NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon Of The Day - Day 10 - Just Keep Writing

The Timeless story Finding Light in the Darkness by Ultra is a wholesome, 19th century AU tale that features Lucy & Garcia unashamedly falling in love.

It is a story of found family - of choosing where and with whom you make your home in the world. It's a sweet & lovely tale. Iris is precocious & the ten-year-old knows what she's doing. Jiya & Rufus are sweet (as can be considering the backstory for Rufus that luckily gets resolved). Karl makes his appearance & Lucy's journal is featured.

(Interesting sidenote: it made me think how in the show we see lots of evidence of Lucy having written (her journal & books) but we never really see her put pen to paper & record her thoughts. Found that intriguing.)

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 16: ML Appreciation Day

It's Municipal Liaison Appreciation Day! Time to show some heartfelt appreciation to all our wonderful volunteers who facilitate our NaNo communities. Everyone who organizes Write-Ins, who hosts and moderates a forum or server, sends carepackages and encouragements: thank you! What I love about NaNo is the self-challenge and the call to creativity, as well as the feeling of community: how all of us are writing our own stories on our own and yet together.

Day 16: ML Appreciation Day

Who would you like to show special appreciation to today? Send some virtual flowers? A surprise plotbunny? A lovable raptor? A nice message filled with kind words?

Lucy Writes Her Journal

One of the things that fascinates me is that Lucy Preston was a writer yet we hardly ever saw her write and try to process in the show Timeless, and subsequently few fanfics show it, even when canonically, she wrote the journal that put everything in motion as well as multiple books. I love reading about those moments when Lucy sits down and researches and writes, and I love reading about the journal.

I've seen many takes on what the journal contained, and I enjoy the few screenshots that seem to highlight talk of specific historical events.

In this picture, she's got pages of notes to help her craft the journal. It's a period in time that fascinates me and I'm intrigued by the thought of the active deliberation that went into it.

Hope y'all enjoy this picture too. It was a fun artistic experiment - I love playing with various styles.

Now also on AO3

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 26: Visualize Your Story

Have you made any fanart yet? Drawings of what your characters look like? Maps of where they live? Favourite childhood memories that bring joy when they resurface in a moment of struggle? We are all inherently creative and I love how NaNo encourages us to embrace it in the broad sense of the world. Whether you make art by drawing, by writing, crochet or sculpting or something else entirely, we are all artists together.

Day 26: Visualize Your Story

When you are stuck on storytelling, it can help to draw a map. Where are your characters now? Where would they like to go? What obstacles do they face in their paths and what shortcuts are available to them? Like your NaNo writing: your drawings don’t need to be pretty or polished - a first sketch, like a first draft, just needs to exist.

If your characters are fighting you: challenge them to draw the way out themselves! Have them sketch their heist or adventure. Allow them to get nice and messy with paint to express themselves or perhaps lament that they stopped drawing past childhood and wish they could embrace their inner artists again. Have them pick up a pencil and explore the absolute FUN that embracing creativity brings and renew it in yourself. For we are in final days of this creative madness. And we are still here! We can do this. Put your pencil to paper and create!

NaNoWriMo - My Cartoon of the Day - Day 13: Draw From the Well of Creativity

There's a concept called "An Artist's Date":* where you plan a date with yourself to refill your artistic well of creativity. For some, that's visiting a museum, or playing around with pencils or crayons, or taking a walk in nature, or crocheting nice warm dragon scale mittons for winter. Treat you inner artist to a fun, engaging experience that will spark your imagination & inspiration!

Day 13: Draw From the Well of Creativity

During NaNo, we draw heavily from our well! Is the creativity still flowing nicely? Take stock, replenish it & draw upon its stores! Are you inspired by your story? Your characters? Let them experience your walk through their senses! Send them on a mission to indulge their passions! What nourishes your & their inner artists? 

*From Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. She recommends scheduling an Artist's Date regularly to grant yourself the time to refill your well of creativity.

The Timeless AU Incandescent & Adolescent (Wonders Never Cease) from @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels is a light-hearted, sweet & familiar story.

She Loves Me AU: Garcia Flynn and Lucy Preston have resented each other from their first meeting. Absolutely, one hundred percent, no warm feelings whatsoever, resented each other. Good thing they’ve each got a wonderful pen pal to whom they can pour their heart out. …oh wait.

The 30s setting, the awkward formality in language, the letters as a reimagining of the journal, all the banter, the humorous supporting roles of Rufus & Jiya, Jess & Wyatt, and gentle support from Mason... it's sweet. The stakes are smaller than whole of Rittenhouse, but still very personal: someone is embezzling from Denise's shop the gang works at.

It's a fun little story to read when I want something uplifting & something that brings a smile to my face.

The Temeraire story The Diplomat's Dragon by indecisive_lotus is such a joy to read.

For those unfamiliar with the Temeraire books by Naomi Novik: it's the Napoleonic wars with dragons and it's marvelous. Arthur Hammond is a diplomat who gets unwittingly & initially unwillingly adopted by an Incan dragon named Churki. As he's been strongly encouraged to retire at the end of the series, he's now run out of excuses to introduce Churki to his family.

Throughout this entire story he's essentially fighting a losing battle to Churki & his mother who outmanouver & outsmart the fiercesome diplomat. It's hilarious to behold how Hammond finds himself at a loss and fails to see the traps he falls into, while still wanting to maintain his decorum & social graces.

The language of the story mimics that of the period and the social context of the time is well-represented and thought out.

I enjoy the humor of this story, the increasing desperation of Hammond, the character portrayals. Churki is very in character, and, as a massive dragon, knows when to adopt the customs of the English gentry when it suits her, but also how to completely ignore them when it suits her purposes better.

Mrs Carter is an intriguing dragon's companion. I look forward to reading more of this story & how it develops, for it's been wonderful to spend more time with these characters.

NaNoWriMo – My Cartoon of the Day – Day 23: Just Keep Writing

We are approaching our final week! Are you flying yet with your story well advanced? Or does it feel you are slowly crawling your way up a mountain? Regardless of where you are: we can keep writing and even crawling is progress. If you need to rest for a bit to lick your scrabbed knees: enjoy the view and remember the view from the summit will be even sweeter. An empty page cannot be edited and having gotten this far: we can make it to the final stretch. One more week to go till we can enjoy the satisfaction of having made it to the finish line.

Day 23: Just Keep Writing

Remember to take a breath and look around at this glorious experience. When the sweat drips from your brow, your legs hurt and your shoulders chafe from the backpack: there is pleasure to be had in facing the experience head-on and living life to the fullest. Likewise with our stories: there can be hardship in committing those words to paper, but the experience of having done so will stay with you. Stand up straight. Stretch your body. Drink a sip of water. And Just Keep Writing! We can do this.

This year, I rediscovered the absolute joys of reading fanfiction. Exploring characters I love in so many different stories and combinations and settings. It is helping me process this year and rediscover things I find important. Fiction has always meant a lot to me, and I'm feeling the urge to be creative again myself.

So, I decided to start engaging in fandom again by sketchnoting my reactions to some of my favourite stories. (At least for as long as it is fun).

My first sketchnote is in honour of the marvelous @sallyexactly whose Timeless stories I've fallen in love with. The Only Way Out - which I first read over Easter and I now lost count on the rereads - is my favourite headcanon for how the series ended.

But the very first story I read by Sally was The Road Ode. It even inspired me to take a mini roadtrip myself this year (in Europe with very few coronacases & lots of measures).

So, without further ado:

The stories by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels have entertained me, amused me and kept me up late. Mads is a prolific writer and I've thoroughly enjoyed reading her work on Timeless and then continued with her work in other fandoms that I haven't actually seen. She's well-known for her explicit smut, garcyatt and such, but she's also exquisite in writing alternate universe stories. Taking characters we well know & love and placing them in different timeperiods & settings in intriguing ways.

The short story The Gutter and The Stars by @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels (story also available on Tumblr) features Oscar Wilde, 19th century language and intriguing imagery. It's short, and humorous: Flynn as the inspiration for Dorian Gray.