I have two quick questions for my readers.

1) Do you prefer to read 1,000-1,500 word chapter parts, or full ~5,000 word chapters?
2) How often would you like to see my stories updated?
3) What days would you like to see my stories updated?

Ha! I lied, there were three questions. In all seriousness, though, all responses would be greatly appreciated. X)

~ Hyun

Your love and support continue to dazzle me no matter how far I think I've grown away/neglected you. Please, reach over your shoulders and pretend that's me hugging you. You all are awesome.

Heritage (and a new story!) to return shortly.

~ Hyun

But I'm going to, anyway.

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TL;DR: Please go over to my friend's blog here, read her fictions, perhaps leave her feedback on them. I feel her style is wasted on the three or four people who read it at the moment and needs a larger audience! Thank you very much!
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First, I want to explain the gallery wipe. July 28, huh? I think that was around the time I joined the Young Writer's Society (a quality institution, I mean it) and got some really in-depth feedback on Heritage. I've gotten better at accepting critiques since then, but thinking I had all of this juvenile work in my gallery with 23,000 pageviews didn't strike me as right. I felt like I was failing people somehow, through strange, convoluted circuits of logic.

The embarrassments had to go.

I don't know if I'll ever be satisfied with my work enough to start posting stuff back up here on DA, since doing so violates a rule I've ignored for far too long: write shitty first drafts no one will see. I haven't finished a first draft of Heritage yet, and any chapter I go back to edit for DA submission will 1) inevitably derail the story as I know it as I realize the implausibilities I've set up and 2) impede my progress toward my first ending. I've neglected drawing, too, and it's shown: when was the last time you guys saw me draw anything with limbs?

That said, I've been writing on and off, though nowhere near the amount I need to write in order to have any success in life. If I'm feeling really good about something, though, I post it on my Blogger, and today I fired up another blog dedicated exclusively to Sosara-related lore, stories or otherwise. In that arena, I won't feel as pressured to come up with QUALITY work; at the worst, I've written and developed my style further.

My aim is to get 2,000 people reading it within three years.

I also want to take the opportunity to pimp my friend ~aurakage's hypertext fiction blog here. It's damn depressing to see such great prose go unrewarded without comment. Please, go over and read her. I promise you'll like it.

Back to my blog idea, though, I want to build up an online readership I can one day take to an agent and say, "Yes, I've had a ton of people read and review my work" without a trace of exaggeration. All joking aside, an author I spoke to at Dragon*Con told me this approach is a great way to notify publishers of your revenue potential and editors will be much happier reading the manuscript of someone who's already read than someone who just came in from the cold without such credentials.

That made sense to me, so I'm going to try it.

Before I sign off... I just realized I'm turning 20 tomorrow. I don't know whether to be happy or sad, but I am laughing about it.

- Hyun

Everything's gone into storage. I need time to collect myself.

Who wants a cookie?







*ahem* All right, in all seriousness. Does your writing style contain any facets you can't stand but keep resurfacing anyway, time and time again? Do some constructions become the bane of your existence as they block you from writing because their existence on the page is that implacable?

One of my banes, for instance, is the way I begin sentences. Permutations of "It is" or "There are" are driving me close to the point of tears for the following reasons.

One: They shift the action of the sentence into a statement of being. The sentence then loses energy and becomes static. Even if that sentence contains a dynamic change, its two senses war with each other and annihilate whatever beauty it might have had.

Two: Most of the time, they lack antecedents -- look at the definition of a pronoun: it's meant to replace a noun previously specified. College writing classes have awakened my grammar Nazi and now he won't let me write a first draft ;_;

Three: 9 out of 10 sentences that cross my mind begin with those words. It -- at-tta! right there! -- I want variety in my writing, but consciously wishing for variety only contrives it even more. Is it better (oh no, that's no good (and look at that! This shit's recursive)) for me to accept my simple, declarative style and get it over with or can I find a way to work something else out?

I also have a tendency to insert additional words: Look out for "seems", "just", "basically", and other words of their ilk. To me (and feel free to differ), short sentences are powerful -- though I love using dashes -- Five-line, six-line monsters are fine every now and then but they become tiresome to read after a few pages; people get to fretting in their seats and wonder, "Does this sentence have an end?" but not even the punctuation within the quotation marks can alleviate their anxiety, that being a technicality of the vulgar language.

All right. Long sentences can be fun. Just make sure they're in character. Too bad Haraan doesn't seem the type to indulge in them.

I definitely need to step out and try different approaches to writing -- different characters, different POVs, different tenses. Grinding along with one single voice can get irritating and I wonder when I'll learn to try new things?