#gonzague

picrew link

ty @gonzague-if for letting me refine and cook an old oc i had laying on my shelf!

this is léonor, but he also goes by philippe de gonzague. a pansexual cis man. romance undecided; possibly peyrolles or nevers. more chaotic neutral than anything. stupidly ambitious but also has a conscience.

basically, he's what happens when you mix vicomte de valmont from liaisons dangereuses and julien sorel from le rouge et le noir, and a product of my continuous love for pretty french assholes and byronic heroes.

Hello everyone!

I’m sorry, it’s been a long time. I should have written an update last week but I was simply not feeling up to it. Not that I had any bad news or anything.

On the contrary, I was able to write every day throughout my vacation and that led me to finally finish Nevers’s scene. The whole thing is chunky, 30k words alone, bringing chapter 2 to 45k words already. And I still have a handful of scenes to write to wrap up the chapter.

The only problem is that my mental health has taken a dip for weeks now and I’m feeling exhausted. I’ve taken a break from writing since I’ve come back, I was not in a great environment to keep working anyway. I can only hope things will improve soon, as much as they can.

My goal now is to switch to 8YR and start outlining chapter 3. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get started to be honest. Maybe today if I feel up to it. I do want to get back to work, feeling unproductive has not really helped things. Or maybe I need to find ways of taking it easy that make me feel better instead of worse. If anyone has suggestions, I would love to hear them!

In fact, I’m considering making a self-care bingo card lol. It’s something I’ve seen on YouTube recently and I thought it was a great idea (I watch Kate Cavanaugh’s videos for writing inspiration, if anyone is curious).

@gonzague-if living in my head rent free <3

Hello everyone and happy new year!

I’ve kicked off the new year by entering @interact-if’s non-ranked game jam. So it’s going to be my main focus for all of January. I would love to be able to work on 8YR and Gonzague at the same time, but writing a whole game in a month is already a lot. But I’m excited about it! I’m not sure the game will be entirely done by the end of January, but the plan is to have it playable from start to finish by then. I think it’ll do me some good to have a finished game on such short notice, even if I have to take some extra time to polish it. Plus, I think I needed to think about something entirely different for a while.

I’m thinking of posting a little intro post for my game jam entry soon, but I’m not sure how to go about it yet. I don’t want to make a new blog for something that will be in development for such a short time. And as Gonzague becomes a more and more serious project, I’m starting to wonder if I should eventually make a blog for it or make the 8YR blog a central hub for all my projects. If you guys have preferences about that, please let me know!

* vieille version *  ⎢ * Nouvelle version en plus grand *

C’est l’heure des 700 différences ! o/ 😭

Hello!

Sorry about the lack of update last week. As mentioned in my post about the Patreon billing pause, I’m struggling with mental fatigue at the moment, so I’m focusing my efforts on the bare minimum, which is working on the stories themselves. Writing updates for the blog can take more energy than I have to spare so it’s not a priority for now.

But I’ve made progress on 8YR chapter 3 during the past two weeks. About as much as usual. I try to write 500 words a day and so far I’ve managed to keep up with that pace. I’m still working on Armine’s introduction to the story, which will keep me busy for a while, as it is the main event of this chapter.

It’s been harder editing and coding Nevers’s scene for Gonzague, however. I try to do a little bit of it when I feel up to it, but it’s not progressing as well as I would like. Part of it is that I prioritize drafting, so I have little energy left after writing to edit and code. But another part of it is that I’m not feeling very enthusiastic about my writing at the moment. I’m sure it’s a feeling all writers go through and that’s likely exacerbated by exhaustion.

I’ll do my best to go easy on myself in the coming weeks. I do have some life stuff coming up that will get in the way of writing, so there will be some ups and downs, for sure. But I’m hoping taking more breaks and trying to refill the well by reading, playing games, watching movies, etc. will help with things.

Hello!

I’ve started feeling better this week and I’m writing again, which is a relief. I’ve decided to try out a new routine, both to be more productive and to accommodate my needs. Instead of doing only drafting or only editing/coding for an extended period of time, I’m doing both every day: drafting when my brain is still fresh in the morning and editing/coding in the afternoon when my brain has a harder time focusing.

Turns out I can get a lot more done that way. I still have the same goal of writing 500 words each morning and I edit and code 5 passages every afternoon on top of that. Which means the Nevers scene for Gonzague is coming along nicely and I started to code Lonnie’s interrogation scene for Better Off.

Drafting-wise, it’s starting to look like the scene with nevers will be longer than the one with Chartres, with a wider amount of variations. But I’m happy with it, I’ve had a lot of fun writing some very dramatic moments lol.

As for Better Off, I just finished the interrogation scene proper today and will start on the aftermath scene next. I’m trying to mark off where I will need to add variations later on, but the first version of the scene shouldn’t take too long to code.

I hope to continue at the same pace next week and I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.