#working on my longfic is what got me to notice all the typos in my wips too 😅

[midnight-rice]

@alltheoutsinfreeeee thank you for tagging me, i love talking about whatever media i'm currently obsessed with! (and may i just say you also have very good taste ^^ FMA and FFXV are both on my list of media to try out)

i uh, can't find the post of the actual prompts, but i'll follow your lead 😅

Last song: Been jumping back and forth between my own playlist of faves and Pav's, so my most recent songs were "On the Other Side of the Mirage" from Tales of Vesperia (it's so relaxing, puts me to sleep every time) and "......" from Fire Emblem Awakening (half of the YouTube comments section was people cursing the songwriters for naming the song only ellipses lol)

Last movie: It's been a hot minute since I've watched an actual movie all the way through, maybe Turning Red or one of the more recent Star Trek movies? It was probably before Christmas, at least. I started watching one of the Hobbit movies too but I fell asleep 😅

Currently watching: The Legend of Vox Machina S2!!!! My sister got me into Critical Role last year by showing me the first season, and this second season has been even better in terms of overall quality! We've also been watching campaign 2, so you can imagine how excited we were to hear that they'll be animating The Mighty Nein 😄

Currently playing: Ok this is going to be a long list, I have a habit of juggling lots of games at once. Currently my longplay game is my very first playthrough of Persona 4, accompanied by my good friends @one-bit-oat @askr (feel free to answer this prompt too guys!!!) It's been very fun so far as my introduction to the series, though I'm really slow and kinda bad at it 😅 Meanwhile my sister and I have been alternating between playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Sengoku Basara 3 in couch co-op, I'm more of a fan of the latter since I've gotten really attached to these goofy samurai. Lastly, I've been trying to catch up on some good 3DS RPG titles so I'm working on 100%ing (or close enough) Rune Factory 4 and Miitopia. RF4 has been especially fun, I love repeatedly confessing my love to pretty boys who keep turning me down because I chose to be male 😅

Current obsession: This changes constantly, like two weeks ago it would have been RF4 and one week ago it would have been pokemon TCG, but after watching Pav stream Tales of Graces f, I got nostalgic for it and have been working on my old long fic amidst some sickness. It got me out of my writer's block at least, which I'm very grateful for, now I just need to get out of my art block 😔

thanks again for the tags, other followers feel free to share your own!

[paleclementine]

Happy Halloween! It feels like October 2nd was just yesterday. This month went by crazy fast. Today I am dressed up as Joe from Bladerunner 2049, which basically is just a long black coat, brown pants, boots, and that bandage he wears during the "you look lonely, I can fix that" scene. I really like it. Idk it makes me feel sooo like, cool. Like my internal is now external. I really do feel like that movie and it's nice to listen to that kind of music and walk around with a "bloody" bandage on my nose and have my coat flare out behind me in the creeping winter cold.

I didn't manage to write my Shakespeare essay but that's okay because he extended the deadline. For some fuckin reason. I have to get that done by Thursday. So I'm not doing it today, and probably not tomorrow. Most likely the day of. Because that's how I roll. Oh and I;m in British writers class (obviously) HOLY FUCK how many fucking times can the people in my class reference Jane Eyre in one day?? it's literally not in the curriculum people are just teacher's pets. and freaks. Um anyway, I lost my train of thought lmao. But on another note As I was walking through campus I noticed literally NO ONE was dressed up until you got closer to the English building. lmao. Someone as their OC (probably), someone as Kobeni, someone as scarlet witch. And a really ugly guy in my class dressed as Dazai who looks more like an extreeeemely hungover and ugly version of him. Very sloppy. Do not approve.

I posted a new chapter of my fanfic which yayyy but I haven't gotten as many projected hits as I thought or a single comment which is odd because there's always one user who comments very enthusiastically. Eh, whatever. People have shit going on. ANd no one is going to be reading fanfic near Halloween. Other than me, of course, bc I am reading a longfic about Avatar bc Anthony got me back into it.

So anyway. This weekend. Me and Anthony went to SLC and stayed at Amy's. We ate ramen and hung out at Amy's house Thursday. It was really pleasant :) Friday we... uhhh I don't think we did much until we went to the FNAF movie. I could write a whole dissertation about how much I hated that movie, but all that to say, it was a huge let down. And no Markiplier! Sat we hung out with Amy and went to "witchfest" which was really fun and more like a farmer's market than a hallloweeen festival but still fun. Sorry for typos I'm being quiet. After that we got hotpot which was BUSSS. I'm getting better at talking to Amy but I'm not sure why. Sunday we literally did nothing but watch IT and eat In N Out. We got burritos and left yesterday.

Yesterday. Oh boy, yesterday. I walked into my apartment to go into my room and got stopped at the door by Priya, who gave me that -kayla-english-madeline-hubbart STARE and said

"HAnnah! We haven't seen you in so long!" "oh! I've been gone all weekend. HAhaha. For halloweekend. Hhaha." "ohhhh did you go to the parties down there?" "*scoffs for some reason* no, haha, not at all." "You should hang out sometime!" "okay :)" "no seriously, you should hangout sometime." "I want to!" "Okay!" "Okay!" which, okay, I can see what you're thinking. Hannah, she was being so nice and inviting you to hang out with them! You don't know how girls work. She said it like a threat, or at least it felt like one.

Anyway, I go into my room, tidy it a little, check to see if I can do my laundry (for the first fucking time in three weeks. It''s full). Take out my room trash. Shower. All the while, hearing them in the living room. I want to document what Jimena said because I seriously think she is the least self-aware, miserable person I fucking know. "People always think I'm bisexual. But Im straight. Straight latinaaaaa! but when I'm drunk, I'll seriously make out with anyone. Even girls." like. holy fuck. How does she not realize how actually fucking (and I don't use this work lightly) RETARDED she sounds. Also, Stephen got a girlfriend (fatJay, who is not fat at all and Jimena is a cunt for calling her that) and Jimena bought mini pickles and said "hey guys! this is how big Stephen's penis is!" Yeah okay bitch who led him on and was a completely fucking mess----- okay, ranting about her is cathartic but pissing me off. So basically, they were really annoying and sang star spangled banner at the top of their lungs on a karaoke machine from Five Below and burped like Hailey does, so I pledged not to come out of my room until everyone had gone to bed. Which would have been fine.

If not for the migraine.

Always the fucking migraine. I holed myself away in actual anguish, waiting for them to go to bed, all the while watching depressive tiktoks (I redownloaded it) of landscapes with Silent Hill audios n shit. and I can't express how much I was suffering and for how long. My suffering and my migraine were what I remember most about the night, despite the details I shared about my roommates. everyone went to bed at 3am. I darted out to get some water. And my chickpeas. Anthony came over and brought my leftover burrito. I broke down in his arms. I seriously felt like i had knives on the right side of my face. He tucked me in and I fell asleep. At 5:30 am. Had a dream where someone was drilling peoples faces and realized it was my rommates with the blender and woke up 15 minutes before my alarm at 11:15. Got dressed. Blade runner. Went to class.

well, that was depressing. *zooms in camera like a millennial*

On a lighter note, today is me and Anthony's second anniversary. I have no Idea what we're going to do for that tomorrow or for Halloween today, but I really like being blade runner. It's fun. I want to make a tiktok of me in the mountains and post it later.

I'm so glad I met Anthony. I love him more than I can express. I want to write about him later. I will.

Later.

[weekendwritingmarathon]

Editing Your Own Work

Writing Behind the Scenes is a weekly Q&A feature about writing. Submit your writing questions as an ask to get your own question answered.

QUESTION: How do you edit your own work? What methods work best?

@unforth-ninawaters I’ll start with the second question first. There is no editing method that works best, just like there’s no writing method that works best. Finding what works best for YOU as an individual creator can only be done by trial and error.

That said, I approach editing my own work differently depending on whether it’s original fiction or fanfiction. Flat out, I write fanfiction for fun, this is my hobby, and I don’t put nearly the same degree of effort into editing fanfiction because I have zero incentive to do so. But honestly...I’m not sure my method of editing fanfiction would work for me if I hadn’t learned how to edit my own work better by doing my original fiction method, so I’ll talk about that. I finish a first draft. I then reformat it to have small text to minimize how many pages it takes up and print it out in “view comment” format so I have a wide margin to take notes in. Once I’ve got it printed, I stuff it in a binder, grab a colored pen, and read through the manuscript carefully WITHOUT making changes. This is when I flag “big stuff” I need to fix - plot issues, inconsistencies, etc. Once I’ve done that, I go back to the beginning, grab a red pen, and butcher the story. I consider myself a failure as an editor if I don’t find SOMETHING to change in every single sentence. Everyone can be better. While I’m doing this I often rewrite whole sections, and I make sure I address as many of the plot issues, etc., as I can, and mark anything I didn’t fix that’s still an issue.

Then I do it again. And then usually again. And then I send it to beta readers, and then I edit it AGAIN.

Even so I know of about a half-dozen errors in my self-published novel. It’s really hard to get things perfect.

For fanfiction, I don’t bother printing or anything. I just read through from the beginning, catch what I can, and post. If there are minor errors, extra words, or plot inconsistencies...well, it’s fanfic, and while I want to do a good job, folks get what they pay for… <3

@tellthenight Editing is the process after you know your fic has all the pieces you need, those pieces are in the right order and go the right direction. It is NOT rewriting/revising. Editing is another area where people do all sorts of different things, so my editing process may not be your editing process.

On the first pass, I highlight and put comments in my draft without making very many actual changes. I’ll fix a typo, correct grammar, or make simple changes for clarity, but most everything gets a comment. I comment on every single thing I notice, even if I might not end up changing it. I look for clarity issues, making sure the vocabulary of each character fits, blocking issues (how did they suddenly get outside???), etc. We all make silly errors in first draft--that’s what drafts are for and why everything you post should get at least a cursory look before it goes public.

Next, I go through those comments and solve those problems. Sometimes I skip the ones that require more thought and get through the easier stuff first. After I’ve resolved my comments, I go through again looking really closely at my word choices, focusing on verbs, clarity, and vocabulary. I search for my “bad habit” words (so, just, etc.) and get rid of most of those.

When I think I’m done, I usually give one more look for wayward punctuation, spelling, and common word swaps (they’re/there/their, etc.) to make sure there aren’t any glaring errors.

@ltleflrt I have two methods of editing my own stuff.  The first is to put time between the first writing and the editing.  The longer I go between writing it and then reading over it, the less my brain tends to fill in the blanks and I’m more likely to notice an error.  I only use this for fics that I’m not posting a chapter at a time, so like for Big Bangs and other challenges, and I catch quite a bit before I finally send it to be beta read.  My other trick is to start from the bottom and work up.  Because I’m reading things out of the order that I wrote them, I have to concentrate harder on each sentence and I catch more errors that way.  This is my most common method since I usually post things pretty quickly and don’t have patience to wait very long to re-read it.

@treefrogie84 You know that kid back in high school when you were peer editing each other’s papers who would sit there and add in every single comma you were missing and instead of just writing “awkward” or “flat out wrong,” would fix it for you? Yeah. That was me (that’s still me).

Short version: I edit my fic the same way I beta anyone else’s. Except moreso, because most fics I beta only get 2-3 passes and I’m working on pass 10 for my current longfic. I even use the suggestions feature of Gdocs the same way.

The first pass is the big stuff: that passage doesn’t work, that entire scene is unnecessary, what the hell does that sentence even mean. Actually, punctuation fixes are a constant thing. If I know how to fix it, I’ll go ahead and insert the correction into the doc. If I don’t, I highlight it and comment with what’s wrong (I’ve made comments before with ‘just… no’ as the reason or just question marks). Anything to tell me what needs to be fixed when I’m coming back to it in a few days (weeks, months). Once I’m done with the pass, I go through and accept the changes on the easy stuff. To save myself some tears, any deletions over about a paragraph in length get moved to a separate document so the hours of work put into it aren’t just gone.

The comments and suggestions that aren’t accepted because they’re harder and/or require more brain power stay put until I can come back to them. When I do come back to them, I move back to suggestions and just… poke them until they’re better.

Rinse, repeat. And again. At some point, when I have a clean draft, I send it over to my beta. Then he pokes things with a stick, doing much the same process, and sends it back. It’s pretty rare he doesn’t look over things at least twice, sometimes more.

I don’t know if this method will work for anyone else. This is the process that I’ve worked out over years and years (and making my English teachers hate me). I actually prefer using paper for the first pass, but that gets awfully expensive, so I’m adapting to not doing that anymore.