minatika

minatika

Avid reader and bird watcher that uses too many emojis in her comments 👍

Mostly Offline // Reading Only

My current writing projects are focused on publication so I can't post them online ❤️ If you like my work, please wish me luck as I try to become an author.

registered at: Jun 02, 2023
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    Finalist - MAL x Honeyfeed Writing Contest 2023



    Jan 04, 2024

    **Original Author's Note** for followers who read this story during the contest (copied here since I removed it from the chapter!)

    Hey there! :D This is a bonus chapter of some cut content for Mia and Toren’s backstory. Just this section alone ended up being ~2,000 words and a little too long for the flow of the story.

    Now that the contest is over, I plan on making a few edits and touch-ups to the story, especially sections that got cut the most due to time constraints and word limitations! (No more 1.5k limit? YES PLEASE.)

    I fully plan to submit Love Sorceress in other places :D so I may take it down from HF at some point if necessary. I’ll try to give advance notice if that happens!

    Thank you again to everyone who read and supported this story! And the fan artists ;) you know who you are!!! 💖

    As for future projects, I’m not in a place right now where I can have the luxury of writing for hobby. My current novels are all written to be self-published, or to submit to agents for official publishing in the USA market. So due to the copyright around that, I can’t post these on HF or other webnovel sites.

    But I will stick around to support my fellow authors here!! I almost feel like a weight has been lifted, and I feel a lot lighter when I log in now, knowing I don’t have a contest looming over me 🤣 Also, I will be probably making accounts with other webnovel sites so I can read works elsewhere, so let me know if any of you post your works on other locations so I can check them out! (I do still have a backlog of non-contest novels to catch up on though 👀)

    Let me know what’s currently inspiring you! What’s the next story on YOUR horizon? Or what books/stories are you looking forward to reading? I’m always looking ahead, and onto the next project!! 👍 And I hope you are too!

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    Love Sorceress Cover Art (Purple Edition!)
    With a Love Sorceress I'll Make My Romance Last!
    Chapter:41


    Dec 19, 2023

    To:Craftable

    Mia and Toren bonus chapter!!! :D It is a little short, since the chapter was mainly based on cut content from the original story – I changed what I originally wrote and shaped it up to be more stand-alone 👍 but I didn’t really have the inspiration to make it longer or do my usual level of editing and finesse-ing 🤣 since I'm still a little sad about the loss.

    The fact that you’re looking forward to what I create still means so much to me ❤️ Since I’m trying for publishing, it indeed might be awhile before anything I write becomes available (sadly 🥲) But I think it’s worth my time to try x) if I could become an author for my career, then I could write even MORE than I do now!
    Aaaand if it ends up that I can’t become a full-time author…well, I’ll have a HUGE backlog of stories to post online 🥲

    Honestly I love that you’ve taken the “magic as shapes” system and you’ve been able to turn it into inspiration for your own world-building!! I didn’t really get to explore that magic idea much in Love Sorceress, but the idea is incredibly fascinating to me – and I know that with your interpretation, it’ll turn into something really unique and new that I would have never imagined! Excited to see it! :D

    Genshin and Runescape 🤣 two of the greatest distractions ever! (Keep me away. If I log in to my old Runescape account I won’t return for months.) I hope your move went well, and that the winter isn’t TOO harsh in Canada!! I’m also in a bit of an uninspired rut right now in terms of reading/writing (I swear, all my inspiration went into the crazy summer rush xD) but I hope to catch up with your Nym rewrites soon <3 I bet they're awesome! :bee_wheart:

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    Love Sorceress Cover Art (Purple Edition!)
    With a Love Sorceress I'll Make My Romance Last!
    Chapter:41

    Dec 19, 2023

    To:SynphonyKnight

    Author’s note and bonus chapter all in one!! :D I had most of this chapter written during the contest, but it ended up getting cut for pacing reasons. (It would have been placed right at a pivotal point before the Festival arc, and sadly because of that, the backstory felt like a slowdown to the overall pacing so it got cut.) I always planned to shape it up and turn it into a stand-alone bonus chapter, regardless of what happened with the contest!

    Freedom from the 1.5k curse is fantastic, and I’m really looking forward to seeing more long-form writers get to showcase their skills that we didn’t get to see in the contest!! I’m usually more of a 5k to 10k chapter kind of person. I think the contest helped me learn how to be concise and not make chapters longer than necessary (very important!) But I really, REALLY missed the ability to truly describe scenery, delve into deep world-building, craft crazy-complex magic systems – basically, all the fun things that come with longer-form writing 🤣
    So from that standpoint, I’m excited for your world-building process, even if it might feel a bit like procrastination (I know that exact feeling.) But it’ll definitely cause your writing to be stronger with a well-crafted world as its basis :D

    Also if you have a game dev background, I totally recommend writing a short Visual Novel! I made one myself last year using Ren.Py and it was really a worthwhile experience. Though Ren.Py (and Python in general) have their limits. I might recommend using another engine or possibly creating your own, depending on your time/coding experience.
    I think I wrote around 15,000 words in a multi-branching story path, with some dating-sim like elements as well as a basic item inventory (so I had to code a point system that would pay attention to the user’s choices, as well as creating a very rudimentary inventory system that would change flags depending on the items in the user’s possession.) I then made the Character Art (with changing facial expressions), as well as Background Art -- though I admit to using some AI generated backgrounds towards the end, as I got lazy and never intended on publishing this. 🤣 The whole thing probably took me around four months, with about 80 or so working hours during that time. For your first VN, I would definitely recommend keeping the word count shorter than you think! I originally wanted to do something double or triple the 15k length, and quickly discovered that once I added Words + Art + Character Expressions + Animations + Branching Paths + Coding…just a small word count could become a HUGE project!

    Okay, sorry, went on a tangent there about VNs 😆 but again, thank you so much for supporting LS!! You’ll definitely still see this novel around the contest scene >:D I’m not giving up yet!

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    Love Sorceress Cover Art (Purple Edition!)
    With a Love Sorceress I'll Make My Romance Last!
    Chapter:41



    Dec 19, 2023

    To:Taylor J

    Bonus chapters are always a favorite of mine, because they’re often a chance to get to show sides of the characters that (for one reason or another) the main plotline doesn’t give time to showcase! Like in The Rings of Love, your bonus chapter really got to show more sides to Luna and Walden!! I wanted to do the same kind of thing here with Mia and Toren, since some of their character building got sidelined to make sure the story stayed focused on the main couple 😅

    Oh woah!! I never knew the Shield Hero novels were THAT high in word count 😱 I’m amazed they even call that a “Light” novel! That’s really cool! Also good to know that the publishing industry in Japan supports longer novels 🤣 right now, I’m fighting the publishing industry here in the USA that doesn’t even want to LOOK at a novel over 150,000 (and sadly mine is sitting around 170k. I must cut!!) But holiday plans and life stuff has been distracting me too. Looking forward to the new year!!

    I do want to read the main series you’re posting, whether it’s here on HF or elsewhere :D I am way slower now with reading now though, so it may take me a little bit 😂 I honestly don’t know how I found the effort to read/comment so much during the contest (I think I was running on some crazy inspired energy or something. Also. A LOT of coffee.)

    Regarding chapter lengths: Honestly I think 1,500 words was nice as a *reader* (I was never worried a chapter would be too long) but as an *author* I felt very crunched by that limit. Personally, 1,700 ~ 2,000 words felt like a better comfort zone, so I’m aiming for that with my future projects.
    👍

    Thanks again for reading x) and you'll definitely see me around!

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    1
    Love Sorceress Cover Art (Purple Edition!)
    With a Love Sorceress I'll Make My Romance Last!
    Chapter:41