#elle af

Hello, friends!

It's almost my birthday, and I would absolutely love it if you could take a few seconds to share this post and consider donating if you're able! <3

Emryn and I met through this fandom and can't wait to raise a little Shadowhunter of our own - hopefully sooner rather than later, with a little help! <3

2022 was wonderful to me, and I was so blessed to get to spend it starting a forever with the love of my life. I got engaged, and then married, and had the chance to finally see friends I haven’t seen in years, as well as some I met for the first time ever. 

I’m starting 2023 with a new job, one that finally uses my degree (after having it over a decade rip) and my first job ever with a set schedule and weekends/holidays off. I’m PSYCHED, even if I’m also terrified to have so many new things to learn in this role. It’s going to be a challenge, but it’s one I’m absolutely up for. 

I really hope that having a consistent schedule will allow me to set aside time to write a lot more this year. I struggled a lot the past year with adjusting to a job that rotated shifts every 2 weeks, and spent a lot of time I could’ve been writing taking mid-day naps or falling asleep on the sofa at 8pm. 

I posted 73,559 words to AO3 last year, which I know is objectively a lot, but which is also the lowest amount of words I’ve written since I started writing fic in 2018. 

So that’s my goal for this year. A little more structure, maybe, and some personal accountability on a few other goals I have like really buckling down on learning a language and picking back up my ability to read sheet music and messing around on my ukulele for fun. 

For those of you who don’t follow me on twitter, I’ve been busy the last two weeks getting ENGAGED and planning a WEDDING. The ever-lovely @thatnerdemryn decided I was worth keeping around for the rest of, oh, I dunno, forever, and proposed to me at the end of June. I’ve never been happier, or felt more loved, and honestly it’s just been the most wonderful whirlwind lately. 

I’ve definitely been more MIA than I planned on because of it! We’ve had a lot of weekend plans that involved travelling out of state, and the next few weeks I’ll have potential wedding reception venue visits planned that’ll keep be a little more MIA, but I promise I haven’t vanished! I have a bang fic in the works for next month, a tumblr prompt request I’m probably about a quarter of the way through, and some other ideas brewing, so I won’t be gone for long! 

This month I wrote 15,438 words that I posed to AO3- more than I have in a g e s, thanks in no small part to @thatnerdemryn. They held the Femslash February prompts through the Malec server, and so many of those were the only reason I wrote this month. I also got matched with Em for my Rare Pair exchange fic, so I have them to thank for that inspiration, too. Not to mention the casual encouragement to set time aside to write after dinner while we hang out at night. Thanks, babe <3 

I’m definitely getting back into the flow of writing and I’m working on finishing up some SHadowhunter Bingo fills I started in, like, November. I’m cautiously optimistic that this might be the start of some steadier fic posting from me again, which I’m really excited about! 

I haven’t written as much this year as I have in the past, but I did write a lot of fics I’m proud of, and stories that people enjoyed, and I loved every second of it. I even got to try out a few new fandoms this year I haven’t written for before! I’m getting a lot better at being okay with not producing content 24/7, and this year was honestly really good for that for me. I wrote about 165,000 words this year, and I crossed the 1 million word mark on my AO3, so even though it wasn’t as much as I did in previous years it was still a TON and a big milestone year all the same! <3 

I didn’t write as much because I spent the last half of the year travelling long distance to visit my partner every weekend, but on the plus side of that, I got to listen to a ton of audiobooks while driving and hit my reading goal of 30 books for the year! 

Long time no talk, since my past few Fridays involved travel and visiting Emryn, so I haven’t been around as often as I used to be on the weekends and these just keep slipping my mind. Life is busy, but good! Spent last weekend with Em at their family’s lake cabin and honestly I never wanted to leave, it was such a nice little getaway <3 Work is about to get a bit more stressful with all the college kids going back, which means we’re about to be understaffed again. More money for me, but only because it’ll be more shifts with bigger sections so ya girl is about to be anxiety central for a little while. Oof. 

Reading-wise, sure am taking a hit there lately. I think I might have to switch up the sort of books I’ve been reading, or maybe read a few shorter ones to get back into the swing of things, because I’m just struggling to finish anything I get lately and then I have to return it, and put it back on hold to pick up where I left off (because I get everything from the library fjkdlsfjklds). 

Writing-wise, most of this month has just been poking around at my Shadowhunters Bang fic, the rough draft of which I’m finishing at the midnight hour of having done today to post next weekend! Between that and being away to visit my partner literally every weekend for the past 3 weeks since we started dating I haven’t been writing as much, but I’m hoping once the bang fic is polished up and out of the way it’ll free my brain for the dozen other ideas I’ve had bouncing around lately! (On the plus side, it’ll be around 15k and if I manage to also finish the coda fic I’m behind on and the one from this week, I should clear my 20k posting goal for the month!) 

Reading-wise, I’m almost done with Ruin and Rising! Then it’ll be onto Six of Crows! Not going to lie, I’m kind of impressed that I’ve managed to hold off on watching the show so far because the temptation was strong, but I really wanted to read the series first and I’m sticking to it! I also have the audiobook of One Last Stop that I’m listening to while driving or doing chores around the apartment, and I should finish that pretty soon, too. 

Writing-wise, I think I might actually hit 20k of posting fic this month, at least if I can keep up the momentum I have going right now.  I posted 4 fics this past week! I’ve been writing daily and using Camp NaNoWriMo to keep me accountable, and actually getting some of these super old Whumptober drafts out of my docs and polished up to post, finally! On top of that I’m working on my Bang fic, and a few new ideas I’ve had on my mind that I can’t shake, so hopefully lots of content to come soon!