What creative projects have you been working on?

I received feedback from my second alpha reader for my manuscript/draft. Assuming I can finish my side/practice thing (which somehow has exploded to 60k), I'll get start on Draft 2 this weekend.

I was a little disappointed by the first reader's feedback. While there was good feedback I can incorporate, it was very micro and limited. The second reader's feedback is far more substantial. They pointed out some higher level areas to make changes, what worked/didn't, and things that felt not great.

I was most surprised by some of the feedback I didn't receive. I expected to hear very strongly that my opening was too weak. While the first reader pointed out one, especially slow, segment in the second chapter, the second reader seemed to enjoy the character depth that the pace allowed. I have one character I was worried is fairly trite in terms of representation (LGBT) but they were well received, the only major feedback from my second reader (who is LGBT themselves) was a lack of closure for the character at the end of the book.

I was actually feeling pretty confident with the direction I wanted to take Draft 2 before now. I was thinking I'd do a focus on plot, cut the scenes and themes that aren't relevant to it, and take a step back from the strict narrative structure I have in place. That would allow me to bring the first action-heavy chapter closer to the beginning and really eliminate everything that isn't the story. The cost would be some degree of world-building and character exploration. Now I'm considering if I should instead do a micro-level pass where I buckle down on superfluous scenes and wordiness, as well as incorporating the specific items of feedback, but without those larger changes.

This weekend I expect I'll read the feedback more thoroughly and then re-read my draft before deciding. It's been over a month since I finished it, so I'm hopeful I'm far enough removed now to really take a scalpel to it.

After a decade, I finally have a computer I can record music with. I have the demo for a great idea tracked out, but now I’m trying to tighten everything up and am running into perfectionist problems.

The demo sounded so great, and has a raw feeling that I want to keep in the final song. The recorded tracks for that demo had pops and clicks/artifacts that I just don’t want in the polished track which after re-recording has lost some of that original feel.

I want to be free with it all, but it’s a juggling game of what’s realistic, and what sounds best.

Dunno! Maybe I’m just being too hard on it. I don’t have a pro set up so my limitations can be… limiting. Home studio!

I just reactivated my Mixcloud account, since it is the last place left on the entire internet where one can upload music under the radio streaming license rules. That means anything goes and there are no takedowns. Sounds Vintage #9 and #10 are finally, officially, done at last and uploaded in glorious .flac quality with proper editing as of this morning. If you are short on long, multi-genre cartwheels filled with Keter-class earworms that beat anything the radio has seen in two decades, you're in luck. Still need to get #11 done and rework #13 up to the 2h56min (4xVinyl) format, and then the mixtape royal flush is complete. I was thinking about making separate posts for them but I think I've spammed people on Tildes with enough of my music already. ;)

I am continually trying to chip away at the game I'm developing, currently tackling some writing and working on the functional parts to trigger game events/updates during dialogue.
Unfortunately I've been running into some frustrating crashing issues with godot that I think are related to wayland / my desktop environment which have meant that my recent attempts to get anything done have been mostly troubleshooting rather than development.

The game itself is a sidescrolling platformer / cozy game where you play as a cat who delivers mail to other animals around the city. I've got a lot of the foundational stuff in place, but writing has proven a bit of a blocker. I'd like to think I'm a decent writer, but it's also not something I've done much of, and I've always struggled with dialogue. The nature of the game means that essentially all the writing is dialogue, and it's been triggering all of my worst procrastination / avoidance tendencies, which creates a sort of feedback loop where I ultimately make very little progress, even on the non-writing aspects of the game.

My intent is to take a full month or so off work at the end of this year / start of next year that I can dedicate to "full time" development, but hopefully I will be able to make some progress before then.

More 3D printing! It's been fun. Created a cover for something in the house, printed some stands for foam board, printed a new version of the handle/holder for an Aeropress cap I made to use as a DIY "melodrip" water distribution tool for pourover coffee. Looking around and considering other parts that would be useful for me. Considering doing a mount for a couple of USB-ended PC fans to use for cooling my modem/router area, etc.

Trying to look at every problem that needs solved or any quality of life improvements I can make anywhere in my life where a 3D print could come in handy.

While simple "trinkets" and things are occasionally fun, I don't want to print a lot of those kinds of things unless they're for a particular purpose.