#and i'm excited because it's my first fully published multi chapter fic

[freakvampire]

oh, it had to be you

Edward Little/Solomon Tozer | rated M | 6 chapters, 20k words

As soon as Solomon put his hand on the front door, someone cleared their throat. “Where are you going dressed like that, young lady?” Bill called down the hallway. He was standing with a mug of tea in hand, the other lifting the hem of his shirt to scratch at his belly. Long gone were the days of modesty between them, giving way to their comfortable and familiar teasing.

Solomon answered with a vague, “Out,” and felt his lips curl at the joking banter between them. The clothes he’d thrown on were nothing special— beloved, shredded blue jeans held up by a studded belt below the 100 Gecs shirt Tommy got him that Sol cropped and cut the sleeves off— but Bill wasn't really worried about the way he was dressed, anyway.

The question he actually cared about was swiftly reached: “With?”

Tozer is the guitarist in a punk band. Not many people say "no" to that... but when it rains, it pours.

(5 times Solomon Tozer gets rejected, and 1 time he doesn't.)

[all-weneed]

hi everyone! dani (@biscuityskies) tagged me in a last sentence challenge and because i'm just so obsessed with them, i am, for once in my life, following through.

this is from chapter 8 of None But You (Half Agony, Half Hope) my persuasion-inspired codywan fic and current pride and joy. this is my first published ao3 fic and really my first multi-chapter project for a fandom so I'm excited to be close to finishing it up.

Instead, Obi-Wan grabs Cody’s hand where it lies limp at his side. He curls Cody’s fingers gently over his own and lifts Cody’s hand to his mouth. With a gentle kiss to his knuckles, Obi-Wan continues, “and I need you to not look as if the fight is already lost. I need you to trust me.” Cody’s wide eyes stare into Obi-Wan’s own as he breathes out a quiet “always.” Obi-Wan drops Cody’s hand with a grin a touch too close to wicked for either of their own good, before he turns and walks away. He needs to find Mace.

so uhhhhhhh yeah things are happening!!! i am optimistic to get this fic finished before my semester starts (or at least, everything but the epilogue, but i'd like to get epilogue finished too), so keep an eye on things as i'll be working on this pretty non-stop now that i am fully moved in.

if you see this, i want you to post a last line challenge. and tag me in it if you do so i can see it :) love ya, bye!

[mcsquared789]

2023 Wrap-Up

NOTE: This was previously published on AO3.

Now that we're at the end of 2023, I've been reflecting on how much I've done. I've just kind of fully accepted that this is pretty much going to be a multi-year long project, so I thought: hey, why not do a sort-of Spotify Wrapped on my own series? I would critically go through everything I had written this year, as well as tease what I have planned for the next year, and then put it in a seperate chapter in this fic so you could see how much overall progress I've made.

So that's what we're going to do! Before I continue, I will just add (for further context) that the changelog will always be continually updated with progress and additional reports — whereas these will be uploaded once and never touched again. If you're reading this much later, I will not be updating anything else in this chapter other than describing the writing process for what I've written. This means that what I write later on, as well as any promises I make, may not be accurate to what I've said here. Keep that in mind.

IRON MAN | MAY-JUNE

I started this project with the very first fic, Iron Man — but it's a bit misleading to say that I only started working on this in May. Half of it had actually been prewritten out somewhere else on a Word document, back when this was strictly a personal project and I had just wanted to give writing a try. Specifically practicing, by translating a movie to a novel: a reasonable exercise. It was off and on for a while, but when I finally decided to pull the trigger and bring this to AO3... your incredible support encouraged me to finish it. Therefore, here we are.

But what encouraged me to go to AO3 and start this, anyway? Well, I found out about the platform in no small part thanks to ColeyDoesThings — great channel by the way, subscribe to them if you love fanfiction. But I never really got the appeal of fanfiction and what I could do until I found myself inadvertently writing it, and soon realized that I could do whatever I wanted while writing about things I really care about, which really made something click for me and unleashed a creative spark that had been dormant in forgotten and abandoned projects. A winning combination indeed, that also was spurred on by how diabolically shit the MCU had mostly been this year. (By the way, I'm glad that they're cutting back a lot in 2024. We really need a break, guys.)

But spite wasn't enough — back in March, I had no plans to do anything like this. I really decided to commit to this for my own sanity after I watched the best thing they put out so far this year — GOTG3, of course — and was reminded of the best parts of the overall universe. I then decided that I had to rectify the love I had of it with its overall current state. So I sat down with Scrivener and finally was able to finish this fic: now a much easier task after having written and rewritten the first chapters of it over and over, and also having to adhere to some sort of schedule to finish my work instead of continually perfecting it again and again. The deadline and your expectations, allowed me to bring this over the finish line and deliver the ending.

There were a lot of setbacks. I found it difficult to balance the pacing with the events of this fic — because unlike a lot of other stories in this project, I had to condense a series of months into just about 20 chapters. As well, I also really struggled to make the side characters Pepper and Rhodey important in this... because this was really just about Tony, and I wasn't sure how I was going to change things up yet. I did finally manage to expand their roles in the sequel, however.

Overall, it was a good start. And doing the epilogue (the part when Nick Fury teased the wider universe) finally brought into sharp relief the ambition of the project I was about to undertake, and made me really excited about what I would be able to write next, what characters I would be able to bring together, how much I could actually write of what I wanted to see. Although there was a speed bump...

THE INCREDIBLE HULK | JULY-NOVEMBER

Jesus Christ, this took four months? Ugggh.

Okay, so if Iron Man proved my ability to do this... then this fic had to prove I was capable of expanding on things that wasn't there. This and Iron Man 2 were the only movies I hadn't watched prior to doing this, and this was about as drastically different to anything else in the MCU as it could get. Thus, I think I really struggled with writing it, while also figuring out what to do with Bruce Banner and these characters I admittedly didn't know very well — so the streak I was on had clearly vanished, and I fell behind further with each chapter.

(To be fair: I did take a long holiday in September that stopped me from working on this for a while. So really, it took three months. Still inexcusable.)

That's not to say this was terrible, though! On the contrary, it allowed me to distinguish this fic from Iron Man heavily by including body horror, heavy themes and overall a much darker tone. It really set the stage, I think, of the different genres and themes I may be able to write and change up during this project — and that really excites me for the future. If these two series already feel so different from each other, then how different could they be from Thor? Or Captain America? Or Guardians of the Galaxy? In that regard, I cannot wait to find out. This then will also set the tone for the other fics in the Hulk series, which will have to be wholly original.

It also introduced me to Betty and Thaddeus Ross (at least in a more nuanced way from what we saw of him in Civil War), as well as Emil Blonsky. I now have different ideas for what to do with them going forward that I've already established, as well as bringing in other characters from the comics that will join this universe along with them. So next year, I'll hopefully then see if I can make them work in the universe by expanding on from where their stories end, referring to comics and other adaptations to represent them in these fics the best I can. I'm thinking specifically of Samuel Sterns, Nadia Dornova and pre-transformed, non-fourth wall breaking Jennifer Walters. (This will also then set the stage for whether I can do the same with other characters I plan to add later, like Clea Strange.)

Although I have somewhat of a plan now, I will say that if I can guess what the hardest fics will be to work on in the future... it will definitely be the Hulk series, and the repercussions they will bring to New York and the universe itself. But I'll just end this by saying that I'm still really excited for them and what they'll add, and I can't wait to focus on them soon after I finish Phase 1. In fact, I've cheekily teased in Hulk already what Bruce's fate looks like in Phase 2! Let me know if you think you caught it.

NOVEMBER | THE CONSULTANT

I decided to start doing shortfics, because I needed something to switch focus to during longer projects — and where better to start than that one short film that came out in 2010, that focuses on the end of The Incredible Hulk? 

This was my first attempt at a short story, and I feel that it was a good one: but it will probably not fully represent my ability to write them. For one, this will probably be one of the only fics that connects directly to another fic I've already written: others will probably take place in the intervening periods between one fic and another, like Sanctuary. (See the slate.) As well, this features characters that do not have as big of a role to play in this universe — sorry, Coulson fans. I have yet to see what it's like to write one featuring a character that I intend to also star (or co-star) in a novel length fic.

But this fic was really good, I feel, for helping me practice condensing a story into as few words as I can. The length of these shortfics will wildly vary depending on how much I need to go into detail, but for this I was able to tell everything while expanding on it in just under 3k words! Very nice. And as well as continuing to flesh out Coulson, I also was able to establish a bit about Jasper Sitwell in some ways that I am very proud of: as a hint, it just means I feel confident in writing stories that both work for readers who are not familiar with the fandom and those who are. If you know, you know.

DECEMBER—? | IRON MAN: WAR MACHINE

That brings us to my current fic, the sequel to Iron Man! There have been a lot of factors in this that has helped make this such a breeze compared to Hulk, and they all have to do with how I've written it. For one, I've developed of writing chapters long before I publish them — which has made this fic go by very quickly, but has given me time to catch errors and edit sections I'm not super happy with. For another, the amount of different perspectives in this has allowed every chapter in turn to stay fresh! With all their different challenges and considerations for how I have to write the characters: from Tony, to Vanko, to Rhodey, to Pepper... and soon, a bit of another character we have not properly heard from yet.

(I might as well add that this is the first fic where I've added proper flashbacks — and I think they've really worked in helping me explain character motivations and decisions! Expect more of them from Tony and Rhodey in the rest of the fic, especially for a particularly heartbreaking chapter to come soon... yeah, that will not be fun to write.)

Basically, this is the beginning of what I've truly envisioned will come out of this series, and I'm really loving it! Planning and remaining consistent has been a boon for me to be able to finish over half of this fic in just a month, and has made me really confident that I'll be able to finish the rest by the end of January (hopefully). As well, this is a story with a really complicated and non-straightforward plot compared to its predecessor — so I'm so happy that I've been able to find ways to manage all these characters during this really busy period in the timeline of the MCU, along with other stories that are happening around the same as this one. And I hope to recapture that interconnectivity in future fics — especially the Avengers fics, that I predict will be very, very long.

And with the fun I'm having with it, it's also a good sign for how I feel I'll be able to tackle 2024. 7 months have gone by since I started doing this, which is not really a full year... but now that there's a good chance I'll be taking myself through 2024 like this, I feel confident that I will be able to release much more high-quality fics now without losing momentum, on top of balancing out my real-life priorities. With that said, I suppose we should talk about that will look like?

THE FUTURE

Okay, so I only have one goal for this project next year, that will be more complicated than you think: and that's just to finish Phase 1.

I say that flippantly, but I don't know how long that'll take. Not counting the fic I'm in the middle of, I have two new series to start, three more shortfics I'll be doing, one novella that will be mostly original and one big giant fic at the end that I still don't entirely know what will be like, nor how long it'll turn out to be. Those are a lot of concerns that I need to address early on, so I can then get writing — eh?

If I do have a rough outline, I will say that I think January is going to consist of me finishing War Machine, and February will consist of me completing the entirety of Widowmaker. From there, it's just a steady race to complete one fic at a time, at a reasonable pace, so that you get all these characters and I do as much good with them as I can leading up to The Avengers. This will be made more complicated by the return to work outside of this, which I'm absolutely 100% sure will slow things down at some point — so to that end, all I ask is that you understand when I need to step away for a little bit. I will let you know well in advance like I did last year, so I don't experience too much pressure to deliver.

Of course, the crux of becoming an AO3 author with all these promises I'm making is that I will be definitely getting a lot more attention, and a lot more readers who will be waiting for updates — and that thought both excites and warms me greatly, but also terrifies me a little! Still, if you are reading this and are well invested at this point, you have my eternal gratitude for sticking around and seeing what I'll do next. I started this because I wanted to do it and make these fics happen, but as time moves us further from what spurred me on to do this originally... I no longer just do it because I want to, but also because I know there will be more of you who like, share and engage with my work, and will continue to do so. That is what keeps me going.

So yeah... I'm not gonna stop any time soon. There will be days where it will feel harder to write than others, but every day I get in the chair and get lost in what I'm doing brings me closer to what I'm capable of. Thank you all once again for supporting me this year and brightening up my 2023, and I hope you all love what I'm doing next year! I hope I like it too. *u*

If you have any questions you want to ask about how things went this year that I didn't think of to put here, or have any suggestions for the next year... ask me. I'll answer them to the best of my ability — consider it a cost beneficial transaction that will help the both of us!

And of course, a Happy New Year to you all as well! I'll see you in 2024.

— (M)

[hippolotamus]

5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Rules: post the top 5 works you’re most proud of that you released in 2022 (not necessarily your most popular), your top 4 current WIPs that you’re excited to release in the new year, your top 3 biggest improvements in your writing over the past year, your top 2 resolutions (ways you wish to improve your writing/blog) for the new year, and your number 1 favorite line you’ve written this year!

Tagged by @rmd-writes @blackandwhiteandrose & darling wife @lizzie-bennetdarcy 🥰

5 works (in no particular order)

Warm Hellos and Our Last Goodnights This one is definitely a pride and joy of mine, despite it's more serious content. Well, really because of the more serious content. Up until I published this I felt I was an author readers could count on for fluff and light-hearted feels. But the idea shouted at me and begged to be written. I'm truly glad I listened. [David/Patrick, T, CW: MCD]

What's Next? My first crack at writing Rachel, during a period when there was some fandom upheaval over her purpose in the show. By far one of my least popular offerings. It was satisfying to dig into her side of the breakup and what she may or may not have noticed before Patrick left for Schitt's Creek. [Patrick/Rachel, G]

Whatever may come (your heart I will choose) This one is... my baby, love of my life, I'll snarl if you look at it wrong. LOL (sort of). In all seriousness I have a very strong attachment to this work. There are many pieces of my own complicated coming out journey littered in every corner of it. Mapping out Eddie's journey from high school to adulthood was... let's just say I'm getting choked up thinking about it. It's safe to say I'm very proud of my Marshmallow. [Buck/Eddie, M]

My Favorite Color is You I both love this one and am quite proud of it. It's a level of E I hadn't really explored before and, while some of it could probably use some tweaks and fine tuning, I love the shit out of it. Artist!Buck being adored by one Eddie Diaz, with a side of painting each other, lives in my head rent free. Always. [Buck/Eddie, E]

The Sound of My Heart My first attempt at fake dating. It was... a wild ride from a plot planning perspective. (I use the word planning incredibly loosely here). However, I'm rather impressed at Past Me's ability to research a city I hadn't been to since my senior year of high school [redacted] years ago. Researching train schedules and the New York Botanical Gardens was probably my favorite part of the whole experience. [David/Patrick, T]

4 wips

4... really??? Okay, so the ones most likely to get published that I'm excited about:

Completing If you like Fashion & Baseball

A yet to be named Twylexis oneshot with some worry/comfort over a health scare.

For the Record [working title]: a fluffy little Buddie first kiss/getting together fic for @shortsighted-owl

Continuing to add to the Secrets & Lies universe

3 biggest improvements

Punctuation around dialog tags. Still a struggle but better than before.

Taking direction from my betas and applying those notes more consistently

Varying my word usage by eliminating duplicates and making more trips to the thesaurus.

2 resolutions

Writing multi-chapter works fully before publishing. I am terrible about this and often write myself into a corner.

Consistently adding more eyeballs to a doc for feedback.

Number 1 Favorite Line

This was insanely difficult to choose just one. I'm cheating and picking something from both fandoms:

I know all your secrets: “Never better. Should we exchange the usual my country wants you dead pleasantries first or is foreplay off the menu tonight?” 

Whatever May Come: Technically only one line used multiple times, but I absolutely adore the repetition of I love you, I love you, I love you in chapter 23. There's just so much yearning packed into it.

I don't know who has been there, done that with this but I'll tag @shortsighted-owl @vanillahigh00 @alysiswriting @sarahlevys

[lostinfantasyworlds]

Hi! First of all, I just wanna say that UNTL is definitely one of my best reads this year. Thank you for sharing that masterpiece.

What should we look forward to next year? Any WIPs?

Omgggg I am so honored sldkfja;sd thank you so so so much 🥺😭 ❤️I just —

I do have a few WIPs and I will give little summaries of each under the cut!! They are in order of when I will most likely finish them)

 Under the Northern Lights post-canon PWP oneshot - I’ve had all kinds of little snippets pop into my head of Inuyasha and Kagome’s lives together within the UTNL universe, and I always write them down. Most of them are smutty because I can’t seem to help myself hahahaha. This one is the most fully-formed idea that I had a few months ago, and wrote down a whole rough draft in my phone. It actually takes place on New Year’s Eve, which is why I was hoping to have finished UTNL well before the end of the year so that I could have posted this follow up oneshot on/around NYE, but OH WELL. It’s mostly just porn anyways, but includes a tiny hint of plot that actually ties in with the epilogue! (you will see a reference to “New Year’s” in the epilogue, so just know that you will eventually be getting to read the whole story 😉)

The First and Last - Modern AU that could either be a long oneshot or a multi-chapter depending on how long it ends up being. Currently it's only about 4.5k words, but still super rough so it could definitely end up being multi-chapter. I'm so excited about this one because childhood-best-friends-to-lovers is one of my all-time favorite tropes (Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable were my first ship before I even knew what shipping was...), and now I'm FINALLY going to have a story of my own using that premise! This story is inspired by the summers I spent as a kid at my grandparent's cottage in Maine. It was in a very tiny coastal town, and was on a quiet street with a few other summer homes, so I would see the same kids every year and we would all hang out. And I may have had a smol crush on one of the boys that I would see each summer😏. So this story is InuKag in a very similar situation!! I love this one and can't wait to share once I go back and fill in all of the middle parts 🥰

Sometime Around Midnight - Modern AU multi-chapter based on  a song of the same name by The Airborne Toxic Event. I actually came up with this as my first multi-chapter AU back in January/February before UTNL randomly forced its way into my brain and took up my entire life for the rest of the year. I'm still really excited about this one, and have a whole elaborate backstory planned out, but am actually really stuck on how I want the plot to go past the initial couple of chapters (which starts off as pretty much just a retelling of the lyrics of the song). It won’t be super long, probably only 3 - 5 chapters, but I really can't decide on an interesting enough way to end it 😆.  I'll figure it out eventually, though!

The Girl at the Rock Show -  Modern AU enemies-to-lovers fic that I wrote for @goshinote’s birthday back in October! I was only able to get it to the point of being a super rough draft (that was still over 6k) by the time of her birthday, but I promised to get back and finish it eventually, which I still plan to do! I debated whether to publish it, since it’s very much written for Jane and her interests with lots of inside jokes/references lol , but I figure I might as well share it because someone else might enjoy too! The basic premise is that Inuyasha and Kagome are both working at a concert venue and do not get along at first. But....✨sexual tension✨is there and so begins a FWB type of situation that of course turns into something more...

A couple of canon-based very short oneshots - I have ideas for little missing scenes I would’ve loved to see in canon every so often, and have a couple of rough drafts written. One is my version of a little follow-up to the almost kiss in TFA episode 18, and the other is a post-canon idea of how InuKag’s first kiss might have happened based on the manga where they never kissed inside the jewel! Both are short and sweet and very fluffy. I started off with most of my ideas being canon-based, so I like to return to that as kind of my bread and butter after writing a lot of AU. I just love love love Inuyasha and Kagome’s dynamic in canon, and I consider it a fun challenge to write within that world and keep them as in character as possible!

Apart and Together (very tentative title, pls ignore lol) - This is actually the first fic I ever started writing after finishing the series! It is basically just my ideas of what might’ve happened during the 3 year separation, and how their reunion would have gone. It’s actually already like 20k words hahaha, but I started it so long ago when I knew nothing about writing, and have shifted my views on certain things, so it will require a lot of editing/restructuring to get it finished. Eventually!

Untitled Multi-Chapter epic-style long fic based on Darling in the Franxx - Post-apocalypse AU where demons (led by Naraku) have taken over the world and humans are forced to live in small areas under constant attack. Inuyasha and Kagome (and others) are paired up on a mission to gather fragments of the Shikon Jewel, in an effort to stop Naraku from getting them first. They don’t get along at all at first, but learn to trust and rely on each other over time, although they grew up as part of a selection of kids that were raised to be soldiers so they don’t know much about humanity/love/etc. Also there is a twist! The premise is loosely based on the anime Darling in the Franxx, minus the sexual robot stuff hahaha. This will probably take me forever to write tbh. I have a loose idea of the plot, but nothing really written so far. I want to write the entire thing before posting, so it might not end up getting posted next year but we'll see!

That is ALL of my WIPs that have actually been fleshed out into full story ideas! I have a handful of random scenes jotted down in my phone that could potentially become stories if I thought about them a little more, but I don’t like to have too many open WIPs at once, so I’ll try and get a few of those out before trying to come up with anything else.

Thank you SO SO much for this question, and for your support of UTNL! It means the world ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

[lostmykeysie]

➶*✧*⤪･*✧*2022 FIC GOALS*✧*･⤪*✧*➶

first up, thanks to @theonlywolfpants and @wolfstarhaven for being generally all round amazing, but also for tagging me in this

1. finish Trust is Earned

so this is a two in one, because i need to finish this, but i also need to learn from it: never plan a beginning and an ending for a fic and then just dive in. i need structure!! i need plot!! and yet here i am, without either!! as much as i love writing fluff i cannot write multi chap fluff, i am directionless. but i will finish it!!! i originally told myself i'd do it in time for christmas, but that's not going to happen. 2022 it is.

2. finish and publish my regulus black redemption fic

so this one i am excited about. i have learned from past mistakes and have planned the entire thing, every single chapter, but it means so much to me that i'm worried i'll be writing and re-writing and editing forever and just never post. i've never read anything reg focused/centric and it's all very new but i already love it so much and i'm hoping it'll be my best so far. just need to take the plunge! i have decided i will do it today. promise.

3. read non-wolfstar fic

so my issue is that i have a lot of problems with focusing and attention. i love fanfiction! it completely made my life during lockdown when i was in a situation (that i'm unfortunately still in) where i can't watch any tv or films because my mind just can't focus for long enough. imagine lockdown but without netflix or disney+ or anything - that was basically me. subscriptions to every streaming service out there but no brain that will let me watch, i was genuinely just lying in bed every day staring at the ceiling lol. then something or other got me onto ao3 and i've always been a wolfstar fan in concept but never in practice but next thing i know i'm hooked, and i've finally found entertainment my brain is happy with!!! but now i'm seeing all these talented writers with so much to give and i really want to branch out and read something else so i can appreciate them fully but i need a good introduction to trick my brain into caring about something other than wolfstar. i would really love some fic recommendations for non-wolfstar HP ships (and preferably not remus or sirius because wolfstar are endgame) fic that is short/semi short that you think showcases the characters or pairing and could kickstart my interest - please please please!!!!!!!

4. interact more

i honestly think i've only had tumblr for about a month which is insane. i had it when i was a teenager (makes me sound so old, i am still in my 20s ok leave me alone) - this super angsty depressing black and white blog. i'd love to find it but i can't remember my url and i don't have access to my old email :( but anyway, i've not hopped on here for long, but i am so glad i did, because it's great, but i am so out of the loop. so my plan for 2022 is to interact more and get to know everyone (lame)

5. write more!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meeting With a Stranger is honest to god the first thing i've ever written. it all started after many bottles of wine with two of my greatest friends. we were talking about ff and how we'd love to write, but didn't have the stones to/didn't have anything to say. (they're completely different fandoms - V is all about supernatural (destiel!) and L is a huge k-pop fan (loves BTS)) and i was saying how i'd love to beta work but could never write because my brain was empty of plot. then it got me thinking, and then the first MWaS scene with remus and james came into my mind, and then i would think of some stupid/funny line and be like haha sounds like something remus would do, and then boom, i'm writing a whole ass fic, and the rest is history.

i have a doc with prompts and inspos and scenes that i would to build on, mostly oneshots (i love writing fluffy oneshots so much) including a christmas wolfstar that i'm going to try and write next week and my reggie redemption fic eek! so i think this one will be my easiest goal only because now i've started, i canny stop

6. beta fics

i want to beta fics!!!!!!! in reality i want to live out my secret dream job of being an editor. i've never beta'd a fic and i'm not sure what the level of involvement is but it's something i really want to start in '22 so... if anyone is in need of a beta hit me up in 2022 :D

sorry this ended up really long, i am apparently an oversharer. all my mutuals have already been tagged and posted their 22 goals which tells me i need to get cracking on #4 asap!

[lostinfantasyworlds]

Hello dear! When you come up with an idea, what is your writing process like, from conception to publication? What comes easy for you with writing? What do you struggle with? I'm so excited for you to finish Under the Northern Lights--I'm so looking forward to the binge!

Hi @fawn-eyed-girl!!! Thank you SO much for this question!!! I've always wanted to explain my writing process a bit more, since I feel like I'm always making cryptic, weird references to it 😆. I'm so excited to finish UTNL too, and I'm so excited for you to read the rest!!! 🥰❤️

Answer under the cut because it is LONG...sorry hahaha

What is my writing process like, from conception to publication?

So...when I see those posts that circulate on tumblr about writers having tons and tons of WIPs, I can't relate 😆. Ideas for stories are actually kind of few and far between for me, and they seem to pop into my head randomly, often in response to some kind of visual or a song or something like that. Most commonly though, I get a lot of ideas while I'm in the shower, for whatever reason 😆. In fact, I think I had just gotten out of the shower (back in February) and was looking out my upstairs bathroom window down at my snow-covered backyard when the idea for UTNL suddenly popped into my head, and within minutes was a fully-formed story with all of the major plot points and everything!

Once the idea has been had, I need to write it down immediately because my memory is AWFUL and I will definitely forget otherwise. So as soon as I get an idea for either a story, or for a scene, dialogue, etc, I will jot it down in the notepad on my phone. Sometimes I'll write down an entire rough draft of a scene/story, sometimes it's just a couple bullet points. 

Then comes the planning, especially if it's a longfic like UTNL. I am a planner through and through, and don't think I will ever be able to publish a multi-chapter story without having a super clear outline of the major plot points and an idea of what needs to happen in each chapter. This is not to say that I think there’s anything wrong whatsoever with the pantser approach! We are all different, and I very much admire those who can figure out a story as they go along! It’s just that for me, I need to have it planned out as much as possible, otherwise I think I would have sooo much anxiety.

With UTNL, I had all of the major plot points planned way back in February, as well as rough versions of a lot of the pivotal scenes, written down in my phone. Then, I made a Google Doc with an outline each chapter, making bullet points for all of the major plot points to be covered.

After that, I created the doc for the actual fic, and just started pasting in the scenes I had already written down in my phone into their respective parts of the story, and started writing the rough versions of the early chapters. In my rough first drafts, I just kind of "word vomit" and try to get the general idea of the chapter down on paper without any regard to sentence structure, flow, etc. I might leave certain details or even entire scenes to be filled in later.

I then would have Jane ( @goshinote) read/comment on the rough draft to get general feedback/just to share the story with her as it was created because it’s dedicated to her and she has been such a huge fan/support! 

At some point after that (sometimes months later, depending where I was at with publishing) I start finalizing the chapter to get it ready to post. I used to refer to this process as “editing”, but it's pretty much the opposite of that lol so I stopped saying that. This is where I fully flesh out the chapter (often doubling or even tripling/quadrupling the word count of the rough draft), do any research that needs to be done to fill in details, add in all the transitions etc that I might've left out before, and start paying attention to actual writing style. At some point around this stage, or during the next one, is when I have Jane read through the more finalized version again to help catch grammar errors etc!

AND THEN, FINALLY, the part that really takes me the longest is the final pass-throughs, when I really get into the nitty gritty of every single sentence and start overthinking all kinds of little nitpicky writing things like word choice, syntax, flow, not repeating words too often, etc etc etc. Those things are kind of new to me, so it takes me forever and a half for me to figure out the best way to convey what I'm trying to say and keep within my writing style, etc. Also, at this stage I'll really put myself in the shoes of the characters and try to mentally act out each line and think 'Would they actually say that? How would they say it? What would they be doing?' etc.

That still doesn’t even fully cover my level of neuroticism and the insane amounts of time I spend combing through every line of every chapter even after it’s already been published, but this answer is already so long and I haven’t even answered the rest of your questions! 🤦🏻‍♀️Sorry 😆

What comes easy with writing?

I guess that initial stage, where I’m just kind of letting the ideas flow directly from my head to the page and not worrying about all the extra stuff. Most of the time it’s just a scene that I’m seeing play out like a movie in my head, so I try to just plop it down as plainly as possible to describe what I’m seeing. 

Also...at this point, I think I’m known for writing really emotional stuff. I think that comes really easily to me too, and it’s what I love exploring most when writing. My main goal is make whoever might be reading feel something.

What do I struggle with when writing?

Pretty much all of that nitty gritty, technical writing stuff that comes in the later stages of my process. I’ve learned a lot over the past year and I think I’ve improved quite a bit, but obviously still have a long way to go. I think one of the biggest things for me has been grasping the concept of ‘show, don’t tell.’ I have a tendency to want to dive into the characters heads and write long descriptions of their thoughts and feelings, so I’ve tried to get better at reeling that back a little bit in favor of dialogue and/or actions. And in the beginning of UTNL, I definitely wrote wayyy too much backstory that I could have just shown/revealed later on (and still did, so it ended up being repetitive).

Oh, and I also dragged through the location research I had to do for UTNL omg. I hated it so much at certain points 😆. Some of it was fun, but with them traveling all over a state I had never been to before, I had to do SO SO SO much research about all kinds of little details, and at one point I was like please make it stop 😭😂hahaha. WRITING IS FREAKING HARD.

If anyone has actually read all of this, BLESS YOU ❤️

Thank you so much again for the questions, Fawn!!! This was a lot of fun to answer!! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️