer-baby-sabbatical and kicks off autumn!

i’m so grateful to be in disserland. 😭 i only have to commute to campus once every two-ish weeks for most of the semester! otherwise i have the flexibility to work entirely from home, entirely on my research. 🥲🥲🥲 what a dream. 🩵✨

at the center —

ALSO. starting to gear up for the major re-read and completion of at the center!

someone responded to my tumblr post inquiry for potential betas, and we have tentatively set some prelim plans for later in the fall about beta-ing future chapters, particularly for consistency, plot points + hints + foreshadowing, etc.! i have a whole spreadsheet with all the interwoven links, and i will very much appreciate having another set of eyes to help manage it. GRACIAS, GRACE. ✨

back in the early 00s, i had like a team of three betas. 🤣🥲 (I HOPE THEY LOG BACK INTO TUMBLR/AO3 AGAIN SOON. i think we all collectively took years-long hiatuses from tumblr. 💕)

abigail (@dragonsinparis) is also a forever-beta, but she is also doing very cool things, like working toward getting her novel published!! 🤞✨ GO ABIGAIL GO.

“cleaning” day —

today (saturday) is a cleaning day, both mentally and physically. i’d like to continue transferring some stuff from my fic-only tumblr (@therentyoupayfanfiction) to this site… even though i got my account back, i’m still not comfortable with tumblr… i feel like i could lose everything with no warning again in just, like, a split second. 😅

today, i’d like to:

• post something! a drabble? a ton chapter?

• write at least like 500 words…

• reply to all the fsg-chapter 12 comments on ao3! 🌊🩵✨

happy writing! 💙🩵✨

a tumblr miracle?? + we love data✨

silver lining of tumblr deleting all my data —> opportunity to collect my own (✨fancier✨) data (but also tumblr restored my data?????)

TUMBLR RESTORATION??

first and foremost, in an unexpected twist of fate: tumblr emailed me yesterday and declared that my account was restored!!! behold!!

@therentyoupay

of course, i am ecstatic and grateful beyond all measure.

of course, i trust tumblr 0%.

a good reminder, i think, to put your eggs in multiple basket-websites. 🥲🥲🥲🤞 i will continue to use my tumblr account for community, but i will still gradually move my fic, my fic fanart, and other important keepsakes here. with all the social media sites imploding right now… WHO KNOWS.

but i have always been inspired by my favorite early 2000s fic authors who created their own websites (e.g., http://forthwrites.com/) to house their fanfics and, eventually, to share news and sales of their original fic. ✨✨

WORD COUNTER & PRODUCTIVITY TRACKER

plus, i am really sinking into some of the opportunities that squarespace has to offer… LIKE GRAPHS.

also, as i mentioned in my previous post (🌊 beach day = mermaid!au writing session??), i did, indeed, END UP MAKING A WRITING TRACKER for this year, based on the record-breaking year i had in ✨2015✨. thank goodness that post was not lost to the abyss forever.

check out my 2023-2024 word count tracker!! link above on the navi bar ♡

part of me very badly wanted to make some fancy ones in python, but i have learned through experience that squarespace often can’t handle many embedded code bits at once. besides, it’s a nice accountability check-in to come to the website each day and update the graph directly!!!!!

MULTI-CHAP WIP RISES FROM THE WAVES

on that note, GUESS WHAT I FINISHED YESTERDAY

CORRECT

my eternal summertime sadness fic has risen from the sand

the waves

the cape cod ROCKS AND DUNES

i am finally in the FINAL STAGES OF EDITING AND PROOFREADING ✨ update and COMPLETION coming to ao3 soon!!!

BANNERSSSS

i also made this banner (above) when my tumblr account was trapped in the void and i couldn’t find the fic fanart i usually used for chapter updates! 🥲 (i found it now!!)

i really would love to make a banner for each of my stories, but at this point, i just need to be writing them first, not just playing with banners 😂😂😂 i will only make one once i update that fic, THAT WILL BE MY PLAN.

thank you all for visiting and periodically checking out the new changes to this site!! it (1) protects my work from two-thirds of my life omg but also (2) allows for a fun creative outlet (and organizational outlet lbr) that scratches a part of my brain not already being satisfied from writing fic and writing my dissertation!! ✨ we love a happy brain-scratch trifecta

happy writing, all! 💕

🌊 beach day = mermaid!au writing session??

this pattern is what i have been telling myself for years but 😂

i’ve always said that my writing is very seasonally-driven (seasons of climate, seasons of life), which i still think is very true.

one of the reasons why i have so many very nearly finished WIPs is because i only write certain stories with certain vibes when i can tap into that headspace. and there is no better time to write “mysterious angsty star-crossed summertime sadness mermaid!au” fic than the end of summer. 🌊✨

we were supposed to go to the beach yesterday but the night before that is when i realized that my tumblr account had been lost. 😅😅😅 i ended up staying up pretty late to salvage as much as i could, so yesterday’s day trip got postponed. 😂😅 today’s beach adventure was much much needed (and not only for frosted sea glass vibes and motivation, lol).

i’ll try to squeeze in at least one more beach day before i return to campus for the fall semester, which is in just a few weeks!! i’m so grateful to finally have reached the dissertation stage, as it means that i can primarily work from home. i’m also so fortunate that my colleagues and advisors are so understanding and accommodating of my commute and are allowing me to only come to campus only once every other week or so. 👏✨

already, i can feel ✨2015✨ vibes, in which i had worked three teaching jobs and did my master’s degree part-time while working—and to give myself breaks from all the academic reading and writing, i wrote like 150k words of fic. 😂 (primarily in the form of jelsa one-shots, lmao)

it’s a very specific creative headspace and I HAVE FELT ALL WEEK, existential tumblr crisis aside. 😂🫠🫠🫠

one of the pages that i’m saddest about losing in the tumblr debacle is the ✨2015✨ record-keeping of my writing productivity, fandom- and academia-wise. 🥲🥲🥲🥲 in its honor, and to optimize this ✨2015✨ headspace, i will make a special tracker here, to acknowledge the words i’ve written this year (2023-2024), starting from this month, august.

it would be lovely for everything to come full circle: all the fics i started writing in order to take a break from working on my master’s thesis (e.g., at the center) and my bachelor’s degree (e.g., that one night), getting finished and wrapped up by the time i complete my doctoral program and defend my dissertation. 😂🤞✨ it would help clear the way for me to start publishing original fiction and non-fiction—starting with my dissertation research!!

in the meantime, will i update the summertime sadness mermaid!au or the wintertime sadness mountain!au next? 😂😂😂😂 WE SHALL SEE.

as for my tumblr drama: still no word yet from tumblr support. 🥲🤞 i remain cautiously optimistic while also giving up all hope lol. i’ll e-mail them every 3 days until i hear a response. 😅😅😅😅🙏🙏🙏

thanks for your continued support everybody!! sun and sand (and chardonnay) helped mitigate the sting of Tumblr Termination™ 🥲🙏✨💕💕💕💕💕💕

happy writing!! 💕✨

tumblr account termination grief → creates own website

what do you do when 11 years of community, conversation, fic, fic fanart, gifts, recs, and friendship are just deleted while you’re eating dinner?!

https://www.tumblr.com/therentyoupay-deleted/724770445987020800/hi-all-my-account-therentyoupay-was

yesterday and today, i had been planning to wrap the second and final part of snow globe, a gift!work for aicosu based on their “three-word sentence” prompt, “just say it.”

clearly, the energy went more toward PANIC and CONTROL-THE-CHAOS and SAVE-EVERYTHING-YOU-CAN vibes instead, BUT. 🤷‍♀️

here i go, anyway. hoping to have snow globe finished and wrapped up within the next day or so!