I've got two long-term projects I'm working on currently. One is a queer post-cyberpunk roadtrip across a post-US North America. It's on what feels like the thousandth iteration, but I've got the plot outline complete and am about a third of the way through a first draft. It's been in kind of a holding pattern for a while though because I discovered a critical plot hole that will require a full rewrite of what's already been written and I'm not in love with the very flat style it's developed along the way.

The other project is more nebulous. It's sort of a philosophy-informed examination of Utopia, humanity's innate violent nature, and the destabilizing forcing driving the split-reality-misinformation apocalypse. It will ultimately be a series of related essays on aspects of the topic, written as a web-zine survival guide.

As far as style goes, I've been writing long enough that I've developed my own style and voice. I have my own idiosyncrasies such as using hyphens to make german-style compound words and using my own lexicon for flavor, but also specificity. I never really wanted to copy anyone else's style. I'm not super well read either, which gets in the way of my roadtrip novel quite often. I have trouble switching between narration and action or dialog so elegant, flowing prose is not something I'm great at.

For vocabulary I have a good memory for words so I generally have a smattering of compelling words waiting in the wings, but there is no shame in using a thesaurus. I've also asked Claude and ChatGPT for help with words as well, especially when there is a word that I know exists but can't remember it.