Updates: An Exposition + Update #1

I'm not sure why I didn't start doing this earlier, but I'll be writing these journals (mirrored on dA) periodically to keep you guys up to date on what's going on with BWSD. Each will be separated into three sections; the top is all business. What's the latest bit I'm working on, word count, how fast it's moving along, so on and so forth. If progress is exceedingly slow for any reason, it will be noted here. If the reason is internal (i.e. I haven't figured some part of the story out yet), it'll also be noted here.

The second will be slightly more personal. If progress is slow due to something external (i.e. I'm out of town), you'll find the why down here. Oftentimes progress will be suspended while my brain is in drawing mode (as it is right now), but I can promise you this; this rarely happens, and progress almost always resumes immediately after the drawing is finished. [And the drawing is almost always related anyways, so there's that.]

The last section is all personal. Fair warning: I am emotionally volatile and tend to bottle it up, so if you venture this far, remember, I warned you. Just expect this section to be filled with random thoughts mixed with whatever I'm feeling or thinking about. As of this moment I have perhaps two emotional outlets I can rely upon, one of whom I've abused far too much and the other who is currently indisposed; I apologize in advance for any 'emo' bits.

I will attempt to make at least once of these a week. I might make more than one a week, but that's my minimum goal.

---------------

Update 1 [Current Arc: 3]

Actual writing progress has been temporarily suspended due to outstanding circumstances. I continue to mentally chip away at things, but the major internal factor is the massive roadblock I've been staring in the face. There's a whole host of problems with its introduction that need to be solved before I can even get into the meat of it, but I expect once I get a proper grasp on it, it'll write itself fairly quickly.

— « § » —

A couple weeks ago, my grandmother (mother's side) was hospitalized for about a week after suffering an aneurysm followed by a stroke. The surgery performed to clip the aneurysm had to nudge her brain to do so, causing permanent and unknown extents of brain damage. Following the procedure she was bedridden, on a feeding tube and ventilator, and basically asleep. She showed little signs of consciousness besides occasional eye movement (she sometimes looked at visitors). On Sunday, February 9th, my mother and her two brothers made the call to pull her off the ventilator and feeding tube. She'd shown virtually no signs of even a partial recovery. She died two days later, on February 11th.

My mom is otherwise indisposed, so most of her responsibilities fall to me and my siblings; writing has slowed as a result.

When she was hospitalized I was also in the middle of working on another drawing. The past couple weeks have been spent trying to get back into the drawing groove, with some recent success. You can find the WIP here, arranged in order from earliest to latest snapshot. I feel documenting each major step for this piece in particular will benefit me later, when I'm trying to figure out how the hell I did X or Y.

Ultimately this means writing has slowed to a near-standstill. As always, this is only temporary. I passed the point of no return months ago; I won't stop writing this thing until it's finished or I die. Or if Google's servers eat it (please don't, Google).

— « § » —

I apologize in advance for what follows. I know it's extremely distasteful, inconsiderate, and selfish, but it's just a point of view. This is only how I see things.

I decided a long time ago that I don't want anyone to cry when I die. I don't. I'm legitimately considering having it in my will to hire a bouncer or something to punch whoever cries at my funeral/whatever (also contemplating cremation/donating to science). Yes, my grandmother's death is sad. I do miss her. I'm closer to my mother than anyone else; as hard as I try, our emotions are linked. If I'm sad, she is, and vice versa.

Which makes me wonder what happened to my empathy, because I'm not all that distraught at my grandmother's death. Which also makes me feel terrible because I was her favorite grandchild (my three siblings take after my father's side; I'm the odd one out).

I can't tell my mom I'm not distraught. She hasn't seen me cry about it, and honestly I teared up a bit but that was it. The last time I saw my grandmother alive, in the hospital, I only said one thing to her, and it was all I needed to say.

"Goodbye."

Some part of me wishes I could brandish this about. Not because I'm proud I'm that detached, because I'm manly or some shit like that. I want to tell people this to put them in touch with just how much I've poured into BWSD. Had my grandmother died two or three years ago, I would have been utterly devastated. Things are different now.

My protagonist is an assassin. Death is what she does. It's not a flight of fancy that she's that way; when her first iteration came about, she was only a thief. But that was in a story where she was a secondary character. I realized later, after a few fruitless attempts, that what I was really writing about--and for--was her. She evolved into an assassin, and once I swapped to her as the protagonist, it was done. It just felt...right.

I feel bad about it. I do. But I can't help it. This is how far it's gone. I am so close to Zephyr that I almost laughed at everyone who cried when we were standing there, just waiting with bated breath for her to die. Death is a part of life. As far as I can tell, people get upset about it because something was left unresolved. They feel they didn't live to their fullest, or they didn't achieve some goal. Close ones regret the last thing they said to the deceased wasn't the most loving thing they could say.

I have no intentions of leaving such things unresolved. When my time comes, it comes. If I die tomorrow, so be it. Literally the only regret I would have is that BWSD would never see itself to completion. I promise I'm not lying; when asked what I wanted for Christmas last year, the only thing I could think of was, I want people to read BWSD. But I can't tell people that; if they haven't read it because they were interested, but read it now, then they're reading it because I told them to. Not a good reason. If you weren't interested, it means I didn't make it interesting enough.

I've no doubt I would be devastated should my mother die, but I guarantee I would make every effort to shed no tears, and simply move on. Death is a part of life. It comes for everyone. It's the last goodbye you'll share. I'll die. You'll die.

The reason I wanted to laugh at those who were crying is because their grief says, to me, that either they had unresolved issues, or that have not fully accepted death as a part of life. Everyone dies alone.

I want people to know this just to know how much of myself I've invested in BWSD.

Zephyr avoids close relationships because of the hollow void death leaves when the other end passes. I am the same. Neither of us are 100% successful at said avoidance, but we try. Both of us are at peace with death [no, I haven't committed murder--just remember she's an herbivore living close to a lot of carnivores].

I can't say whether she has this quality because I had it and gave it to her, or I gave it to her and it rubbed off on me. I honestly don't know.

The other distasteful thought I have on this is that, while I was standing there, watching her struggle to breath, there was another persistent thought:

"This is great research."

Yeah.

But I have to ask you this.

Do you honestly, truthfully think that I would be as detached as I am from my grandmother's death, if I was writing Zephyr solely because I thought she's awesome and this story has to be 'the coolest thing ever'?

I did warn you, it'd be distasteful. But I sincerely hope it goes to show how much of me I've given to BWSD, and how much of what it has become has seeped right back into me.

-ahem-

I DID WARN YOU, IT'D BE DISTASTEFUL.

[Although not as distasteful as me arguably trying to milk a relative's death for my own gain...sigh. I hate me.]