#posting this early because we finished early!

[darling-stardust]

The little voice in Hermie’s mind spoke up again, and this time, there was nothing to distract him. He wasn’t ready to listen - but then again, he didn’t think he would ever be ready. As sunlight trickled in through Normal’s window and spilled across the floor like melted gold, he finally let himself think it: I am in love with Normal Oak. ...And I’m never going to tell him.

Have you read Cosmiado's fic as long as you're here i will live like this ?? Because I have and I had to do something about my feelings !!

[elerrinacrownedwithstars]

I don't think the story of Beren and Lúthien is somehow out of place in The Silmarillion. Yeah, most of the Silm consists of sad and tragic tales, but I don't think this makes B&L's story somehow inconsistent with the rest of the book. If anything, it serves as a contrast and elevates the Silm. It in some ways like a fairy tale, but at the same time it does break the conventions of fairy tales. It's about death, Tolkien's central theme, in more ways than most other tales of the Silm are.

It feels like this reading of Beren and Lúthien as a strange outlier comes out of treating and reading the Silm as a self-contained entity. But it is not. The Silm is still very much a part of Tolkien's legendarium, and despite the difficulties he had in writing and editing it, you can't really deny the ways it's connected and essential to Lord of the Rings.

And if you look at LOTR, the story of Beren and Lúthien appears very early in the Fellowship of the Ring. Aragorn sings their tale to the hobbits as they are spending the night by Weathertop, afraid of the Ringwraiths. Aragorn speaks of it as a sad tale that may nevertheless lift up the hobbits' hearts.

This, I think, is an important clue as to where the story will go. In many ways, Sam and Frodo's quest to destroy the Ring mirrors the quest of Beren and Lúthien to steal a Silmaril - and the two quests are interlocked because B&L's success enables the Silmaril to become the star of Eärendil, which in the form of Galadriel's star-glass will aid Sam and Frodo in some of the darkest moments of their journey. B&L's union also provides Middle-earth with a line of Men who will engage and keep Sauron busy long enough to be defeated, but that's beside the point of this post. The structure and nature of the two quests is similar: here are people who were underestimated by the powerful, going where the great cannot go, and doing things that even the mightiest could not have done. Before Sam and Frodo enter Shelob's lair, they even talk about Beren and Lúthien's quest, and note how they are in the same story still, as if to set the following scenes and the fight against Shelob in the very tone and memory of B&L's quest.

Beren and Lúthien's tale may on the surface seem different from the rest of the stories of the Silm. But if you look at the whole of the legendarium, it is more essential than many other tales of the Silm. The problem is that Tolkien himself had trouble constructing the myths and the early history of Arda in a way that would indeed fit the works he had already published at that point, and the uneasiness we may feel about B&L or whichever part of the story is because it was very intricate and Tolkien was not able to finish the story or find a satisfactory way to compile the many versions. Christopher Tolkien's editions of the Silm and HoMe are undoubtedly the result of a Herculean effort but even he knew and admitted there are other ways the fragments of his father's works could have been organised. Even so, there is no doubt of the fact that the tale of Beren and Lúthien is one of the core threads of the legendarium, and without it, the Silm and the story of Middle-earth would be much lesser.

[snowydoesitall]

✨movie night with the hidden inventory gc✨

*:･ﾟ✧cast: gojo, geto, shoko, utahime, nanami, and haibara

✧summary: a one shot of the hidden inventory friend group’s movie night

♡a/n: i’m back!!! guys please appreciate my efforts with this one this took me several attempts to post and way longer than usual to write

ྀིwarnings: language; gojo and geto are their own warnings atp; no beta we die like suguru’s tea mug

after the discussion regarding which movie they were planning to watch that night had ended, you wrapped up whatever homework you had left before changing into more comfortable clothes and heading to shoko’s dorm a bit early to help her set up.

upon arriving, you find that utahime had the same idea as she was currently standing by the microwave waiting for a bag of popcorn to finish cooking.

shoko was at her laptop, looking perplexed, so you walked over to her to see if she needed help.

“i’ve been trying to get into our disney+ account so i can stream cars onto the tv, but it keeps saying that the password is incorrect”, she explains. “did gojo change the password again?”

“i don’t think so…did you put the question mark at the end?”

shoko paused for a moment before typing something into the password bar. sure enough, the app finally let her in.

she stared at her laptop in disbelief for a solid minute before responding.

“huh, that seemed to do it. thanks.”

you nodded, chuckling lightly, before walking over to utahime, who was microwaving what appeared to be the fifth bag of popcorn.

“damn, do we really need that much popcorn?”, you asked.

“if it were just us girls i would’ve stopped at three or four. but there’s going to be seven of us, and you know how gojo is with snacks”, she responded.

“good point.”

the two of you continued to chat for a bit, shoko joining in once she finished setting up the movie.

eventually, the boys finally showed up with a couple snacks as well as a few bottles of soda, which they set on the counter.

“alright, that’s everyone. shall we start the movie?”, shoko asked.

everyone agreed, grabbing a couple snacks and drinks before settling themselves on either the couch or the floor in front of the tv as shoko presses play on the remote to behind the movie.

as the movie played on, the room was filled with all sorts of chaos. for starters, gojo would not stop quoting lines from the movie, which, while slightly annoying, was tolerable. eventually haibara joined in for a bit, seeing as he’d watched that movie at least a hundred times.

it eventually got tiring though, especially once gojo started quoting lines from completely different movies, and so geto ended up lightly tapping him on the shoulder to get him to stop.

speaking of those two, once gojo’s focus had shifted to his boyfriend, the two of them were practically glued to each other with how close they were. this didn’t exactly surprise you, since gojo is the king of being clingy, especially around geto, and the latter of the two never minded it despite not being super clingy himself.

“alright, you two need to either get a room or stop making out on my floor, because some of us are trying to watch the god damn movie”, shoko complained after about ten minutes of their behavior.

“i mean i’m not opposed to- ow!”

whatever gojo was planning to say next was cut off by you smacking him from the couch.

“making out during a disney movie is crazy, you two”, you stated.

“fair point”, geto responded, lightly shoving gojo off his lap, to the latter’s dismay.

nonetheless, the two of them settled down after a while, so your attention shifted back to the movie.

about halfway through, you started feeling tired, which made sense seeing as it was getting kind of late and you’d had a pretty long day. all the same, you did your best to stay awake, as things in the movie were starting to get real interesting.

you reached into one of the popcorn bowls to grab a few pieces to keep yourself awake. in doing so, your hand brushed against another hand, causing you to pause.

you glanced at nanami, who had reached into the popcorn bowl at the same time you did. the two of you sat there for a moment, neither one lifting your hands from the bowl.

after what seemed like a couple minutes, you finally lifted your hand out of the bowl, a few pieces in your hand.

“looks like we had the same idea”, you remarked with a laugh, popping a piece of popcorn into your mouth.

“looks like it”, nanami responded, a small smile forming on his face as he too grabbed a few pieces of popcorn.

you heard a cough, so you turned to see utahime staring at the two of you, a knowing smile on her face. you stared back at her, hinting for her to back off.

eventually, towards the end of the movie, you were getting more and more tired, to the point where even popcorn wasn’t enough to keep you awake. the last thing you remember before dozing off was the start of the final race.

you woke up slowly to someone gently shaking you awake.

“hey guys, time to wake up, movie just ended”, haibara stated.

you took a glimpse of your surroundings, noticing that the nearly-empty bowl of popcorn had now toppled onto the floor, spilling a few kernels. you then noticed that you’d fallen asleep leaning against nanami, who in turn had fallen asleep against the armrest of the couch.

haibara was standing in front of the two of you, currently trying to wake up nanami, who was still sound asleep against the armrest. you sat up quickly, hoping that he hadn’t noticed you dozing off on him, but you figured he must’ve since the second you got up was when he finally woke up, slightly dazed and tense as he glanced around the room, presumably to find where you’d gone.

once he noticed you sitting next to him, he let out a sigh of relief, looking more relaxed.

“you okay, man?”, haibara asked, looking slightly confused.

nanami turned to face the brown-haired boy, looking as if he’d just noticed his presence.

“oh, sorry…i’m fine, just…it’s nothing.”

you and haibara looked at him suspiciously, feeling that it wasn’t just “nothing”, but didn’t pry.

“i’m fine, you two. seriously.”

you opened your mouth to say something, but before you could, you heard shoko calling for the three of you.

“hey! are you two sleepyhead lovers and hai going to help me clean up or what?”

“the WHAT?”, you exclaimed, looking at shoko with an mixed expression of shock and confusion all at once. meanwhile, haibara was looking like he was trying not to laugh while nanami was awkwardly looking around the room, trying to avoid eye contact, a twinge of pink starting to show on his face.

“nothing! don’t worry about it, now come help us clean up!”

you signed, knowing you weren’t going to get a legitimate answer from her, at least not right now, so you got up from the couch and started cleaning up, the other two boys following suit.

but as you were clearing up the kitchen, you couldn’t help but think about what shoko said.

lovers?, you thought to yourself. but how could that be? we’re just friends, after all…

but then you started to look more into it, moments of the night playing through your mind. the small smile he gave you when your hand brushed against his earlier, the way neither of you pulled away immediately, his slight blush at shoko’s jab at the two of you, the way he rose up from his sleep the second he no longer felt your presence, all of it.

the more and more you thought about it, the more and more you realized that perhaps the other girls had a point.

“you okay?”

you snapped back into reality as you turned to face nanami, who was looking at you with concern.

“yeah, i’m fine, just…tired”, you tell him, giving him a reassuring smile.

you weren’t entirely sure if nanami believed you, but he didn’t show it if he didn’t.

“i see. anyway, the others are planning to crash here for the night. the cleaning’s pretty much done if you wanted to head to bed.”

sleep did sound pretty nice right then and there, so you nodded.

“yeah, that might be a good idea, it is pretty late…”

the two of you headed back to the living room space. nanami returned to his spot on shoko’s couch, leaning against the armrest, while you sat next to him and tried to fall asleep sitting upwards, not wanting to invade his personal space nor accidentally wake up haibara, who had taken up the other side of the couch.

“there’s no way that’s comfortable”, nanami remarked as he noticed your attempts.

“sorry, didn’t want to intrude or anything”, you replied.

“i didn’t mind the first time, why would i mind now?”, he asked. “make yourself comfortable. i promise i don’t mind.”

with that, you hesitantly went back to leaning against nanami, finding him a lot more comfortable than trying to sleep sitting up.

before long, you were finally starting to fall asleep. you felt an arm gently wrap itself around you, and while you certainly didn’t expect it, you didn’t try to pull away, nor did you feel uncomfortable. instead, you felt at ease, like this was natural, almost.

by the time sleep came to take you away for the night, you were pretty certain that nanami had some sort of feelings for you.

hell, at this point, you were starting to think that you did, too.

oh god this ended up longer than i expected😭

♫tag list: @ofcqdesi @duwangdays

like what you see? click here to request something! (see here for guidelines)

[klainesecretsanta2024]

Information and guidelines (including deadlines) for the Klaine Secret Santa Gift Exchange 2024 are under the cut.

Don't forget to follow us!

1) We have one very strict rule: HAVE FUN!!!!! ❤️

Enjoy this event, because that's the point! To make each other happy with a nice surprise and to make ourselves happy for being able to do that. We want you to enjoy the process itself. If you have any trouble with this, tell us and we'll try to help you and make it easier for you.

2) What type of gift can you participate with?

Fanfiction (drabble, one shot, multi-chaptered fic), drawing/painting (digital or traditional), 2in1 for superheros: comics, animation, gifset, scrapbook style montage, photo or video edit... Tell us, if you have any other idea!

For fic, I'd like to keep a minimum word counts which is 1k, HOWEVER you can participate with shorter drabbles too, if that works better for you. But in this case please write more of them, like short chapters (that not necessarily related to each other) to reach 1k.

For the others, there are no requirements, except to be creative! Which is never a problem in this fandom... ;)

3) We try to give you enough time to create your gift to make this event as stress-free as possible. That means you'll have 7-10 weeks to do this (it's your choice, depends on when you wish to post your gift in December). That's why we're starting this so early.

DEADLINES:

Signups: September 28th -  October 12th Giftee assignments: October 14th Creating period in Santa's workshop: October 14th - Dec 23th Posting period: December 1-24th

4) Everyone is welcome to joins us in any way. But if you participate, please don't forget that you'll be someone's Secret Santa this year. Which means that someone, who takes the time and effort to make a gift for someone else is expecting a gift of their own - from you. 

5.) It's okay to be a little late. It's especially okay not to post a whole multi-chaptered fic until Christmas. However, please try to post something, anything until dec 24th - even if it's "just" the first short chapter of a multi-chaptered fic. Please don't feel it's not enough, it's perfect, you just started to post a long fic, are you kidding?? Your giftee will love you for it! But please, also make sure you finish what you started, and do that within a reasonable time.

6) If you realize that you probably won't be able to post anything in time, not even one short chapter (but you are determined to do it soon): don't freak out! Just please, please communicate! Let us know and send an anonymous message to your person, let them know their gift is running a little late. Don't worry, no one will be mad at you, I promise. :) Life happens!

7) Which brings us to a very important part: If you decided to participate, please take it seriously and don't forget about it!! If you realize that you won't be able to fulfill what you've committed to, PLEASE CONTACT US ASAP because it means that we have to find a very generous new Santa for your giftee in time!!!!

8) Will we give you prompts? 

Kind of... Yes and no. We'll definitely have some (probably open) questions for every one of you about what you like, so you'll have some idea to choose from and work with - if you want to. Please look at this as an option because we do this to HELP YOU, not to sabotage your creative energy!!! :) It can make your gift more personal, but you don't have to use any of it if you have trouble with it. Again, it's an option and your giftee will know that - some people need inspiration, some people don't.

Also, if you have more questions, you can always tell us and we'll try to get more information from your giftee's interests for you.

9) No-nos:

We respect everyone's feelings and interests but please, please do the same and in your prompts try to avoid of the really dark topics, like your favorite topic EVER is <3 major character death <3 (to use a valid example). This might make your Secret Santa very anxious about how to please you. It's Christmas time, regardless of the theme of your gift, and most of us love to keep our love ones alive, well... any time of the year, really. ;) So please consider to sugar coat your feelings about this, for example, say you like angst, or that you can handle heavy topics. (So your Santa have a choice but probably won't feel like they have to kill someone for Christmas to make you happy. ;) ) //Yes, I'm traumatized, sorry about this.//

This also applies to gifts: be creative but please, avoid the very divisive topics (you know what those are), so everyone can enjoy your gift in this fandom equally.

!! AI generated art and fic are not allowed !!

10) A tip: This event is not about the gift only. Your giftee will always be happy to know that their secret Santa is thinking about them. A nice anonymous message in the question box or through us, like "I'm making your present, I hope you'll love it" or just "I'll be there soon ;) - your Santa" can put a HUGE smile on anyone's face! Please make sure you stay anonymous, though!!!!

11) Keep your giftee in secret. This is a secret mission.

12) Tags to use and follow: #klainesecretsanta2024 and #kss2024  - we'll track both.

13) Do you have any questions or suggestions? Our ask box is always open!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Reasons to play In Stars and Time: Canon Pronoun Warfare.

[kyouka-supremacy]

I think we should just bring back Wungo Wednesday and start a fandom collective anime rewatch

[tango-but-everywhere]

They’re discussing tall buildings.

Cleo, secret life episode 9.

[ID: a minecraft screenshot from secret life, taken at dusk at the spawn campfire facing Trader Scar’s. Etho and Tango are nearer to the campfire while the viewer, Cleo, is further back. Both of them are in full diamond and holding shields, but Etho is holding a bow and Tango a golden apple by the looks of it. Etho’s facing Tango and Tango’s facing Cleo. End ID]

[icewindandboringhorror]

Apparently I can meet my goal of roughly 400,000 words in 6 months if I just somehow write at least 2,200 words a day ghbjh... Almost 2,500 today... huzzah...

[ace-malarky]

anyway scenes finished 7/100 let's hope this set doesn't take the next nine years lmao

[foursidecity]

(in my head) they don't even know I finished page 2 of calendertown

[hellothere-generalangsty]

It's way past my bedtime ans my cat is sleeping-purring next to me but I thought I'd post the process of the @ailani-reillata Ailaniversary art I made today just to talk a bit more about it

Disclaimer: doing traditional art is cool until you need to scan it or post a picture of it 😂 also kinda long post below so ofc no obligation at all to read it!

Phase one: Sketching the Idea

My inspiration for the posture was a Yara Flor comic strip I found on Pinterest. Yara looks over her shoulder and her hair falls on the side of her face, and I loved the way it framed her face and thought it would look great with Ailani's hair.

I drew a little doodle on the page to help me visualize how the hair would be divided, and focused on 3 main parts (the lines, the bubbles, the empty space) which would - supposedly- help me during the lineart stage. Below are images of the final sketch.

I was hesitant on adding details to her arms, such as the folds of a dress, but I was so anxious about ruining the drawing I abandonzd that idea. I was considering adding her tattoos and was still not decided at this stage of the drawing.

Phase 2: Line-ing the Art

Is that even a real word? Idk, I'm too tired to English properly so we will say it is. Following the sketching phase was naturalle the lineart phase, which is one of my favorite stage when drawing. I bought new inking pens too so I was able to test them out, and it went quite well!

As you can see, the ribbons, outline of the skin and facial features have been done with my new pens, and i was quite happy with the result! It gives a more natural look to the whole drawing in my opinion.

At this stage I decided not to add her arm tattoos and consider this version of Ailani as the one you would find in the early chapters of Begged and Borrowed Time, so before she would get her tattoos.

Phase 2.5: Line-ing the Hair

This stage has it's own part because it was really fun to do! The inspiration for the way I draw hair comes from @/ssavaart (aka Scott Christian Sava on Youtube). I've been following him for a while now and I'm trying to push my art beyond my comfort zone and try new stuff thanks to him, and having fun with drawing hair is one of these things!

Look how beautiful these curls are. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm really proud of the drawing at this stage 😂 it's the perfect moment where the inking went well and I have not yet ridked myself with the watercolours - so I always take a long sight (and tons of pictures) to celebrate reaching this stage without incidents.

Phase 3: Watercolours

Here comes the difficult part. It always makes me nervous because I always fear ruining my drawing and all the efforts I put into it by doing the watercolours. But I love the medium too much and if I want to get better I need to practice. So, testing the waters, I finally dive head first into this crucial stage.

The watercolouring goes well, I'm overall satisfied enough to take some pictures and even try to scan it, with the hope that the scanned rendering will be better than the usual "photographing and editing" I do with my phone.

Spoiler alert: the scan was NOT better than the pictures, and no amount of editing could change that. (Or maybe I am just very bad at editing.) So, back to my "photographing and editing" habits, I somehow managed to get a good enough result:

I still feel unsatisfied as I find these digital versions do not properly render the visuals I have on paper, IRL. With the digital versionsw the hair is either so dark we don't see the details, or too bright, the colours are too warm and light... And while Ailani looks light-skinned, the paper version has these visible brown tones that I struggled to find on the digital version, even when editing the pictures. The closest I got is the tone you see on the first picture, but the image is not lighted enough so the overall quality of the picture is a bit lessened by that.

Still, I won't complain too much, because overall it was a very fun drawing to do, I enjoyed every stage of it and I would love to do another piece like this! But for now I will go to sleep because it is Way Past My Bedtime 😂

If you've made it this far, thank you for your attention, feel free to let me know which stage is your favorite and what you liked most (or disliked most) about this drawing!

I for one really had fun doing Ailani's lips, as well as filling her hair, and colouring her eyes! 😊

[mantisgodsdomain]

Having the unfortunate experience where we read the words of someone who has clearly sorted an entire category of people into the same cardboard cutout construct and having to bite our tongue so that we do not say something deeply inadvisable on the internet.

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: March 26

"Songs About Rain" by Gary Allan

[ainawgsd]

It has been A Day

[daydreaming-in-daisies]

aaaaaand now I can't sleep bc of anxiety about my future and whether or not I'll even graduate next month 🙃

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)