#This is full of typos lol I might correct some of it later

[saraptor-art]

Saraptor, what was it that drew you to the fishman community? I see you as an advocate for their rights,Sometimes, even like a mother to them.💪🏽🦖

Apparently I had A LOT of things to say to answer you question!

I’ll add that I’m honestly surprised Arlong had so little fans and fanart especially before the live action! I don’t understand too well why Crocodile and Doffy have such a fan base, is it just because we haven’t seen Arlong in a while?

I know there is a case to be made for Doffy and his relationship with his crew/family but they all have a bit more of a cult vibes to be actually wholesome I believe. And that he is also a product of his world, not as simple of a villain as I say ;) And yes, Arlong does threaten those who want to leave his side.

Edit : I wrote Neptune in that last panel, but obviously was talking about Pluton ! I'll edit the image soon

[real-life-senshi]

Okay, resuming Act 18 liveblog now! I'm actually so excited to get to the climax scene here, I might actually go feral on commenting on some of the scenes.

I actually wanted to do it yesterday, but just when I was about to finish a long commentary for my first post - I clicked undo shortcut to correct a typo, but instead, it erased over 2/3 of my post and I was so devasted I gave up. The original post is at least 50% longer than what I'm posting now. :')

First off... Nephrite's angry proclamation against Venus and Venus's reaction really tickled me. Venus absolutely doesn't seem threatened, or even impacted by Nephrite's outburst at all. I might be overreading this, but I actually think Venus/Minako looked really cold and calculative here. It's as if locking onto her prey, which for all intents and purposes, Nephrite did become the victim of her ploy. (Act 19 & 20) Even back in Act 15's jewelry theft ploy Artemis and Minako were running rounds around Nephrite.

I actually don't recall if Minako and Artemis knew it was Nephrite specifically who was ofter Venus, or if they simply labelled themselves being pursued by the Shitennou in general (hah! general...); but Neprhite's exclamation certainly outed himself if Minako didn't know before.

I do wonder if it was intentional that Nephrite and Mars are the only ones to have a verbal reaction to Venus showing up. These three are the only players in Act 19 and 20 scenes when Nephrite attacked Venus and Mars came to the rescue. Hmm...

Anyway, back to the Senshi... Kirari Sailor Dream playing in the background is so awesome and epic in this scene.

I simply cannot get over how the editor kept scrambling Mars and Jupiter's placement to put Mars and Venus together. lol And look at all their faces, Jupiter, Mercury and Moon all have a sense of reverence for Venus in their reaction, but Mars is just in full fight and glare mode. She's already beyond being starstruck by Venus's presence!

This being the first time we see all 5 Senshi together is simply awesome and epic! The posing is extremely impractical here when in front of their enemy, but honestly just how crazily good this scene is means I will for once ignore the impracticality of the scene in favour of the visual brilliance.

The composition of this scene is absolutely genius. We see Venus taking the front and centre position, continuing the facade that she's the Princess to the enemy. But the 3rd shot (2nd gif ) giving up a sideway perspective gives us Sailor Moon taking the centre position, and in fact surrounded by the 4 Inner Senshi, ie the Princess's guardians. Like how awesome is that???? This a hidden message for the audience who doesn't know the full story to catch later on, to realize it's always been hinted, while also giving the audience who does know the visual representation they've been waiting for.

Director Sato Takemitsu and the editing crew knew what they were doing, and I am forever thankful for this epic scene they gifted us with!

[lilydalexf]

1/3: Hi! Serious question. FOR REAL, how in the world did you all survive waiting for Prufrock's Love to post chapter by chapter of these amazing AU epics back in the day? I have access to the full collection and I'm still BARELY surviving. And they are like, a bajillion chapters each. How are you alive? I've never been more grateful to NOT have watched the show during its original run. Hoo boy. WHICH brings me to my 2nd question, which might sound arrogant but it is 100% genuine curiosity.

LOL, I don't know how people survived waiting for chapters of new Prufrock's Love fics when they were originally posted. I've never read WIPs until they're completed, so it was always very easy for me!

X-Files fics used to be posted in text (.txt) files because that was the format any browser could handle. Later on toward the end of the show's original run some people posted their stories in html format since by then browsers were better and authors often had their own website where they could post html files. No social media accounts, just individual web pages people made, usually at a free site like geocities, tripod, or angelfire. But to circulate your stories anywhere, they needed to be a text file.

All that is to say: text files made finding and fixing errors harder. Once you posted something as a text file, that is how it was. You couldn't click an edit button. If the story was posted to a personal website the entire file could be replaced easily enough (if the typos were known to the author, which probably wasn't always the case). If the story went to Ephemeral, Gossamer, atxc, or an email mailing list, and nearly all XF stories went to at least one of those places, it was a text file with no way to correct errors. So the errors would be there forever.

Beta readers seem to have been a much bigger thing back in the day of the X-Files airing on TV, in part because the text file thing made fixing any errors after posting pretty much impossible. I don't know anybody who wrote their fics as text files, though. Maybe Prufrock's Love or some authors did, but going through the process of converting word processor documents to text files was a big thing (like, there were fan-made instruction guides on how to do it so all the line breaks and special characters would be right). So why are there typos when even word processors back in the day had spell check? My view is that errors happen, especially in longer stories and ones without betaing, and the text file conversion process did nobody any favors. And it's fic, which is a free, fun hobby without pro editing.

TL,DR: I avoided WIP angst by not reading fics in progress, fics being posted as text files was annoying on many levels, and although word processing programs in the olden days had spell check mistakes happen.

[commodorecliche]

Hey Lindsay, I've read a few of your fics and I love the way you write :) I've been trying to write a story but i'm just stuck at the outline. So, I was wondering if you could, perhaps, make a little tutorial or a walk-through your process? I'd like to have my story points defined before I start writing but I don't have a structure that I can follow and I really love your style *-* It's okay if you don't feel like it though. I understand. Thank you in advance ^^

hey there friend! i’m not sure when you sent this ask today, i so hope you haven’t been waiting all day for my reply!! i just saw it.

first things first - thank you so much for your kind words about my writing. they really mean the world to me. and i am SO EXCITED to hear that you’re working on your own fic. that’s amazing!! 

now to the meat!

so i don’t know if i have specific or... super organized... process, per se, and i don’t really do a ‘strict’ outline, in the most traditional sense of the word (meaning i don’t have a document full of numbers and bullet points and such). and everyone’s process is going to be a little different, so bear in mind, what works for me might not work for you. but once you get the feel of writing your story, you’ll get a better sense of what your own writing process is. and you’ll figure out what works and doesn’t work for you. the way i do things might not work for you, but that’s totally okay, you’ll come into your own as you go along. and hey, maybe this will work for you! who knows!

but what i generally do when i start a new fic is:

1: i type out my rough and basic idea. i like to do this (and most of my outlining/drafting) in all caps, it helps keep me focused and helps me organize what i have ‘drafted’ and what i have properly written lol.

so for example, um, In the House We Remain, my first idea was jotted out like this, at the top of my document: SAPPY GHOST STORY, AZIRAPHALE BUYS A COTTAGE THAT CROWLEY USED TO OWN, CROWLEY DIED THERE. CROWLEY WAS AN AUTHOR AND HIS BOOKS ARE STILL IN THE HOUSE, WHICH IS HOW AZIRAPHALE GETS TO KNOW HIM.

that’s my base level idea, and i kept it at the top of the document.

2: from there, i start thinking about what are some MAJOR scenes i want to have happen. not the minute details, just the major scenes that were popping in and out of my head when i was daydreaming about the fic. these can be as minimal or as thorough as you like. for In the House We Remain, i had a pretty set idea on how i wanted the story to progress from start to finish, so i had a lot of scenes already in mind.

using the same fic as an example, these are some of the scene ideas i wrote in my fic document, underneath my top line idea: SCENES: - AZIRAPHALE SEES THE COTTAGE (ANATHEMA IS THE REAL ESTATE AGENT) AND HE LOVES IT. HE BUYS IT THAT DAY. (DEFINE THE LANDSCAPE AND HOW THE COTTAGE LOOKS, PROBABLY WANT A POND IN THE BACK, THAT COULD BE HOW CROWLEY WAS MURDERED. COTTAGE SHOULD BE COZY AND DREAMY, A LOVELY THING SET OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTRYSIDE. LOOK UP PICS FOR REFERENCES.) - GUNNA HAVE TO MENTION SOMETHING ABOUT THE HOUSE THAT’LL CONNECT TO HOW CROWLEY DIED, SOME VISUAL INDICATORS OF HIS SPIRIT. MAYBE WATER STAINS ON THE FLOOR? LIKE DRIPPING WATER MIGHT POOL AROUND A WET PERSON’S FEET? AM I GOING WITH DROWNING AS CAUSE OF DEATH? DUNNO.***COME BACK TO THIS. - WHILE UNPACKING AZIRAPHALE SEES A BUNCH OF UNFAMILIAR BOOKS IN THE STUDY AND IS CURIOUS ABOUT THEM. - AZIRAPHALE TALKS TO ANATHEMA ABOUT THE BOOKS AND THE AUTHOR. LEARNS THAT CROWLEY IS THE AUTHOR, AND THAT HE OWNED AND DIED IN THE HOUSE MYSTERIOUSLY. - AZIRAPHALE READS THE BOOKS, LOVES THEM, FEELS A CONNECTION WITH CROWLEY. - AZIRAPHALE SOMEHOW CONNECTS WITH CROWLEY’S LINGERING SPIRIT IN THE HOUSE (DETAILS TO COME) - THEY START COMMUNICATING. CROWLEY REVEALS THAT HE WAS MURDERED - I WANT THIS TO BE AN EMOTIONAL SCENE, AZIRAPHALE VERY UPSET AND DISTURBED BY WHAT HE’S BEEN TOLD. ALSO AFRAID CAUSE HE’S MADE CONTACT W/ SOMEONE WHO’S VERY DEAD. MAYBE HE EVEN CALLS ANATHEMA AFTER TO REVEAL THE NATURE OF CROWLEY’S DEATH. - NEED SCENES OF AZIRAPHALE GROWING OLD IN THE HOUSE WITH CROWLEY’S GHOST, THEN EVENTUALLY DYING AND ACTUALLY UNITING WITH HIM. SAPPY, EMOTIONAL, THE WORKS. - AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY’S SPIRITS LINGER IN THE HOUSE, EVEN AS A NEW COUPLE MOVES IN.

those were my major scenes that i needed to write and that would make up most of my story.

3: flesh out the aforementioned scenes. break these scenes down individually and think about them, picture them like a movie in your head. when aziraphale sees the cottage, what’s happening around him? has he gotten out of the car? what is the weather like, is it a dreamy setting? should the wind be gently rustling the trees and his hair? is he in awe? does he take a moment to take in the exterior of the house. what does the house look like? picture that entire scene from start to finish, then jot down your thoughts. remember, you aren’t actually doing Proper Good Writing out. you’re just getting the ideas down and the draft ideas fleshed out. 4: once i have those scenes fleshed out (always typed in all caps for me lol), i start the actual ‘writing’ process. I drop the all-caps, start using proper grammar, and go into I’m Telling A Story Mode. I usually try to start writing at the beginning, because i tend to visualize my stories as movies that play in my head. i need to mentally see it progress as i write it, like i would do if i were watching a movie or reading a book. but sometimes that doesn’t happen - sometimes beginnings are the hardest part. if you struggle with the beginning, skip to the first most fleshed out scene you have, the one you feel most comfortable with, or whatever scene you feel REALLY ready to write. this writing doesn’t have to be perfect (it definitely won’t be lol). but you’ll start to get a feel for how you want to actually present this story and these scenes once they’re all finalized. you can edit it and make it prettier later, but for now, just get some words on the paper as if it were a story you were ready to tell. 5: once you have your main scenes fleshed out, you need to start making connections between them. stories need depth and background, so you need to be able to go “okay, i have aziraphale loving the house and buying it, then i need him to find the books in the study, how am I going to connect those two scenes?”

you can do this part either as you go along (example: you’ve written your first Major Scene, and you want to progress onto your next scene, so you write the connections first, then once you have the connection scenes done, you can then move on to the next Major Scene from your draft) OR you can get all your major drafted scenes written, and make your connections AFTER those scenes are done. you just gotta see what works for you. 

i prefer the first method, i try to write the major scenes and the connection scenes as i go along so that i have a natural flow. that also allows me to make some changes to a later Major Scene before i actually write it. (example: hm, i was gunna have Aziraphale do XYZ in the next scene, but with this connection, I think having him do ABC in that scene might work better).

if you don’t have a clear-cut idea yet for how to connect your scenes, go back to the all caps ‘drafting’ mode, where you’re just throwing ideas on the page in between, like: ‘AZIRAPHALE HAS JUST MOVED IN AND IS READY TO UNPACK, I NEED HIM TO BRING HIS BOOKS TO THE STUDY TO START UNPACKING THEM AND SHELVING THEM. THAT’S WHEN HE SHOULD NOTICE CROWLEY’S BOOKS THAT HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY APPEARED ON THE SHELVES.’ from there, go back into ‘proper writing’ mode when you’re ready, and flesh out that scene - what is aziraphale doing while he’s unpacking? are his boxes of books already in the study, or do i need him to have a reason to bring them into the study? maybe a mover accidentally placed one in the wrong room. this is your connector that will get you between scenes. 6: once you have all your scenes done in a proper first draft, go back, do re-writes, add new things that you think you might need, take out things that aren’t necessary, check your grammar and spelling, and do your final proofing. (read your story out loud too - it’s the easiest way to catch typos, errors, or weird phrasing)

7: don’t be afraid to write ANYWHERE. many of my ideas for scenes popped up in the middle of a work day, and every time that happens, i text myself. i send myself a text, all caps, with the scene idea, and i don’t open it until i’m ready to write. it helps me keep track of things. i did a lot of writing in notebooks, on post-it notes, wherever really. i even have googledocs installed on my phone so i could access a fic from anywhere if i had a sudden idea. and if i had something new to add to the document, i put it in all caps, so i would know i needed to address it later.

8: act things out! seriously, i’m not kidding. act your scenes out with yourself. especially dialogue scenes. have those dialogues with yourself, think about how you want dialogue to progress, and talk those ideas out in a way that sounds natural to you. that’ll help you write your dialogue later. (the number of times my husband has walked in on me running through some dialogue aloud......... goodness).

9: don’t be afraid of music :) maybe it’s silly, but i make a playlist for every fic i write because i like to listen to music to get me into the correct mood for what i’m writing. it helps me a LOT. maybe it won’t be as helpful for you, but always worth a try.

and that’s really.... the extent of my process. it’s a little messy, i know, and maybe it’s not the best advice. and i just hope that it at least a LITTLE bit of sense... but i hope it will at least be of some help to you! if you’re confused about anything, please don’t hesitate to message me. 

or if you want to chat one-on-one, that’s totally fine too. i 100% don’t mind if you send me a chat message. i’m always happy to help.

[inkyturtle]

41 Mike and Don >:3 (I just realized, I don't think I've ever seen a story from you so even if you don't do this one I can't wait to read the others)

41. “Damn auto-correct…”

bed soon?

Donatello had a wary smile on his face as he read the simple text from his only little brother. He looked at the notes he'd written, finding it difficult to actually read them. It was late, likely much later than Mikey would normally be awake. A glance at his phone confirmed this.

Still he looked at his laptop, which now taken apart on his work desk. Donnie could kick himself for all the work his minor mistake had put into play. He could have spent the night decrypting the data on the storage device they managed to snag from the Kraang. Instead, here he was tediously replacing the USB port it damage, along with the other components it somehow managed to fry in the process. It was some sort of bizarre domino effect the genius had never witnessed before, so of course he needed to jot down notes regarding the damage. Then he needed to make sure he had the replacement parts. Also since it had been a while, and he already had the thing taken apart, he may as well do some needed manual updates...

That was only the manual upgrades. It was going to be a whole different journey trying to make his laptop compatible with that storage device, and the knowledge that he'd likely have to decrypt and translate the files.

With a light sigh, Donnie typed out a reply to his brother.

It's still going to be a while. You should go to sleep.

That much was true. It's not that he didn't appreciate Mikey's concern, but whatever reason Mikey was still awake probably wasn't a good one. The fact that Mikey was texting him was a little odd too, now that he thought about it. Maybe the small turtle had tried to knock earlier, and Donnie had missed it? He was pretty distracted, all things considered. Whatever the case may be, a good night's sleep would likely help his brother out.

The sound of his phone told him that Mikey might not be keen on the idea.

what r u doing?

Now he was certain Mikey needed something. A distraction, probably. Mikey probably wouldn't have asked that question otherwise.

Donatello looked at the door to his lab. The thought of checking on his baby brother crossed his mind, but he knew if he did that it would be difficult for him to get back to his work tonight. This was far too important to keep waiting a whole night; he'd already lost a few hours trying to fix his own novice mistake.

A text, he thought, was at least something he could do.

I'm repairing my laptop.

It wasn't even a full minute before he got a reply. Likely due to Mikey's sloppy way of typing, Donnie had to presume.

i didnt know it was broken

With a sigh, the elder of the two rubbed his temple. His vision blurred while reading the screen, but it wasn't unfamiliar. Being exhausted while working was par for the course for him. If he had to, he'd get some coffee after he was certain Mikey was asleep. 

After a moment more, he finally wrote up a reply.

I didn't take the compatibility issues of our conflicting technology into account.

our what?

Donnie groaned. Mikey wasn't that stupid. There was no way that was difficult to understand.

Another message.

what conflict?

Donnie slouched in his chair, resting his chin against the desk as he typed a response to his sibling.

The Kraang's storage device wasn't compatible with the USED slit. I ended up damaging the slit in the process. I can only hope I didn't damage the device as well.

The terrapin shut his eyes. Maybe replying to Mikey wasn't the best idea after all. It didn't take much time or effort to type up a reply, but with how fast and frequently his brother was responding, it left him with little time to do much else. He let out a long yawn, shaking his head as he quickly shot up. He scrunched his brow in determination.

No, he had to finish. He was the only one who could do this, after all. He was about to lift his screwdriver when he heard the phone go off again.

And again.

Three times.

Donatello wanted to ignore it, but he knew he had to check regardless. Plus, he was curious as to why his brother would send so many texts in succession.

dude

r u ok?

im pretty sure ur not suposed to use them like that

Donnie was absolutely puzzled.

What are you talking about?

A quick response.

scroll up

Perplexed, the older turtle read over previous messages. When he caught the error, he felt blood rush to his cheeks. The typo, when combined with Mikey's texts, made for an embarrassing and...somewhat lewd mental image. Donnie let out an agitated groan, typing out another response.

I meant USB port! The USB port was incompatible with the storage device.

lol

Damn auto-correct...

come to bed dude

I can't. I have to get this finished.

do u have to do all of it?

I should at least get the laptop back in wanking condition.

omg

lol

*Working!!!

if ur not going to bed then let me make u some coffee

You should be the one going to bed.

well im not

im already making u some

come out

It was pointless; Donnie hadn't touched his work since Mikey started texting him, and he had a feeling that would remain the case at the rate he was going. Defeated, Donatello stood up and headed towards the lab door. If Mikey was so insistent on seeing him, he may as well figure out why.

Besides, he really could use the caffeine boost.

[anothergirlrecovering]

Wedding weekend

I was in my college best friends wedding this weekend, and I'm honestly so glad for it. We literally had such a good time, and it was so good to be around people who make me laugh. Not just a regular laugh, but that deep belly laugh where you end up crying from laughing so hard. It was a long drive, a full 9 hours but somehow it didn't feel too bad of a drive. Weirdly enough, my husband and I didn't end up fighting at all. He slept for a good bit, and I listened to Waving through the window on repeat for a while. It's definitely my new favorite song, and I'm hoping i'll be able to see it live on broadway this summer.

When we got to our hotel, we checked in and headed to the rehearsal practice. There was literally one car in the parking lot, so I called sandi and asked what time it was. She told me it didn't start for another half hour and I immediately knew kit had lied because she thought I could be late. Thankfully I sort of just laughed it off and jokingly texted her saying I knew she lied and I was totally early. She called me laughing and said with such a big drive she just wanted to play it safe. She got there 15 minutes later, with a few of my old college friends, one being a girl named nastasha who I had hated in college. I was instantly bummed thinking about how awkward it would be, and feeling like my friends would ditch me for her, but I decided to try my best to be not awkward. We went inside, and sandi and I ended up sticking together since we were both in the bridal party. During that time we watched as my husband and her husand hung out with nastasha laughing and telling jokes. In the meanwhile sandi and I laughed on stage telling jokes and being shushed by kits future sister in law. I felt like a high school kid again, but I didn't exactly care because the part they were going over wasn't relevant to us. After the rehearsal we went to the rehearsal dinner and we ended up just laughing the majority of the time. They brought out the food family style, and I couldn't help but die of laughter when sandi said she hoped they bring out more choices in food. We laughed and talked about the time it looked like I shit myself but had fallen asleep in melted chocolate. And sandis husband told a story about a guy who yelled my bad queeda, which ended up being a phrase we continued to laugh about. When it was over I suggested we all go see the lake since I hadn't been. We walked around the sandy area and the rocks and laughed and took pictures. It was so nice just not caring about anything and being able to be happy. Ceselie and I had some time alone together and we ended up in a deeper conversation. She shared about how she has an issue with skin picking and has since undergrad. She asked if I remembered her diet pill and I laughed and said she must have been sensitive to my ed because she didn't tell me about it and she said the skin picking was triggered by that and never went away and shes seen several doctors and specialists but they cant figure it out and how to stop it. She said it makes her self conscious and when I asked about emdr and negative cognitions she laughed and said oh no don't make me dump all of my worthless negative beliefs out there. We laughed. Shes a therapist too and I told her about how making myself puke after the bachelorette party had given me anxiety because I hadn't vomited on purpose since being in recovery. We offered to drive her back to her hotel, thinking it was across the street but it was not. She put in no tolls and it ended up being a 45 minute drive, when it should have been 20 if we had just paid the toll, which we did on the way back because it was late and we were so tired and over driving.

The morning of the wedding we all went to the hair salon for our hair to be done. I didn't realize how many opportunities there would be to correct kits sisters shitty body shaming, and overall reminding everyone that its okay to enjoy all foods in moderation. We ordered chick fil a and enjoyed every minute of it because we were literally starving by the time we got to eat. Nastasha was sitting next to me and it was just the two of us, so I laughed and said hey do you remember that time we both hated each other in college and weren't friends? She laughed and said she was literally just thinking about that yesterday. I said I just wanted to say that I was sorry because I look back and realize that I wasn't always very nice and that I hadn't given her a chance and I have grown a lot since then. She thanked me and said she was sorry too and felt like we both hadn't given each other a chance, and she was thinking about how cool I am and was confused as to why we hated each other. I said I was immature and she was ditsy and for whatever reason we clashed. She laughed and said she is still ditsy, and we said we were both glad those days were behind us. Then we laughed about how weird our RA was, and how far we have both come. There was also a little girl who was maybe 9 or 10 and the hair stylist asked her how she wanted her hair. My heart melted when she said she wanted her hair just like her mommy. My heart broke when the mom rolled her eyes and said no, get something different. But melted again when the little girl said but I want to look just like you mommy. And broke again when the mom said ugh don't say that.

The wedding itself... So I took my propranolol and walked down the aisle at ease. Smiling like I'm supposed to. My scoliosis was killing me on stage, but I got through it. When it ended, sandi and I walked off stage together and we headed outside to blow bubbles. We all stood outside for a while waiting and talking and laughing and taking pictures. After blowing the bubbles, we went back in the church for a few pictures. I sat beside an adorable 6yr old macy, and asked her if it was ok to sit by her. She said yes and I made kid small talk, asking what her favorite part was. She said it was when she got to walk down the aisle, lol, and she told me that everyone was laughing. I asked if she thought the other girl might have made silly faces but she said no and laughed nervously. After taking a few pictures in the church we went on a party bus to go take pictures at a park. On the ride to the actual reception, I saw macy looking bored and she hopped up and sat beside me giggling. I could tell that she was bored and over it and had been ignored the entire time so I smiled her and asked if she wanted to play a game. I spent the 30 minute drive playing bubble gum bubble gum in a dish and a hand slapping game. We laughed together and I let her win a few times. She said we had to say kazam before slapping. I asked her how old she was and she said 6. I instantly got a bit sad looking at her, seeing how cute and innocent she was, and realizing that I was her age when my anxiety and panic attacks started happening. Sometimes its easy for me to brush off my young clients as different than me because they had such horribly different lives, but this little girl has no trauma history and was just simply a sweet little 6 year old. I had the half glass of champagne for the toast to kit and her husband, and avoided the whiskey because I knew we would be drinking wine at the wedding.

The reception... So I ended up way more drunk than I had meant to be. We got there and I was seated beside sandi. I said hi to my husband and took my seat. Everyone had a glass of wine with the best man and maid of honor speech. And then things began to get a little loopy. I remember complaining that we didn't have any potatoes at our table, and I remember sandi and charisse complaining that we were out of wine. Rachel, the sister in law who had shushed us at the rehearsal practice, got up and brought back wine and potatoes from the bride and grooms parents table, commenting on how our waitress sucks. I remember having another glass of wine, and that we talked about sex. I remember laughing and saying how I hate bjs and ran away after the last one to wash my mouth out with soap and that I almost tripped and my husband jokingly said run forrest run. They laughed and shushed me, and Rachel turned around laughing and saying she heard me and wont even put it in her mouth. Then we talked about what positions we liked and didn't like. And then I have no idea what exactly happened next, except that sandi and I must have kept drinking with charisse. I remember standing with them and laughing and taking some of sandis drink and some of my husbands drink. The rest of the night is a blur of random moments. I remember being on the dance floor and dancing, but I cant remember any specific songs. I cant remember any of the father daughter or mother son dance. I cant remember the cake cutting. I cant remember the garter toss or the bouquet toss. I remember at a point I walked to my husbands table and that the room was spinning. I remember sitting with my head on the table because I was too dizzy to lift it up. I remember that my a team was texting me in our group chat and that I was telling them I was drunk and sick and had a million typos. I remember overhearing someone say that sandi was in the bathroom puking, and I remember ceselie seeing me and asking if I had the spins. Ashlee texted and said that I needed to go throw up. I looked up and saw sandi standing across the table looking like shit, and so I knew the bathroom was clear for me to go puke. I remember hobbling to the bathroom and making myself puke a few times. I remember walking out and opening the door to ceselie there asking if I was okay. I said I didn't know and she put her arm around me and walked me back to the table. I cant actually remember anything that came next at the wedding. I don't remember saying goodbye to anyone. I remember being in the car and falling asleep right after. I honestly feel guilty and like a shit friend. I know that people are supposed to be happy and drink and dance at weddings, but I didn't mean to get trashed. My husband said he didn't realize just how drunk I was, and I don't remember the majority of the wedding. He said I didn't do anything embarrassing at least, but I just hate that I don't remember and I feel bad for it.

[anghraine]

Having been wowed by your fanfic ("wandering inside this night" holds a special place in my RO heart), I'm curious: what is your writing/editing process like?

Oh, thank you!

My writing process really varies depending on what I’m doing, but I can explain it in terms of wandering inside this night.

It’s long and rambly, so you can scroll down for a very concise tl;dr version of The Process.

1. Eureka!

I pretty much always start out with 1) a vague sense of something I want to write about, and I sort of mentally fish around until I land on an idea, or 2) an idea pops into my head, or 3) some combination of both.

The last two are the most common for me—I have more ideas than I could ever write. With wandering, it was definitely that way. 

I was hollering into my tags about the Cassian-Leia parallels pretty early, which … Jyn-Han is obvious, but I felt like the Cassian-Leia ones went relatively unnoticed but were probably more profound. And as spies in the ragtag ANH-era Rebellion, it’s more than possible that they’d know each other; I’d made babbling posts, but I really wanted to do something with it. So I sketched out a backstory in until the last chance is spent, but I still wanted more, and also to get into Han-Jyn at the same time, and also just—have something fun! And suddenly (I was actually at a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, lol) the idea popped into my head of jumping to the Han/Leia meltdown of 1980 with established relationship Jyn/Cassian.

2. Percolation

This is particularly important for longer fic (or any long-form writing, really), but it helps with shorter things, too. It’s where you’re not actively working to figure out details or more ideas, much less writing, just passively letting your mind wander. It’s best if you’re actually doing something else—something that doesn’t take much attention, but enough that you can’t completely focus on your thoughts, like showering or washing dishes or something.

When something does come to mind, I scribble it down (or stick it in a doc in some form that will hopefully make sense to me later). Sometimes it’ll be scraps of dialogue, or a phrase I want to make sure gets in somewhere, or a plot-point, just anything that pops up. Ideally, though, I don’t write anything beyond that—just note down anything I might forget and let my ideas develop freely. 

Normally, I’d only do so much of that with something like wandering (fairly short, fairly light). But I ended up snowed in with my extended family, where I was both bored and unable to sit down and write. So I’m sitting there entertaining myself by imagining Jyn and Han, drinking buddies, and how that’d work with the Cassian-Leia brotp of ruthless idealism (Han would be jealous!), and just having that percolating in my head while I read fic and let stray thoughts pass through my mind. (‘Okay but Cassian would fucking hate Han’ being uppermost among them, lol)

3. Brainstorming/Outline

At this point, I try to pin down the free-floating ideas and/or organize what scraps I have into something coherent. With something longer, like ad astra, I generally do a pretty traditional outline—decide what the story is specifically going to cover, and where the things I’ve actually written fit with that, and what’s going to go in the spaces between.

It’s not classroom-style brainstorming; I usually brainstorm ideas by trying to put together an outline. I’ll be “okay, I want to start with something like that shot of Jyn on the platform with an Imperial ship at the end, but it’s Bodhi” and “they get sucked into the Death Star and Jyn exploits Cassian’s injuries to get in” and then I sit down and figure out how I’m going to get from one to the other. “Okay, so—there’s no way they can actually get Kaytoo, but maybe something—yeah, she just up and grabs his dismembered head l o l, okay, and there’s the jump into the ship which rattles Cassian further, and she’d try to treat him with whatever supplies are available, and we’d have Bodhi trying to get out without being shot down, and maybe I can work in the your father would have been proud of you line, and Jyn goes to check on Bodhi and they see the Death Star and…”

Also, it helps a ton to actually talk ideas over with someone else. With me, it’s generally @steinbecks​—not some strict ‘this, then this, then this, tell me what you think’, but ‘I had this idea’ and ‘OK BUT IMAGINE IF’ and ‘haha yeah exactly’ and ‘shit you’re right they do change outfits’ etc. 

4) Drafting (The Big One)

Ideally, I only get to this after nailing down an outline or at least getting a lot figured out in chats/notes to myself. That’s what I did for pretty much all my most successful longfics—First Impressions (f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth), Season of Courtship (Darcy and Elizabeth’s engagement), we get dark, only to shine (AU of The Borgias that moves the canon pairing getting together from S3 to S1), and now ad astra. It helps a TON if you have trouble with discipline and direction, as I do, because you can always go back to it and figure out where you need to be headed when you’re muddled/uninspired, even if some details change along the way. (They always do, for me.)

I did some of that with wandering, but … I was snowed-in, lol, and finally everyone had gone to sleep and my head was full of ideas. So I laid down with my laptop and just dove right in with the only clear line I had in mind: 

Han Solo once had apleasant conversation with Cassian Andor.

Just once.

That was where I planned it to begin! The actual beginning came later, because I very quickly ran into a problem—the sentence worked to jump into exposition, not an actual scene. And with the exposition, I needed to introduce 1) Cassian’s hatred of Han, 2) Han’s lesser but firm dislike, 3) Cassian and Leia’s history together as spies, 4) Han’s brief and half-hearted attempt to suck up, 5) Jyn and Cassian being married, 6) Han’s friendship with Jyn, 7) Han’s jealousy as contrasted to Cassian and Jyn’s mutual trust, etc. Yikes.

So I kept getting mired down in explanations and flashbacks (I actually wrote the scene where Jyn drunkenly complains about finding something for Cassian’s birthday, lol) that slowed it down. And I wasn’t really happy with anything—I constantly niggled at sentences and moved things around and rephrased and it just didn’t work right. I actually have the document I worked in (I didn’t have Internet at the time), so you can see this sort of intermediate stage:

I niggled with it for the rest of the vacation, then it hit me that the issue was that starting a fic with exposition was the real problem. Starting with ESB-era Han just being ESB-era Han could let me work the exposition section in, and without the pressure of it being the opening section I could keep it to a tangential aside and move the jealousy around and so forth. And from there I could just leap to the canon scene with bonus Cassian-Leia shared indignation, and impulsively I added Kaytoo at the end. 

Moral of the story: if you keep trying to make something work and it just won’t, there’s probably something deeper going on. Take a step back and figure out why it’s not working, and often you’ll be able to correct course. Once I tacked in that little ‘Han sulks’ section at the beginning, it all fell together easily. 

5) Revising!

You can probably guess from #4 that I do a lot of this as I write rather than after I write. That’s true, to an extent.

It can be a very … I wouldn’t say discouraging, but sluggish way to write, because you end up struggling over phrases you might not even keep in the end. I genuinely think it’s best to at least try to restrain the impulse to polish everything, but at the same time, there are some of us who genuinely can’t keep going if the current section isn’t working (again, see #4!). So I allow myself a certain amount of freedom in polishing-as-I-go, while restraining the impulse to do anything more substantial. The single best way of doing this is sprinting—writing in short, timed bursts with little to no editing, ideally with a partner that you check in with. (Again, I generally do this with @steinbecks​.)

However, even if you edit as you go and turn out pretty clean drafts, you should still revise at the end. What I generally do is, first of all, just quickly re-read. The writing process is a lot slower than the reading one, and it’s easy to get so focused on particular passages or sections that you lose sight of how it’s working as a whole. So that quick read-through is a way to back up and see how it’s holding together. It’s best if you give yourself a break before you do this—a day or two at least, to get your mind out of the writing mode and look at it with relatively fresh eyes. 

(I will say that I almost never wait. But I do pretty much always end up editing chapters yet again in the first couple of days after I’ve posted them. Sometimes it’s contuinity, sometimes a passage that isn’t working quite the way I thought, whatever. There’s always something. It’s why the chapters I post at Dreamwidth are generally cleaner than the ones at Tumblr, which are cleaner than the first versions posted at AO3.)

However you do that read-through, the most important for me is the next one. At this point, I read the whole fic/chapter/essay/whatever from start to finish—out loud. In fact, if it’s possible, I’ll do a full-on dramatic reading. By reading aloud, you can catch things like typos that your mind silently corrects for your eyes, but also it’s easier to notice sentence-level problems like repeated words/phrases and unvaried sentence structure. If something makes me cringe when I read it aloud, I cut it or rewrite. If saying it aloud makes it sound wrong for the character, it probably is wrong for the character. Sometimes I do the dramatic reading revision two or three times.

And then I either post or print!

The short version:

1) I get an idea, 2) I let the ideas develop without thinking too hard about them, 3) I nail down and think up specific ideas, mostly through chat and/or outlines, 4) I plow through a draft, rearranging/adding material if things just aren’t working, and 5) I revise, once with a quick re-read of the whole thing, and then again by slowly reading it aloud to myself to catch problems with (primarily) mechanics, voice, and word choice.