spindizzy | Entries tagged with hobbies: writing

It's because, right, and this is really fucking obvious and I should have seen it from the start, the fanfic I write is like 90% missing scenes, or after canon, right? So I can get away with alluding to events or the plot being over there and everyone understands that and what I'm doing with it. So when I'm trying to outline original fic, I've got all of the emotional arcs thought out and planned and I can go "Yes, this is where the feels go," but I've not really practiced the whole plot thing, so it's like trying to build scaffolding around empty space because there's no plot over there to hold it up for me!

Aw, I'm so glad I figured this out.

Now I'm going to go and learn to do better.

But then I go "Susan, if you TELL people that you're planning to consume thirty individual pieces of media AND write like thirty thousand words scattered across a whole bunch of projects, they're going to come after you with squirt bottles."

"... No don't tell them you also want to fix your sleep cycle while you do it, that's not going to help."

The lesson to learn from this is to possibly scale my goals down a little to the point where I am confident in telling people about them? But I am also very much of the "reach should exceed my grasp" school of goal setting, so I... Don't know. GOALS: I HAVE THEM. THEY NEED SOME WORK.

OKAY, today I did my schedule for LB posts and Lesbrary posts and stories I want to get done for the forseeable, and it all... Almost looks reasonable. Or at least like I have a plan! And I have a bunch of ideas brainstormed for places that are accepting submissions and I've got a pretty good idea of what I'm writing! And I've done an outline that isn't great but has clarified what I want to do with the story I'm working on, and I've gone through the shitty first draft of the Yuri On Ice fic I've been posting for like the last... Week? And I've got a big list of ways to make it into a really good second draft?¹ And I'm working on stuff for tomorrow and a reaction shot for tonight.

Basically, I've done a lot of ancillary stuff that isn't really productive, but has made me FEEL productive, and I don't know if I should feel proud of that or not. I think I do! Especially as I'm getting words done now! But considering I got out of the house and went "Fuck, I forgot my concentration pills!" that is a pretty good amount of stuff that I got done?

¹: ... Oh god, did I say it would be good? I HOPE IT WILL BE. I WILL TRY. PLEASE DON'T HAVE ANY EXPECTATIONS.

Periodically I go "I am posting all of this scrappy crappy fic drafts under lock where no one can them, is there actually a point to continuing this posting-every-day project" and then forget about it, but I am the sort of person who'll find a rut and stay there until outside forces intervene, so I never followed that thought too far.

But today! I realised! I am still working on things! They may be scrappy crappy fic drafts, but I used to do the thing where if I didn't finish a draft in one sitting, I never finished it! And this is... Honestly progress, this is so much better than I used to be about just doing the work, even if it's crap and in tiny 100 word chunks. At least it's something.

So that's my thoughts after like... Thirteen? Fourteen? Months of posting bits of fic every single fucking day. Goal for next year: make them good.

I am trying to write a fic involving mostly functional adults who have never punched each other in the face or attempted to kill each other, do not live violent lives, do not use confidence/wordplay/misdirection to avoid awkward conversations, and are very upfront with the fact that they have feelings.

THIS FEELS WEIRD.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING.

THIS FEELS LIKE BEING A BIKER AT A FAIRY TEA PARTY EXCEPT THAT'S AN AWESOME IMAGE AND I WANT A LEATHER JACKET WITH FAIRY WINGS STENCILED ON THE BACK NOW.

I'd ask how this happened, but I know EXACTLY how this happened.

1) I start a thing! Good job me!
2) It is late in the day when I start the thing, bad choice me. I get a good chunk of the way into the thing, and then I decide to Go To Sleep. Good job me!
OPTIONAL STEP 2A) I go back to work on the thing! Yay! Good job me! And then I decide to Go To Sleep because it is always late in the day when I start writing things! Questionable choices, me!
3) I want to work on the thing, but it is late in the day and I am too tired to do this draft the justice it deserves, so I go back to step 1 and this cycle starts again.

This has a very simple solution, which is "Don't wait until arse o'clock to start writing," but also if I have time during the day to write I try to prioritise

ladybusiness stuff because that is more important. Basically, my problem is, as always, time management and motivation, who knew.

BUT, THINGS I HAVE FOUND WHILE MAKING THE SPREADSHEET THAT INFORMED ME THAT I HAVE 103 WIPS:

I have a file just labelled "Steve and Tony and naps" and this was not the adorable cuddle pile that I was hoping for.

(Having a consistent file-naming scheme is THE BEST PLAN EVER and I wholeheartedly endorse it. Mine is super simple! It's either "Fic - [Fandom] - ["Helpful" description of contents]" or "LB - [Type of post] - [Title of whatever I'm talking about]" IT IS REALLY HELPFUL.)

I still have a Ronan/Gansey fic in progress because "sex like war on the hood of the Pig" is the best description I have ever written.

I am 100% here for "My brother is an assassin/mercenary on the run from his former organisation and I am smarter than him and not here for his protective nonsense" just going by the fact that there are MULTIPLE FICS with this trope on my list. Any recs?

AvAc!Loki being bad at people is my favourite thing to write about.

(I AM DISTRESSINGLY INTO LOKI/UNION JACK WHERE UNION JACK IS GOING INTO THIS WITH HIS EYES OPEN AND LOKI HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE'S GETTING INTO. HELP.)

WHY IS ALL OF THIS MADOKA MAGICA DISTRESSING AND SAD. WHY CAN HOMURA NOT JUST HAVE NICE THINGS.)

(I have so much Final Fantasy fic in all of renay's pairings, guys, you don't even know how much, or rather you do, the answer is nine, ten depending on how she feels about Paine/Rikku. *cracks knuckles*)

"I don't write that many crossovers," I tell myself, completely ignoring the fact that I will cross any fandom into Shadowrun if you leave me alone long enough and also my preferred form of "Everybody lives" AU is "They wouldn't die even if you killed them" which means Baccano crossover. Also ignoring the One Piece/Madoka Magica crossover because I STILL don't know what happened there.

I apparently have plans for a visual novel just labelled "Timetravelling lesbians vs serial killers". THOUGHT YOU OUGHT TO KNOW.

How recursive is it to write in-universe fanfic for one of the shows in Skip Beat? Asking for a friend.

I am a terrible person who doesn't want Nathan Drake to have a nice day, just going by this list. BLESS HIS HEART.

Okay, today I wrote:

A 1170 words rough draft about The Black Tapes

A 425 word review spine for Costume Quest

172 word into to my Magnificent Seven reaction shot, that I have the notes for and need to assemble

162 words of my review of First Impression for The Lesbrary (Did I mention I'm writing for them? I'm writing for them), which I won't be able to go too far into because captainraz has my copy of the book.

A few more points on next week's Eight Book Minimum post which has EATEN MY FUCKING LIFE OH MY GOD.

... And I've got 1130 words of a review of Hawkeye waiting for me to revisit and polish up and add the fflsadigs images to.

MY BRAIN IS TIRED, GUYS. Like, looking at that list, you can probably tell when my concentration skills frayed? And it's not that much compared to what everyone else does in a day? But that was a decent amount of work for me! And I've had a break, so I might try again, see if I can get a little bit more done before I sleep – at the very least, I can try to bodge a bit more of my Eight Book Minimum post so that when I come back to it tomorrow it's not like "Oh god, THIS THING STILL."

I maybe need to work out a system in my writing diary for marking off progress on things that I haven't finished. I don't really have space to jot down word counts next to things, so I might have to improvise, because I don't want to put a cross in the box for things that I've not completed. We'll see.

I want to write fic about Holmes and Watson in the universe of Anno Dracula (Holmes and Lestrade canonically exist, at least - there's no mention that I remember of Watson), but I really don't want to have to re-read Anno Dracula because it just... Wasn't very good? Like, Kate Reed had the most interesting storyline as far as I could tell (she was a reporter trying to become a vampire and maybe kickstart a revolution and discover the identity of Jack the Ripper), but sort of vanished from the book two thirds of the way through only to show up again for the finale.

... Neither of my libraries have a copy of the ebook, which is a ball-ache because I want to be able to just CTRL+F to find out what I need about Holmes' situation and then make it up wildly from there.

Has anyone else read it? Because here's what I remember of what is relevant (spoiler spoiler spoiler):

( Cut for spoilers )

Current Music: The Room Where It Happens ~ Hamilton Soundtrack

26629 / 50000 (53.26%)

I didn't make it to 50,000 words, but that is still the most words I've written on anything since I was fourteen. (When I was fourteen, I wrote like 38,000 words of a Yu-Gi-Oh AU. One day I will post that to AO3 as proof, but AO3 doesn't have an importer for FFN due to FFN's permission setting or something so I'd have to do it manually. :\)

On the plus side, it's December now! I get to do fun things like open my advent calendars full of stationery (Q: Susan did you really? A: OF COURSE I DID, HAVE YOU MET ME.) and write LUDICROUS AMOUNTS OF TERRIBLE FICTION and SEE MY FAMILY and WORK MY ASS OFF because week two of my schedule continues to be bullshit. And I have a morning at one library on Wednesday, and then an afternoon at a different library entirely! But the buses look... Doable... So I might be okay.

And yesterday I discovered that the bookcase/tv stand in my room where I kept my comics/sourcebooks/lesbian fiction/xbox was MOULDY AS FUCK so I spent today dousing everything that was on it in white vinegar, disassembling the bookcase, and occasionally checking the internet for a sanity break.

I HATE MOULD.

FUCKING. HATE IT.

But I got cuddles! And Lex is going to try to sort us out some new furniture at the weekend while I'm at work! (And then we're going to hang out with his mum, right after I get out of work. Whoop whoop.) And my office is... Actually more accessible than it has been for a while, ngl, because all of the boxes of shite that were making it hard to move my chair are where the bookcase used to be. I'm planning to scrub the walls down with vinegar next time I get a chance, just to try to stave off this problem again, and Lex is gonna pick us up a dehumidifier, maybe.

So, that's how my day's been. How're all y'all?

It was a long week at work, and while I know that it was only four days? Maybe? Work and Doing Shit With Other People That Takes Until Gone Ten In The Evening six evenings a week with HORDES OF PEOPLE and trying to stake out enough brain to write something on my shitty tiny tablet keyboard... I am tired. I am really, fucking, tired.

Not made any word count progress on Nano this week, even though there have been so much BLINDING REALISATIONS THAT SOLVE MY PLOT that I nearly broke my pen writing them down. And every time I look at the screen these last few days I go "I am tired, do I want to write?" an irritatingly smug, perky voice goes "If you really wanted to be a writer you'd make the time to write no matter how crap you felt!" and then I want to punch people in the face.

I think I'm just coming to accept that week two of my three-week schedule rotation is a bastard for my brain, especially with my sleep cycle, and I just WON'T get anything done this week. Gonna have to start planning for ways to work around it so I'm not fucking blind-sided every time.

And for my NaNoWriMo, I'll be writing... Lesbian spy steals a goddess! \o/ I am probably gonna fuck this up awfully, but that is the point of Nano? I apologise now to all y'all for what I'm going to inflict on you in November.

(And now I just need to plan what I'm going to write and write three posts for

ladybusiness by the end of next week! EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, I'VE STARTED TWO ALREADY.)

Aaaaaand I'm finally up to date on my diary project for the first time since FUCKING JANUARY. It was such a fucking timesink getting it up to date, but it's done now! Dobby is free! And now I can get back to writing EVERYTHING ELSE with a mostly-free conscience! \o/

See, the worst part of Hamilton is that Non-Stop isn't my favourite song (it's GOOD, but not my FAVOURITE), but I've had "How do you write like you're running out of time?" written on my wrist for like three days, and I can't deal when I listen to that section of the song.
- (HAMILTON IS REALLY GOOD. Here is a playlist with all of the songs in the right order! Here are the annotated lyrics! It is so good!)
- Never underestimate the pleasure in saying "So I'm listening to a hip-hop/R&B Broadway musical about the founding fathers of America!" and seeing what people's faces do while they process that.
- It's such a visual performance, even though I'm just listening to the soundtrack. I get such a clear picture of the characters' expressions, even if I don't automatically fill in the dance-moves.
- I've been trying to work my way through it, but I've been listening to it all week and I'm only just daring to listen to act two. I DON'T WANT EVERYTHING TO GO TERRIBLY, OKAY, AND THERE IS NO WAY IT CAN'T.

SO THERE WAS A FAIR ON OUTSIDE WORK. Which is fine, because rides and food carts and things, woo, I didn't care about the rides, but cool. EXCEPT. The roads around the library were closed for about four blocks, as was all-but one car park. So work's been dead this week! Auuuuuugh. And I went out to check out the ride right outside our door, looked up at it and went "Huh, that's tall," then I leaned back and went "Oh shit it keeps going!" and it turns out that it was like 100 feet tall. WHAT.

I HAVE BEEN TRAINED ON THE LOCAL STUDIES DESK! SORTA! ISH! I know where things are, but I'm still working out how to do everything. Apparently we have a WWII-era map of every bomb site in town, and I MUST FIND THIS. I'm excited and kinda terrified, because this means that I'm going to be dealing with more in-depth enquiries, and... I could count the number of times I'd been into this part of the library on my fingers before this week. Oops?

I am slowly getting to the bottom of this pit of The Losers fic that I fell into. There is SO MUCH fix-it fic, jesus.
- What's wierding me out is that I can do the side-by-side comparison of where I am with a fic writer and where other people in the fandom were when they were writing for it (For some reason it's harder in a fandom when I'm not binge reading EVERYTHING.), and just... Ugh. I AM NOT WHERE I WANT TO BE. Apparently it's easier to work this out when I'm looking at people who write similar things to me? I don't know?

Oh hey, this icon applies to every fandom I've mentioned here!

Darlings, I need you to help me decide what to write for NaNoWriMo. (You can blame

captainraz for this, she inspired me to try to do it properly this year.) I... Don't particularly have a preference as to which of these I work on? I just decided that maybe working on a fanfic for Nano was a bad plan because if it was Wrong it would annoy me, and if my fandom interests shifted then I'd be stuck.

(... I can't think of a single fandom where I have 50,000 words to SAY. Not all in one go, anyway.)

I've put proper descriptions of the options behind the first cut, with pros and cons as I see them, and I've put the poll behind the second cut. I think the poll itself is only open to people with Dreamwidth accounts (I'm sorry! I tried!), but I'm also going to take people going "Susan, no" on twitter or in the comments or whatever into account.

( Options! )

JESUS FUCK GUYS WE HAVE BROKEN THE THOUSAND WORD BARRIER ALREADY. JESUS. Right. Okay. Poll time! I've not included an "Oh god Susan why are you even bothering, you ALWAYS fail at Nano" option, I've assumed that this is the default. If it helps people who would like to pick what I would most like to write - I would like to write all of them, but most of them have a research requirement that paralyses me ordinarily, and this is my opportunity to write it while not giving a fuck. Anything that doesn't get picked is something I will probably write another day. That said:

( Poll behind the cut! )

I genuinely didn't intend for it to be "WHAT FLAVOUR DO YOU WANT YOUR HEIST AND/OR MYSTERY OF THE WEEK!" but apparently that is all that I write when I'm left to my own devices.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: A Stranger ~ A Perfect Circle

A: BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE ONES EASIEST TO WRITE MELODRAMA AND FEELS IN, THAT'S WHY.

(One day I will write in a fandom because I have a GOOD SENSIBLE IDEA FOR FIC, but until that day: melodrama and feels.)

Hey guys - this post is going to be a sticky, so feel free to come back to it whenever you fancy! I'm doing my best to make it easy to find.

I WOULD LIKE YOU GUYS TO LEAVE ME PROMPTS, IF THAT'S OKAY. Any fandom you think I'm into or would like, any/no pairings, as many comments/prompts as you'd like. I just... Want to make a repository of things for me to write in the future that's a bit less intimidating than going through the

ff_exchange backlist. Like, I won't promise that I'll get to everything, but I really like the idea of having a fixed place to look for inspiration?

~~PLEASE HELP ME TO SEE HOW LONG THIS CHAIN OF POSTING FIC EVERYDAY CAN LAST.~~

I might just have pretend I'm playing musical chairs and start putting together playlists that I write to until the music stops. Which is a great plan until I hit a fandom/subject I can't write with the music that I'm listening to.

Fortunately, baby!Susan was emotrash enough that I am completely conditioned to write through Linkin Park, regardless of logic, appropriateness or fandom, and I lack enough shame that I'm willing to go with it.

This week has kinda been my Ira Glass test - I know that what I want to write isn't as good as I want it to be. I know that I need to take steps to make it better. I'm just... Still in the process of working out what those steps are.

And I know me, I know that without the pressure of posting I don't have the motivation to sit down and work out the problems with it, because I just scribble it down in my notebooks and move on. The typing it up, the making it presentable - that is when I know I need to care. Hence, writing. Posting. Churning out stuff that is okay, but not as good I'm convinced that I can be, because that is what I feel like I need to do to work out how I'm going to get better.

At some point, I'm going to have to stop churning, if only to sit and really look back and pick apart what I've been doing and where I've been going wrong, but so far? It actually seems to be working.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go and visit

captainraz and we are theoretically going to write like bastards! I'm hoping that when I've got company and a goal, I'm less likely to get distracted and more likely to actually finish off the bits and pieces I've been meaning to. I've got the three things that I really want to work on tomorrow, and as long as I can have a decent crack at those, I'll be happy.

(I really need to finish them, if for no other reason than "once I've finished these things, I WILL BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THESE THINGS!" and that will be amazing.)

Me on the way to work: Man, playing Tragedy Looper has really made me want to write something about a pair of girls who can travel a limited distance back in time and use this power to prevent murders and other tragedies, and maybe they kiss?
Work gaming buddy as I get in: SUSAN I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT THIS AMAZING PC GAME I PLAYED LAST NIGHT ABOUT A GIRL WHO CAN TRAVEL A LIMITED DISTANCE BACK IN TIME AND USES THIS POWER TO PREVENT MURDERS AND OTHER TRAGEDIES AND MAYBE KISS HER FEMALE BEST FRIEND.
Me: ... I don't know what I was expecting.

(Yes I do, it's because I carry a filofax and those automatically make you look thirty times more organised than you actually are.)

Today, I went "Okay! I'm going to go upstairs and find my copy of Gangsta volume 5 and the notebook that has the start of the space lesbians story in it, so I can look them both while I'm at my mum's! ... Huh, I can't find my copy of Gangsta volume 5! GUESS I'M ALL DONE HERE!" and then left to go to Manchester.

WELP.

Guess it's time to write some ridiculous pairing nonsense then!

It only just occurred to me NOW, despite that fact that at least two of my friends do this, that I can just FILTER ALL OF MY WRITING POSTS, which gives me the opportunity to pick and choose who gets to read my shitty id-fic, or whether I want people who actually know the canon to be able to judge my choices.

... That's actually a hell of a relief, not gonna lie. I'm not necessarily sure that I'd do it, or who would even want to be on the filter for Stuff That I'm Not Confident Enough About To Post On AO3, but the fact that I have the OPTION makes me really happy.

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Susan

I FIGURED OUT WHY PLOT IS DIFFICULT!

I was considering doing a goals post!

It's like productivity, but without ACTUALLY being productive

Huh, I hadn't thought of that

I think I might be a doppelganger, or maybe writing someone elses' fic.

I HAVE 103 WIPS

My brain is tired

An unwinnable dilemma

IN CONCLUSION: Bollocks

I am so tired

The votes are in! And I'm up to date on my diary project! \o/

Still not dead!

What should I write for NaNoWriMo, the "I swear I write non-mystery stuff sometimes!" edition

Q: Susan, why are you writing in THOSE fandoms right now?

Prompts?

Productivity is hard but necessary

Can you brute-force through the gap Ira Glass talks about?

I am summarising, obviously.

I don't know why people think I'm organised

I forgot DW had filters! facepalm

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