August's passing means that autumn is on the horizon, though it's not quite here yet. The last few months have been very enlightening for me personally. I've had to put several projects on the back burner, brought forward quite a few, and made a lot of progress on things I didn't think I'd even start by now.
Sometimes, you just need to make some adjustments to see what's needed in your life, I think. Space away has given me a good amount of time to really think and reconsider. I'll give some updates on that once decisions have been firmly made, but nothing I put to the side will be forgotten entirely, I promise.
But anyway, today's not about what's coming up, it's about what's passed. So here's all the stuff that I put out in August.
Substack/Blog Posts
August was a bit of fun, including a good one on genre. So let's sum them up here:
Food as Storytelling - I wanted to take a step back and do one of my classic "this thing that's not narrative is still telling a story" type of posts.
Science Fiction vs Magic vs Religion - this is the genre thing I was talking about. Inspired by the Fan of That episode we did on genre crossing, I wanted to really dig into what we actually mean when we say these things, and therefore what really is the difference between all these strange terms.
Bodylore: an annotated bibliography - trying something for this one. Thought I'd take a particular concept or idea and give you a list of some stuff you can read, along with a few of my own notes on the piece.
Video Essay
This month's video essay is all about creativity, capitalism and burn out in Kiki's Delivery Service. In this one, I'm exploring the way Kiki struggles to understand herself in relation to her creative powers, and how burn out can be followed by chasing the issues of capitalism. Kiki gets caught up in needing to make money in order to fit in, and she allows capitalist insecurities to guide her creative practices, rather than finding her own social worlds which allow her creativity to thrive.
Hope you like some Ghibli, cause I've got another in the works. And other animated films from other large studios will be coming as well. Can you tell what kind of mood I've been in lately?
I'm a Fan of That!
My podcast, I'm a Fan of That, which I do with my cohost and friend, pop culture writer Holly Swinyard, had a few new episodes this month. Just two, actually. Funny how the fortnightly thing works out.
First up, while talking about our genre episode in retrospect, I started talking to Holly about Flanderization. They weren't as familiar, so we just hopped on the podcast and recorded the chat! Flanderization is the process of a character slowly becoming more and more cliched and flat versions of themselves.
Our most recent episode is a flip around Ghibli studios. Inspired in part by the list of potential video essays I have, and another part by the fact that... you know... they're fun.
Writing Vlogs
The vlogging continues! Mostly focused on my slowly dwindling number of projects - which, to be fair, is probably the better thing.
A Day of Swift, Surveys, and Video Essays | Nonfiction Writing Day - a nonfiction day, beginning with writing the draft of a survey for the Taylor Swift research, and ending with some substack post writing
Plotting Scenes on a Spreadsheet | Project Submarine Works - on the fiction side, I'm finishing up the plotting of my new novel Project Submarine. Which, of course, involves a spreadsheet.
Surveys and Research Reading | Taylor Swift and Myth Research - finished up the survey, got it all ready to be released (which it is now!) and then doing some research reading
Starting a Rough Draft | New Novel Writing Vlog - now that the fiction novel is all planned, the rough draft writing has begun!
And that's August! Boy, these posts are starting to get longer and longer.
Anyway, as always, be good to one another! And I'll catch you back up with what I'm working on in a few weeks.