Since I’m eschewing social media for a few months (maybe more!) to protect my peace and my emotional health, I decided to do my writing updates/accountability etchings in a new blog posts category. I do have offline accountability notes in physical journals etc but it’s nice to have these blog posts archived particularly since I don’t want this blog to run too fallow. It’s also good for readers to know what I’m doing, I guess. I’ll probably update my music-learning stuff here as well.
July-August Updates
- I submitted 8 separate things in July, and that makes a total of 30 submissions (short fiction) so far in 2025, which resulted in three hold notices, some pending submissions, and some rejections.
- I had my first short fiction acceptance in five years (!!) and have signed the contract and sent back corrected proofs but unsure when it will be published.
- Working on my first collection, Tower of the Rosewater Goblet but because of work and health-related matters, I’m very far behind right now. I’ve also been forced to do my own cover from scratch for it because the cover for which I already paid in full was AI-adjacent (I only discovered this later; I was assured that it was human-made). All of these delays are regrettable but inevitable (I’m trying not to think too much about how much money I lost because when I do, I get really upset). If you’re also an indie author I advise you to do more rigorous due diligence because we can’t take things at face value anymore. You may think a graphics studio doing royalty-free art is using 3D-imaging/vector programmes which are human-made but the slop-rot is deep and many have capitulated. The silver lining about this is that I am also a visual artist, one who has let her art rust for years. Now, I’m forced to practice and do better. And it’s good for my soul in ways I cannot quantify. Sometime in the future I may write a post about the ways in which all three main aspects of my creativity (writing, visual art, music) cannot be divorced from each other and the fact that doing so only creates a kind of ontological wound for me.
- Revising a novella to submit. There are three open calls for novellas right now and I think it’s time to venture to more traditional publication because I cannot rely on indie-pub alone. Plus, I already have professional publications street cred so I shouldn’t sell myself short.
- Making a list of agents because by 2027 I will be querying another novel for traditional publication.
- Wrote my first poem of 2025. I think it’s pretty awesome, if I say so myself.
August-September Goals
Academic
- Submit 3 academic articles.
- Submit the proposal for the Star Wars academic collection I’m writing with my PhD supervisees.
- Finish writing up a PhD examiner’s report. Literally my main order of business for today. This blog post is helping me focus/calm my panic-stricken brain, haha.
- Write another chapter of my hauntology monograph. I really need to finish this damn thing.
Creative
- Write a minimum of 5 poems.
- Finish a minimum of 1 short story. Any short story.
- Finish editing and submitting that hikayat-based novella.
- Finish the Beneath the Unicorn Moon novella for Tower of the Rosewater Goblet.
- Send eArcs of Tower of the Rosewater Goblet to blurbsgivers.
- Continue working on the cover for Tower of the Rosewater Goblet. Mostly mock-ups and doing physical art (watercolours).
- Submit: a minimum of 5 fiction things and 5 poetry things (I have not submitted poetry in years).
- Blog weekly on all three main blogs (this blog: Scriptorium Mythica, Bibliotheca Luminis, and Growing Fins). I want to meet my goal of 40-50 blog posts in 2025.
Music Studies
- Classical Guitar exams prep for my much-delayed Grade 6 (which I was supposed to sit in 2022 before I injured my spine). This is the year. I feel like I am stuck in Groundhog Day, practising the same pieces again and again when I want to gallop through to Grades 7-8. I pine for the Grade 7 pieces so I have to get this done against all of the various life/work/health interruptions.
- Prep to return to piano lessons between Sept-October after I submit my exam video. I don’t want to be completely rusty, heh. Although, I need to get my piano tuned up and repaired as well. One of the keys keeps getting stuck when I do my Hanon drills up and down the keyboard.
Published in Petaling, Selangor, Malaysia, AUGUST 2025