#but for the record i do have published work on ao3 and i've never gone and looked at the bookmarks connected to my fics

[vashti-lives]

I'm not going to argue with that person anymore about bookmarks because it's clear we have core philosophical differences and I don't think there's a point in spending anymore time on it when I flatly disagree with their foundational premise.

But I do think it's funny to watch something hit the intersection of "I don't actually do this" and "it's fine if people do this" in my own belief set.

[television-bodies]

20 questions for 20 writers!

thank you for the tag @aaronstveit ! <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 6! exactly one more than i had the last time i did this but if you think i'm passing up the chance to yap you'd be so mistaken

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 78,851

3. What fandoms do you write for? les mis <3

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

visting hours

suckerpunch

restoring the balance

tech week

the two sides of monsieur valentine

no one wants to read my major character death fic

5. Do you respond to comments? yes <3

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? aforementioned major character death fic until the end of everything. if things had gone according to original plans then this would have been my first les mis fic on ao3 which is so funny to think about

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? still tech week i believe. warm christmassy nice community love feelings going on there

8. Do you get hate on fics? not as of yet!!!!!! i hope this will not change!!!!!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? prev when you said no because you are afraid you were so real for that

10. Do you write crossovers? not directly however i do love to combine my interests (see the exr demolition lovers fic i keep mentioning)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? trembling a little i don't think so...

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? no

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? i have not!!!

14. What’s your all-time favorite ship? imagine if i said something other than enjolras and grantaire. just sprung something new on you guys right now

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? now this question hurts. never say never right except some things just feel so far off.... i think i've fully abadoned the les mis race across the world au that was my answer to this last time around, which means that now unfortunately it looks like my answer may be broken record (my exr music au that spans a decade) and i'd soooo love to actually write it but at the moment it is all in notes. y'know what as i'm writing this answer i think i'm almost making my future self need to write it just to spite this current version of myself so who knows, it may take me a decade to write it but i like to think that i will at some point

16. What are your writing strengths? the start of something always comes easily to me and i love descriptions.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? like. the middle. i know how it begins and ends but it's getting from one point to another that i think i struggle with the most

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? if you can do this i am in awe of you

19. First fandom you wrote for? i love to remember my answer for this: bram stoker's dracula

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? once i have published something i either a) forget most of it or b) begin to overthink and then hate it so my favourites are in my drafts. that being said i am still fond of suckerpunch. i wish i could rewrite certain parts of it but thats life

no pressure tagging @pumpkinspice-prouvaire @palmviolet @furtherfish @beetlesandstarss and anyone else who would like to do it!

[satyraspenser]

TL DR Scroll Down for Link to the Story

So one of the ways I deal with shit is to write fiction. Sometimes the projects are things I can publish, but sometimes a story just grabs hold of me and demands to be told. And if the muse is really demanding, I'll write the book even if I know I'll never be able to make any money on it.

About 3 years ago my love of young David Crosby sparked the idea for the story below. I wrote about 15,000 words and then tried to rewrite it so the real people were more original characters but the muse was having none of that. The story kept whispering to me, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. And like David's music, the story was unusual. Unconventional in the way it wanted to be told. I wrote on it here and there, but never got very far.

And then David passed away. Not really unexpected, considering his age and health, but heartbreaking to me nonetheless.

And there was the story, still whispering to me, as if David was at my shoulder, his breath warm in my ear.

I've decided to share the link to the work in progress on AO3 here with all of you. Maybe my way of keeping David alive will comfort you too.

If you like the way it sounds, have a read and let me know what you think. DM me if you want to know where you can read my other published works under another pseudonym.

Trigger warnings: polyamory, bisexuality, sex scenes.

Long Time Gone by Satyra Spenser Summary: I remember quite clearly the first time I saw David Crosby. I was 14 years old when I discovered my mom’s stack of vinyl record albums and there was David in all his suede-fringed and beaded glory on the cover of Crosby, Stills & Nash from 1969, and I shed a few teenage tears over the glorious harmonies. You might say I fell in love with him a little bit even then as I blissed out to CSNY and James Taylor while everyone else my age was listening to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

The second time I fell in love with David Crosby was eight years later and 54 years earlier, when we kissed on the Sunset Strip after a Byrds show at the Troubadour in 1965. I was 22 years old and I knew better. I knew our relationship couldn’t last, knew how dangerous it was to give my heart to a man who lived so many years before I was even born. But I also knew that loving David was the only thing I could do to help him through the tough times to come.

It was what had dragged me into the past, after all. That—and a green suede cape.

Copyright Satyra Spenser 2023

[shadesofmauve]

Writer Chat Tag game

Tagged by @swaps55. Thank you!!!

Tagging @virusq, @fenmere, @spaced0lphin if you feel so inclined.

What is your total posted wordcount on ao3?

292,540. But just you WAIT until the rewritten and expanded Sunset and Evening Star goes up.

Do you have a routine for writing?

When I was first writing A Star to Steer Her By, I was only working four days a week, so on Friday mornings I would sit down, gather all the pieces I'd jotted down over the week, and sew them together into a chapter. Since then I've developed exciting new health issues and switched to full-time work, so now I don't have a routine so much as a collection of Things That Work. To wit:

All writing is in google docs, because I can access it from all over, including my phone, so I can

Seize inspiration whenever it comes, play out the scene, and write it down. I've got a notebook by the bed and a water-proof notepad in the shower (THANK YOU, @swaps55, it's the BEST THING EVER). I'll stop partway through walks and write things on my phone. I will tell my boyfriend and occasionally house guests "NEED TO CAPTURE AN IDEA JUST A MINUTE BYE" and dash out of the room.

Write after dinner and before Bedtime Reading & Tea, IF I have the time and brain energy.

Revisit the outline once the chapter is done and record all scenes and important things discussed in them, because my memory has gone to shit and I'm in danger of leaving things out or putting them in twice.

Finding the time to stitch the pieces together is the hardest thing. I'm also working on putting everything that isn't the current chapter in One Big Doc, because I write wildly out of order and I keep losing shit.

What’s your favorite tropes/pairing

The pairings I write are obvious, so let's go tropes/themes. I love competence porn. I love teamwork and friendships that span more than a pairing. (The combination of those two things is why I love heist movies).

Do you have a favorite fic of yours?

I re-read A Star To Steer Her By occasionally and enjoy it immensely, despite the rocky never-wrote-long-fic-before start, but I'm honestly SO PSYCHED about some of the deep emotional waters uncovered in the Sunset and Evening Star rewrite... does it count if I can't share it yet? Also, I'm too deep into it right now to be a good judge. I haven't had that experience of going back to it (the rewritten version) as a reader. (I've done it with the published version; it was shitty. That's why I'm rewriting).

Your fic with the most kudos?

A Star To Steer Her By, to no one's surprise.

Anything you don’t like about your writing?

I can so, so tell the times I tried to force something without hitting flow (see above re 'some of published SaES is really shitty').  That's different from "Put the butt in the seat and stitch that story together", which has to happen. I realize that's kind of saying 'I like it when it goes well, and dislike it when it doesn't.' But eh.

I definitely wonder sometimes if I'm too heavy-handed with whatever point I want to make. Like having to put Joker in a situation where someone is an ableist asshole to show what he's dealing with -- it can feel cheap, because what he'd *actually* be dealing with is all this micro stuff that builds up over time, but it's hard to show that in a story. So there has to be a larger stand-in event, and it can feel like setting up a strawman. Not sure I'd say I dislike how I've done it, but I'm not confident in it.

One thing that I hope rarely shows but is really a pain-in-the-ass is that, since I write out-of-order and I'm sometimes dumping things from two different notepads, a draft email, and a new google doc into one chapter, I'll find that I wrote the same scene twice. Or more. Because I knew that info needed to be conveyed and I forgot I'd already done it. Figuring out which version to use, or frankensteining them together, can be brutal, and then you've done all this work and only progressed by one scene.

Now something you do like?

Well, see, I like it when it works and I don't like it when it doesn't. :P

When I share snippets it's always funny dialogue, because that's easy for me (though conveying the comedic timing is absolutely something I put a lot of work into), and because it tends to share well as small pieces. But I'm more pleased by the scenes that make me choke up, because they aren't as easy. I suppose I'm more surprised when they work. This includes the upcoming Emotional Cascade Failure chapter and The Vortex of Tears.

[haloburns]

writing in 2021

okay, so this year was a hell year for me, like most everyone else on the planet. became fully disabled (yay chronic fatigue) went back to uni to finish classes, hated it and was pretty damn depressed, moved home early, graduated, and then started working for my mom. that was like the first five or six months of the year. i had a hard time writing because my brain was still stuck on school mode, and i felt like i needed a break from ANYTHING vaguely academic. i didn't read, i didn't write, i binge watched a fuck ton of shit and played so many hours of video games.

but then in july i got paramount+ and started binge watching danny phantom for the nostalgia. i wrote a quick drabble in late july, kinda thinking i would do more with it later, but mostly didn't think about it for a couple of months. fast forward two months, i remember that "oh yeah!" i started that fic and now i kinda wanted to finish it. so i started the second work, got stuck and left it for another couple of weeks. the ideas wouldn't leave me alone and so i finally banged out the second and third words over the course of like maybe two and a half weeks?

at my sister's wedding at the end of october, i found out that ectober was a thing! i immediately started getting so many ideas and i knew how i was going to continue the au! and then i decided that, fuck it, why not use nano to get the writing done?? i'd never managed to finish nano before, and i really dont like the structured way, so i just set out to write 50k in a month and get through this au i was working on.

and i did it! i wrote 61k in november and published 7 new, mostly complete works! i took a little break in early december because my creative juices were gone, but that didn't last long either.

the end result is that i published 102k in six months, wrote 61k in ONE MONTH, and have in total written 111k. in six months. that's just fucking WILD to me. and it's the most i've ever written and published on ao3. my previous highest record was 68k.

anyway, i just wanted to write this because i'm so fucking proud of this and honestly it's bc of the phandom that i've been able to go back to writing. i'm so happy that i'm part of a fandom again, i missed it.