(.·" Literature is the beautiful lie that tells the truth.(.·"

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
—Robert Frost

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” — Ira Glass

o o o

Want to just talk about books with me or get recommendations on what to read? I'm on Goodreads as bloodredrosez. I've gone through a lot of YA fiction. I'm an avid reader and I love getting recs from people too. I'm also over on Archive Of Our Own now as bloodredrosez

I'm not dead, I've just been bogged down with real life. Work has been very busy, my personal life has had some milestones (good ones, don't worry), and I'm at an age where I feel like I can no longer mess around and really have to start figuring out the rest of my life, you know? But everything is harder because of the uncertainty of these times.

I have also finally jumped on the Mo Dao Zu Shi train and it's going real fast. I ended up reading the novel by MXTX before I ever watched The Untamed, but suffice to say that I'll probably be active over on AO3 because the last time I loved something this dearly was Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms and that was a full 3 years ago.

Hope everyone is still safe and healthy. It's been a hard year all around. I've learned a lot about myself and I'm grateful every day for what I do and what I have.

As I mentioned before, despite the quarantines and pandemic, not much has changed for me in terms of having more free time because I work in a hospital. But the truth is that I've just been very unmotivated to write and I'm just trying to get back into it.

Drama recommendations: Eternal Love/Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (my GOAT drama and I'm trash for the book, plagiarism and all), Surgeons (I must be the only one in the entire fandom), Arsenal Military Academy.

o o o

To find the Chinese translation of BRR, Google the story title and "TieBa" since no longer allows direct links in profiles. I don't think the translators ever finished but IIRC they got up to at least chapter 15. There is also a German translation out there somewhere and a French one, but I lost contact with the translators.

All my DBSK fics can be found under bloodredrosez @ livejournal

Anita Blake fics: Elysian Dreams @ Pomme de Sang or its sister archive for selected authors, Sourdre de Sang. NC-17 material. As of late 2019 it seems that Pomme de Sang and Sourdre de Sang have been shut down, I don't know why and I'm not sure if the archive will ever be up again as no one seems to know why they were taken offline. I've reposted The Art of the Fugue over at AO3.

Ephemeral Dreams @ FictionPress (haven't posted anything new for over a decade though)