How did I get 106 comments on a single post?
Well, I'm still accepting prompts for 100 word fluffy, sweet, funny, or lighthearted ficlets with the occasional 200 word double-drabble instead. Fanfic or original fic is great.
I've been having a ball and I have more to write. It's practically cathartic.
Let's take the third first. Overhauling the story from inferno, aka "Dowse and Bleed," left me feeling drained and exhausted, but it's out to beta and may she not find any more structural issues that need addressing. For that matter, may I not!
On angst: I write a lot of it. I know that. I've been buried it in lately and I feel a desperate need for something light, fluffy, and humorous, so on to point two:
Anyway I need something light and fluffy to clear out some headspace. Anyone want to give me
And I will write you a drabble: 100 words. No more. That'll keep my headspace break from getting out of hand. :grins:
Seven Days
Kingdoms and Thorn
Kingdoms and Thorn/Fire and Water Crossover Fanfic
X-Men Movieverse
X-Men Evoverse
I've been getting some serious jabs of conscience for stories not finished, particularly as trovia's birthday whizzed by without an appearance of a completed version of "Summercome," her promised sports story, and then the three prompted stories I'm working on: a five times fic for in_the_blue, the rest of one for thecatisacritic, and "Everything is Blood" for lithiumlaughter. To say nothing of "Safe," which I still haven't gotten back to for whipsy.
In the middle of all this, I'm starting to get people bugging me for more "Son o' de Guild." Normally, I'd be okay with this, but I have a problem when people review a separate ficlet with just "Please update Son o' de Guild" and when they tell me they thought I wasn't going to finish it after I told them last chapter I would, and they all think I owe them the next chapter because I said they definitely wouldn't get another one for at least another two weeks, but that I'd be working on the story more now.
I am working on it. I'm not trying to update by a particular time because I'm currently trying to write the next chapter in some natural way without starring Jean Grey. Again. This is a story about Remy, and I've got a very important main character who is not the main character who's outgrown the bounds I want her in. It's tough, okay?
And then I go wandering through my beta emails and discover the information on the Roswell/X-Men Movieverse crossover I never got off the ground, and I wonder again how I'm ever going to get all the stories in my head out of it.
Ah, well.
How's your scribbling?
But en brief, for completed pieces not counting revised version which may be longer and/or better, these are the current figures for the year:
So I only need to finish another 271 pieces in 133 days, or about 2 pieces per day. No pressure.
So Sunday, I percolated. Yesterday, I sketched. For whatever reason, I don't do much scribbling to music without lyrics, but I put my current favorite CD on shuffle and sketched out in scribbles the opening of Ilsa Killinger and Pieter into the world of Kingdoms and Thorn.
Which is to say, I scribbled down some dialogue, thoughts, and key actions of the first few scenes of how they begin to interact with this world. Ilsa is starting the Special Unit with a cameo by her husband and by Dreamer—one operative I wasn't expecting to have to deal with so frequently. Pieter was on assignment in his old college city, Bellyn, when suddenly he finds he's in the middle of another country as the Thorn Rebellion occurs around him. Learned something new: he's been in one of these before. So much more makes sense to me.
I'd share a scribble, but trust me, sketches aren't particularly readable to anyone but me.
Hopefully today, we'll finally move to writing.
I have learned so much about myself creatively. I began this challenge without a job, then got one and have still managed to maintain creating every day. Sometimes I work on a challenge piece, sometimes not. Sometimes I finish one or even more; sometimes I do not—but I work.
I have experimented with syllabic and prose/free verse poetry; I have felt the freedom to write original fiction as though it were fanfic. The parameter of perfection fell aside and gave way to the parameters of time and necessity.
I have actively scribbled on ten different projects on a single day. (Heaven, help my productivity!) I have discovered that those who do not reread their own work have it easy compared to those who—literally—write what they want to read and already have read in their mind before they put pen to paper. I have learned that blogging and writing do not always get along and allowed my blogging to languish.
I have stumbled into a world I thought I would leave unwritten. I have grappled with how much should I allow the same characters to resemble each other. (I came up with a workaround, but were I not resigned, I would make Cate and Casaia entirely too much alike.) I have learned to accept the areas of my worlds that I would prefer to skirt. I have learned how to write gift fic that reflects a different tolerance level than mine on stories straight from my heart, that matter to me.
I have learned what my cultures boil down to. In Vardin, a guardian does not need to be right, wrong, or indifferent—only effective. They do not have the luxury of second guessing themselves. They do not have the luxury of failure. In Kingdoms and Thorn, love is sacrifice. They all love someone fiercely. They do not have the luxury of selfishness.
I have learned about my own convictions, where I will bend, where I will break if I write that. I have learned that I will have different readers for different worlds. I have learned the importance of story order.
I have learned why some stories that I love, I will never fangirl. I have learned why some stories I fangirl, I will never write fic for. I have learned how to fangirl my own work.
How has your writing year been? Any deep lessons or reflections thus far?
I had some private conversation recently about a character of mine who has appeared in a significant role through various ficlets but only in snippets and scatterings and primarily when feeling playful or trying to keep things light, which en brief, led said conversant to not particularly like the character because they felt shallow.
It made me really think about it. I have deliberately put off writing the stories where this character gets full development—even though they were linchpin pieces for the entire series—for very particular, but entirely subconscious reasons. Today, I realized why.
A long time ago, I talked about how I was an immersion writer. I know that about myself and when I'm galvanizing my output, I start prioritizing fics. I don't tend to like shifting mindset, and perhaps that's exactly why I'm not burrowing deeply enough into Niko's psyche for "Everything is Blood," because it would shift my mindset from the Kingdoms & Thorn post-operative mindset I've been needing to stay in to finish this collection into the operative mindset, which I need to do, but not just yet.
When a new story comes to me or some real depth of understanding on a story I've got on the docket, but not on the table, I tend to put it off if it doesn't fit with the mindset I'm buried in. Sometimes, I'll be writing and realize I need to know something and instantly will shift gears to write the piece of information I need, then finished with the story, get what I want out of it, then dive back into the story I wrote it for.
The character that I haven't really written is in the Kingdoms & Thorn storyworld, but he's not an operative. He's never been an operative. Digging into his mental space throws me out of Rachelle, Ashen, Red Wolf, Shift, Cate, and Justus—all characters I'm trying to plow out some serious fic for. But I can do it. I know his mental space. I know his character so much that I didn't even catch the lack of depth in his portrayal in the few ficlets I'd dropped him into.
But I wrote full-on in the mindset of another non-operative in that world when I wrote "Acceptable Cost." Why? Because I needed the background on healers and the medical system in Kishet for "Dowse and Bleed" and I needed the background on Alaine and her family for "Collateral Damage"—both of which are linchpin fics entirely within the post-operative mindset. They're focus pieces for me, so I went ahead and wrote Alaine, stemming from the original snippet I gave her in the first draft of the story from inferno and Mira's commentary on Alaine in "Collateral Damage" as it stands so far.
But I didn't explain anything. I wrote the incident, her mindset, her heart, her experience, then stopped. It was a worldbuilding piece, and I was okay with keeping it as that. The other character's stories aren't worldbuilding pieces—they are character studies, deeply interrogative of setting and history, etc. They are bona fide linchpins.
Do you write multiple projects at once? How do you prioritize them?
