November 2024: Keep On, Keeping On

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to That Writing Month. Whether you’re doing NaNo or have jumped ship to one of the many, many fantastic writing events on Bluesky and the other socials out there, I wish you the best of luck on this month of writing.

As for me, it’s been a wild month on a personal level. Not all of it has been great, but you know how it is: you do your best, hang on, and eventually, you come out with a good story—or at least a happy ending.

On that note, let’s dive right in, shall we?

Writing Update

So you’ll likely notice a couple of things. First, I’m crossposting this update to Beehiiv (sign-up here!) to test the waters of that platform, mostly because I like the fact that only subscribers can see updates. (Very handy for marketing reasons!) If you’ve subscribed to Substack, you don’t need to re-subscribe at Beehiiv, as I’ve already imported your contact. Also, apologies for the double-dip. Everyone else, please be sure to subscribe over at Beehiiv, as future updates will be over there.

The other thing you’ll probably notice is that there is no promised sign-up form for the beta read for The Nameless Song. I apologize for missing yet another deadline, but as it turns out, the revision is getting heftier than originally planned. We’re halfway through the book, yes, but I’ve decided to straight-up rewrite a full-on third of the manuscript. This is because I’ve started planning The Dragons’ Valse (second book in the series), and a lot of the story beats I have in mind are rehashes of beats in the first book. And given that TNS is 40 thousand words over what’s sensible for a fantasy book, why hammer the outline of TDV into place when I could just cut storylines out of this book and paste them into the next one?

So that’s the story. I’m shifting storybeats around and coming out with a stronger (and hopefully shorter!) first book, which means I need a little more time before we get to the whole beta thing. I’m planning on using this month to write the revisions, and hopefully, by December, we’ll finally be ready. But of course, keep an eye on your inbox for updates. I might even make a mid-month update if I’m going fast enough.

Finally, to motivate myself to continue revising words, I’ve started a twice-a-week YouTube livestream: Night Writes, 8 pm to whenever, every Thursday, Friday, and potential extra days (as announced on Bluesky). Come join us to chat, vibe to lofi beats, write, or listen to me edit/ramble/rubber duck at you. It’s a fun little place full of lofi vibes and the drone of my voice, and hey—free previews of whatever I’m working on. Just look up jaxwolffwrites on YouTube.

Looking Forward

November
I’m simultaneously tackling 30 Days, 30 Lines and First Draft Fall on Bluesky while running word sprints on Night Writes. It’s a lot of juggling, sure, but I adamantly do not celebrate American Thanksgiving, and anyway, anything to slam through TNS revisions. :’)

December
Revisions continue here, unless I somehow manage to smash through the rest of the story in under a month. (I mean, I only have 30k to work with right now, so probably.) Which is to say, beta read will very likely open up here.

January
Still planning on tackling Starting Off Write with the draft zero of The Dragons’ Valse.

February
Assuming the beta read is still going on (I plan on letting it go until April), I’ll be taking a break after wrapping up TDV’s draft zero to focus on putting together a query packet for TNS, cleaning up the socials for pitch events, and maybe setting up an author’s website at long last.

Line of the Month

Bringing back a classic, because you know I’d edited That Part this month:

Lore of the Month

If you’ve been lurking on Bluesky, you might have seen a long thread about magic in the world of The Nameless Song. If you haven’t been lurking on Bluesky, don’t worry! Here it is!

In the world of The Nameless Song, magic is in everything. I don’t just mean socially; I mean literally, there is magical essence in everything. It even has a name: lumina.

There’s a long lore-heavy story as to why this is, but this magical essence is divided into four domains, which is then divided loosely into three elements each. In other words, there are twelve elements and four domains, in this order:

• SOLAR DOMAIN: Fire, light, time

• TERRESTRIAL DOMAIN: Earth, wood, blood (i.e., healing magic)

• CELESTIAL DOMAIN: Wind, lightning, heart (mind/spirit magic)

• LUNAR DOMAIN: Water, shadow, space

Other than a couple with less intuitive names (noted above), these elements control exactly what they sound like they control, as well as concepts that might be related to the element in question. For example, water controls water, but it’s also used for summoning storms, controlling ice, weaving water breathing spells, and so forth.

Everyone is born with their lumina aligned to one of these elements. This element is then called a person’s “native element,” and it’s passed down to them by one of their parents—which one tends to be random. To learn additional elements, a mage will typically start with the other two elements in their domain, then move on to the elements of either adjacent domain. A water mage, for example, will learn shadow and space magic, then move on to either fire or wind, depending on their preferences. They wouldn’t jump to earth, as jumping across the wheel from lunar to terrestrial magic tends to take a lot more time and effort spent on hardcore studying than most mages are willing to expend.

Of course, most mages tend to learn the other magics in their domains and end there, if they feel up for it. Most people don’t make a career out of learning magic, after all, so there’s no reason to learn all twelve elements. That and learning all twelve tends to destabilize one’s lumina and turn one into a walking magical firework that’s liable to go off at any time, so it’s actually heavily encouraged to stick with one element.

Only two groups of people don’t follow the above magical rules. First, clerics. Clerics, as part of their pacts with their gods, are given the element of their god to use. So if your native element is time, you can be given access to wind magic, courtesy of your god. You’ll also be given heart magic to assist with your religious shepherding duties, even if your god isn’t otherwise aligned with the celestial domain.

The other group are the voidwells. This group gets its name from the fact that the store of lumina within every living being is called a luminous well, but within a voidwell, any lumina that might be in said well is, you guessed it, void. Or inert, more politely put. Or to put it more accurately, a voidwell has enough magical essence to live, but it’s extremely difficult to nigh impossible for them to use that essence to perform magic. (Note: Most voidwells can use a limited amount of basic spells, but usually, a considerable amount of effort is needed on their part to do so. This is why Mick, in his human form, can only perform magic while playing music, usually vigorously. As lumina reacts favorably to music, any ordinary mage would rely on songs to boost their magical potency, but a voidwell like Mick uses music to rouse the barest hints of magic they possess.)

How voidwells become voidwells is not particularly well understood (some are born that way, while others, like Mick, lose their magic over time), but one thing is for certain: in a world where it’s considered normal and expected for someone to weave magic, those who can’t have been dealt a terrible hand indeed.