#I have the draft but I need to write the final draft if that makes sense

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt behind the cut; got some more "draft stud" for y'all. No real reason, haha, just because I actually wrote a pretty decent chunk more of this than I ended up having space to post for the mystery slots last week and like, it SEEMS like so far this WIP is up a few of your ( crime ) alleys. Like juuuuust maybe, hahaha. So I took a lil' writing break and got it all Tumblr-able for all of your tire-thieving, crime-lording needs! ❤️ content notes/warnings: omegaverse, family-planning via attempting to recruit a crime lord who is legally your dead-brother-by-adoption to knock up your best (boy)friend, and Tim Drake's total lack of respect for both personal boundaries and Jason's impending migraine. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“Jesus Christ,” Jason groans, burying his face in one hand. He doesn’t even bother asking when or where the little creep got ahold of any of his DNA to test that. Fucking–probably off the damn memorial, for all he knows. Or, well–admittedly "at a crime scene" is an equally likely option. “You know if I were legally alive, we’d be legally siblings, right? Technically we are legally siblings.” 

“I actually think it’s pretty common to ask siblings for favors like this?” Tim says. “Or cousins, maybe.” 

“Yeah, the actually related ones!” Jason says in exasperation. “Or at least the ones who aren’t trying to drop-kick each other into either early retirement or a life sentence in goddamn Blackgate!” 

“I mean I really don’t think we have that kind of relationship anyway, considering, but also I’m not the one who you would ideally be knocking up,” Tim says with a shrug. “Also full disclosure, I don’t actually think Blackgate could handle you so there’s not much point in trying to send you there. Maybe if I just needed a free weekend or something, I guess.” 

“Why did Batgirl turn you down on this, Dream Warrior?” Jason asks, half-eyeing him.

“I’m going to blame either David Cain or Lady Shiva for that,” Tim says. “Probably Shiva, considering we were effectively asking her to sire a pup and then not actually be their parent. I didn’t think there was a high chance of her saying yes, honestly, but she was both our immediate first picks so it seemed kinda . . . I dunno, disingenuous not to ask her?” 

“Yeah, obviously she would've been,” Jason snorts as he unwraps his sandwich to tear a bite off. It's goddamn delicious, which MM's always is, but he's still vaguely annoyed because it's goddamn Tim Drake who brought it. “So what pick in the stud draft am I, eleven? Twelve? Lucky number thirteen?” 

He cannot actually imagine how many people must've turned Tim down for him to be here, so–

“No, you're second,” Tim replies, shaking his head. Jason stares blankly at him past his mouthful of wafflewich. “If you say no, I’ll be calling Super-Man, and if he says no then–” 

“Superman?!” Jason sputters. 

“No, Super-Man,” Tim “corrects” like he somehow thinks he’s actually saying a different name. “Kong Kenan. How was that not self-evident?” 

“Because it sounds exactly the fucking same, that’s how!” Jason says in exasperation, though that does make more sense. Definitely more sense than Clark, anyway, because that was definitely a what the actual fuck EVEN moment. 

“It really doesn’t, but this is getting off-topic,” Tim says, then gestures meaningfully with a hand and asks, “Which is: what are your thoughts on sperm donation? 

“Sounds boring,” Jason replies frankly before taking a swig of coffee. 

“Oh, that was a metaphor, Kon said he’s fine either way but I’d really prefer you actually fuck him,” Tim clarifies with a much more meaningful gesture. 

Jason stares blankly at him again. Tim continues to look unfazed. 

“. . . is this a kink thing, Beyond Thunderdome?” Jason asks finally, for lack of any other reasonable explanation.

“This is a ‘I don’t want my omega to feel like a lab experiment for his first breeding heat because he’s worried about making me feel emasculated’ thing,” Tim says. 

“. . . yeah, fair enough,” Jason allows, taking another sip of his coffee. Still goddamn delicious; still Tim Drake-related annoying. “Jesus, though, you could’ve led with that. You know I’m a fucking beta, though, my chances of successfully knocking up your boy in one cycle are not that impressive.” 

“Well, that’s the useful thing about cycles,” Tim says with another little shrug. “They, you know, cycle.” 

“You want me to fuck your omega through probably multiple heats?” Jason asks, still more than a little incredulous about the idea. Again, he was not even aware that those two were dating. He was not even aware that Tim was into invulnerable and insatiable touch-based telekinetic omegas built like sexy industrial farm equipment with a very public history of “let me prove I’m good enough” issues, though actually when he thinks through that full sentence in his head it’s admittedly difficult to make an argument for why he would not be. 

Maybe if he was very, very gay or very, very asexual, Jason guesses. 

“Well, if it goes well this time, we’d probably ask you to do it again in a couple years anyway, so why not?” Tim says. “Kon wants to have more than one.” 

“Oh, so twice as many multiple-heat fucks?” Jason says. Jesus, this little freak of human nature. 

“Maybe three times, depending?” Tim says, tilting his head to one side with a considering expression. “Kon was designed to be hyper-fertile but given I have heard of exactly one Kryptonian ever that had a littermate it seems like Kryptonians might have a lower chance of conceiving litters than humans do, so we don’t really know how that might go yet.” 

Jason pauses for a long moment, because all general incredulity and disbelief aside, that sentence contained a red flag the size of a damn bedsheet. Several bedsheets sewn together, in fact. 

Maybe just an entire Bed Bath & Beyond’s worth of bedsheets, actually. 

“‘Designed to be’,” he repeats, and Tim’s expression briefly sours. 

“We’re not going to get into what Paul Westfield’s backup ‘make myself a custom Superman’ plan entailed,” he says. “Especially because he didn’t immediately scrap the thing when Kon came out sixteen and unpresented.” 

“Fucking hell,” Jason says. Well, that definitely explains Tim wanting to make sure Superboy doesn’t feel like a lab experiment while he’s getting bred.

“Mmmhm,” Tim says. 

Jason eyes him for a long moment as he takes another swallow of very good coffee, debating on how stupid this idea is and also if he wants to deal with Bruce’s opinion on him getting involved in it. A counterargument, admittedly, is Superboy’s very pretty smirk and ass you could bounce a giant penny off. 

Though . . . 

“Do you actually factually know if Kryptonians have a lower chance of conceiving litters, or is the prevalence of them having singles potentially just a birthing matrix thing?” he asks. “Because another solid reason I can think of to use one of those besides not risking the dam’s health or life and doing whatever weird ‘genetic optimization’ thing they had going on with 'em is Kryptonians being a lot more likely to conceive litters. Like big litters.” 

“. . . that is a question that I should have thought to investigate sooner,” Tim admits with a slight wince. 

“Y’think, Season of the Witch?” Jason asks dubiously. Tim frowns, tilting his head again and clearly confused, and Jason rolls his eyes. “Third Halloween movie, genius.” 

“Oh,” Tim says. “I was wondering what the names were about.” 

“Terminator, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Mad Max,” Jason says with another roll of his eyes. He did not think calling the guy a bunch of threequel titles was that subtle a dig. “Jesus, kid, watch a movie that didn’t originate on either Netflix or PornHub."

“I don’t watch either of those?” Tim says, wrinkling his nose. 

“You watch porn somewhere, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking me to knock up your bitch for you,” Jason snorts dubiously, tearing another bite off his sandwich. Who even has that thought process? 

“I’d really prefer you not call him that,” Tim says. 

“Who cares, he’s not even here,” Jason retorts dismissively, waving him off as he chews. 

“Well yeah, I wouldn’t be telling you not to call him a bitch if he was here, because that would actually be helpful,” Tim says reasonably. Jason . . . pauses, and stares at the corner of the wall past Tim’s head. It’s a wall. 

 It . . . sure is a wall, yeah. And also the corner of a wall, yup. 

Wall. 

Jason chews the rest of his bite very slowly and does not allow himself to process the implication that Superboy might like being called a bitch in bed. 

“I’ve never actually heat-partnered anyone before,” he says. “Like I’ve rut-partnered a few people, but I feel like that is likely a significantly different experience. And probably also easier, frankly, given getting most alphas off takes about a fifth of the time and effort as getting most omegas off.” 

“That’s not really a concern,” Tim tells him with another one of those little shrugs. Jason stares at the corner of the wall past his head some more. It is . . . still a wall, yeah. Yup. Definitely still a wall.

What the fuck does that even mean? There is literally no way Tim meant “you wouldn't need to bother getting my omega off while you were breeding him as non-lab-experiment-ly as possible”, because in what fucking world would he have meant that, so like–what? Just . . . what? 

Jason’s brain is unfortunately supplying some very goddamn creative and very goddamn dirty theoretical answers to that question.

[inexplicifics]

I’m also a writer, of both fanfics and works I hope to publish someday, and I was wondering if I could ask your advice. I have a number of larger projects that I want to undertake, but thinking about how long it’s going to take to finish them makes me anxious and then I won’t even start. You’re an incredible writer and you have so many finished works; how do you do it? What would you recommend for someone who feels incredibly daunted by the lengthy and disheartening process that is writing a novel or series?

Also thank you for your Accidental Warlord series; it brings me inexpressible joy every time I read it

Oooh okay this is a complicated one. Let's see.

First off, and this is hard: don't compare your output to other authors. I have what my friends affectionately refer to as Wordy Bitch Disease. I write a lot, I write fast, and I write clean enough copy that Rose isn't doing copyedits, she's doing plot and characterization fixes. I start a new WIP...pretty near daily some weeks, and they do not all get done. My WIPs list is frankly fucking terrifying. But it's important to note that I have been writing pretty consistently for twenty years at least, and I was not as fast, coherent, or skilled when I started. For that matter, when I'm tired or stressed or just feeling blah, sometimes the words don't come, and it's important not to beat yourself up about it when that happens.

Second bit of advice: start smaller. I really, really like flash fic challenges and themed prompt lists and tumblr ask memes, because they make me limit my story to what can be told in a few thousand words. That lets me improve my craft without getting bogged down in enormous plotlines. (Yes, sometimes the story still grows a plot. But it's less frequent.)

Third bit of advice: take little bites, and accept that it's going to take a long time and possibly several drafts. When I started MBTT, I genuinely thought it would be 50K. (I am bad at estimating finished lengths of stories.) But I still took it one chapter at a time, and tried to have each chapter be a coherent whole, a chunk of story that needed to be told. When I'm working on the AWAU, if I think about the whole overarching storyline too much, I get overwhelmed and have to go stick my head under a proverbial rock for a while. But one story is doable, most of the time. I've had to restart drafts for some stories two, three, four times to get the voice and style and plot to cooperate. Be willing to say, That's not working, and try something else, even if you're really fond of what you've written so far.

Fourth bit of advice: learn what style of planning works for you. Some people like to outline in great detail. Some people like a sketchy outline. Some people, like me, can't outline - it kills the story for me. The WIP I started this morning has a notes section for important characterization details and the single plot point "Bandits?" Anything more than that, and I won't write it, because in some sense I've already written it so why bother doing it again?

Fifth and final bit of advice, because this is getting long: if you can find a cheer-reader, cherish them. Having someone in the doc leaving comments or emoticons helps immensely with knowing how my readers will react and with keeping my own enthusiasm for a story stoked high, which vastly increases the likelihood of it getting finished.

Good luck! Be brave! Thank you for the compliments!

I hope to read your stories someday!

[aggieharkness]

Final draft of the thesis sent!! At last I can write and succumb to smut for Patti Lupone's characters. Chapter 8 of "Have I earned it, mother?" it's currently on the works. Be a little be patient because I need my gears to start turning again 😂😂😂 but I'll try to make it good and worth the wait (sorry about that) ❤️

[crybaby-bkg]

Oliver’s been stressed. it’s an obvious thing, despite the way he tries to hide it with tired smiles and invitations to stay in for the night instead of out on the town. you’re not in a relationship with him, but he texts and calls you more often than not, lets this look cross over his face when he doesn’t think you’re looking. it’s something in between, something yet unspoken.

it’s why you’re not sure if it’s overstepping too close into relationship territory when you suggest a paint date with him. well, not really date, you had stumbled over your words when you introduced the idea to him. just a day where we stay in and paint and order some food and desserts and just—

he’d agreed on the spot, stopping your rambling with a lighthearted smile, a softness in his eyes that you’re not sure you’re meant to see. but he agrees nonetheless, and so you’re set.

the day is cloudy, the air thick with oncoming rain. you’d stayed the night, so all you wear is a pair of his boxers and an old jersey of his. you insisted on sleeping naked, but Oliver had urged you to don his clothing for reasons you think may be too fond that you try not to dwell on, lest you hurt your own feelings with assumptions. but he kisses your head when you plate both of your lunches that he’d ordered, pats you gently on the butt when you lean into it.

“I’m not a painter,” Oliver groused a few minutes after you got started. you sit across from him at his dining room table, too big and fancy, puts you too far of a distance away from him. your legs are crossed and your eyebrows are furrowed in focus. they crease when his words pull you from your concentration; a landscape painting, set at dawn, a pretty wonky deer in the distance, the sky a navy blue, the green a bit too bright for grass. (do the colors match his eyes and his hair? you’re not too sure. you’d deny it anyway, even if you were. which you’re totally not. right?)

“And neither am I,” you tell him, biting your lip in focus as you try to marry the blue and green well. “But this is for fun and relaxation. Not necessarily for talent.”

Oliver falls quiet after that. makes a few quips here and there, peeks around his canvas at you to make some sly remark about how he’s gonna win the best painting. you can only laugh, eyes squinted in mirth, unseeing of how he captures the details with his eyes, his memory.

“Okay, it’s time to reveal our paintings.” you tell him after an hour has passed, and you’ve both fallen quiet in concentration. Oliver looks unsure, the most you’ve ever seen him, and offers for you to go first. he smiles when you flip the canvas, giving you a slow clap, eyes drinking in the details, the colors that reflect him in every sense. he doesn’t say it out loud. he couldn’t if he wanted to, not when he turns his painting and reveals you.

“It’s a little shitty,” he says when you’ve gone quiet for too long, stiff as stone. “I couldn’t really get your eyes right, and your hair is a little off but—”

“It’s perfect,” you say softly, smile shaky, everything unsaid in the way he captured your smile, the reflection of him, of pining, in your eyes. “Out of all the things to paint, why me?”

“Why not?” he counters, saying everything and nothing, his words full and empty, enough but never quite filling. you smile anyway.

[spingtail]

every day on this earth is another day being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment (having to see a whole thread of people saying the one (1) "androgynous"/even slightly just barely masc female character in a franchise looks better with her hair down because she's pretty)

[pagesofkenna]

fantasy novel wip has officially crossed the 10k mark since i started the new draft with the new outline last month. gotten less writing done than i would have wished but when i am able to sit down to write i'm getting a lot more done than i had previously.

[javierduffy]

ohh javieran … javieran post kieran’s death .., javier is a poor lonesome cowboy in america a long way from home with no more sweetheart to sit and talk with him ooohhh can anyone hear me ….

[evanescentdawn]

didn’t expect for my return to ao3 be releasing an old 2018/19 bleach wip, but well! life can certainly surprise you!

relationships: established byakuya/ichigo

tags: AU, humour, shenanigans, captain!ichigo, mystery

chapter: 1/?

summary:

“Here we are,” Kisuke announced as they reached a big black door. He pulled out a key and slowly opened the door to reveal a massive room buzzing with soul reapers. Taking out his trusty fan, Kisuke flapped it open, adding to his dramatics while gesturing with his free hand to a massive machine, “Behold, my greatest invention yet!”

“…What. The. Hell.”

“What? Is something the matter, Ichigo?” Kisuke lowered down his fan, a wide smirk painted on his face. “Speechless?”

-

It’s been years since their last war and Urahara Kisuke got busy, inventing his new latest machine yet. One that allows easy access from and to Heuco Mundo. Shiba Ichigo and others set out to test it but they run into something unexpected…..

[rita-rae-siller]

She is complete…. The Timeline is finally done. Nothing like outlining 35+ years worth of backstory lore only to have to start writing the actual story outline 🙃

[justalittlebluetiefling]

I do think the hardest part about actually writing a whole novel for the first time is having to constantly remind myself that first drafts are allowed to suck. They are not meant to be perfect. They're allowed to be filled with half thoughts where you need to go back later because you can't figure out what you need to fix until there are words on a page. Like, allowing myself to feel like I am bad at something and still continuing to push might be the biggest way I've grown in my entire life.

[piedoesnotequalpi]

no, disney plus, I do not want to watch the orange critter be inaugurated. I want to watch 17 year old Christian Bale punch a guy in the face.

[unnonexistence]

inspiration on that new silly one-shot fic ran out but luckily writing is still Going

[purble-gaymer]

couple a sillies from my storyboards

[pierrelucdisaster]

😭 I cannot believe in the two weeks since I interviewed the person I'm writing my latest story on I have interviewed... Only HIM STILL! I have eight other people to interview but I could not get a hold of anyone! I got three for next week. Two I gave up on and the next three I cannot get to bc their person of contact is the most frustrating person on the planet. This story has been delayed twice already bc he will not get back to me in a timely fashion and postpones when he's sending me the info I need. I can't do this!

[prosebushpatch]

fully aware that a night of sleep might be enough for me to realize it's garbage and still majorly lacking BUT I JUST WROTE A QUERY DRAFT FOR MY MERMAID STORY AND I THINK IM FINALLY ONTO SOMETHING. IT ONLY TOOK, WHAT, 5 YEARS TO FIGURE OUT QUERIES?!?!?!

[fiepige]

Drinking game: Take a shot each time the word "symbiote" appears in my fic

(So far it's 95 times and I'm not done writing yet... I really need to find another word to use sometimes but what else can you call them??)