#dont be embaressed!!! i wont expose you i promise!

[revasserium]

but in the meantime, i love love love childhood friends to lovers too <3 all the best with the zoro fic! -- @anonymilk

i love how in the previous reply of my ask you said you don't have the energy to write and your new zoro fic is estimated to be hella long. go girl, give us your blood, sweat, and tears <3 (im saying all these with a sincere and endearing tone XD). how is the progress of that fic? you said that you normally write without much planning, and you seldom do drafts (iirc), but is it the same for long fics? how do you handle longer fics? what sparked the idea?? also don't forget to drink water and take breaks! also, dw abt not having "that girl" tips for dealing with stress. i also have a few bad habits up my sleeve, although thankfully it has been sort of controlled and i hopefully won't spiral again XD

LMFAO LAWD go on -- expOSE me some more why dont u HAHAH. no but in all honesty, i think it was a combo of me feeling super inspired by opla, opla fandom being fucking HYPER active right now, and actually (!!!) me forcing myself to read like actual books that i enjoy reading!

i always forget (for some stupid reason) that nothing inspires me to write like reading does. and you'd that after almost 20 years of reading and writing voraciously, i'd have learned that by now but alas, here we are -- every single fucking time.

it's like pms-ing, and then realizing when u get ur period that u were feeling genocidal bc of pms... and just like living through that cycle every month. whomph.

and yes, you're right -- i do write with zero plan. i still write with zero plan. but the its like... hm. how do i say this without sounding absolutely unhinged and literally clinically insane --

whenever i feel inspired to write down a story, i'll hear/see/feel the first few lines in my head, like literally word for word, the sentences will just... unfurl inside my brain. and i'll get this like vague, misty impression of how the story might go. now IF at this point in time, i'm in a place where i can write down the first few lines and "pin down" the start of the story, then it's safe. it's home free. think of it like... tendrils of silk on a high wind -- if i manage to catch the end of one and pin it down, the rest of the string might still flutter in the wind, but there's much less chance of it just flying away.

now if i DONT manage to get those first few lines pinned down to a word doc or a notion page or like... the back of a grocery store receipt, then the story simply flies off, towards another willing creative who might have the time and energy to pin it down instead. it's happened plenty where the start of stories will come to me when im in bed or riding the subway or whatever, and i'm too tired or there's no service or whatever -- and i decide to let that story go. but literally it'll just flitter through me and then by the time i sit down somewhere i can actually write, i'll have forgotten the whole thing.

but after i've got the beginning down, there's a high chance that while i'm writing the beginning, i'll get some idea of how i want it to end (this isn't always the case; a lot of times the end won't come to me till i'm solidly halfway through). so i'll like write down roughly how the story wants to end, and from there, i have to do the legwork of filling in the middle -- aka GETTING from the beginning to the end.

and truthfully, i still don't plan. i have no idea how most of the story will go. but i like to think of the story as it's own kind of living thing as opposed to it coming from like... inside me. so i trust it like it's a living thing too, i trust that if i write down the beginning and then as much as i can of it, it'll stay put where it's supposed to be till i have time to come back to it. and so far, that's what's worked for me.

this is the case even for my "longer" fics, and i think the longest i've written on this blog is like... 4/5k, but in my personal "archives" of fics i've just written for myself (there's a kakashi fic, a criminal minds spencer reid fic, and an inuyasha fic, that are all like 50k+ words each, and unfinished), this is still the case. i just write what comes to me, and trust that if a story wants to and is meant to be told by me, it'll stay put for as long as i need it to till i can find the time and energy to take care of it and write it down.

there's no advanced planning, no like... outlines or anything. i still just sit down and write.

before, back when i didn't have to get up at 8am to work a big girl job, i would just tough it out and stay up all night writing till i was done with the story or it was done with me or i got too delusional to keep on writing. but now, as long as i've got a decent start penned down, i can kinda close out the fic whenever i want to, and then come back to it later.

and thank you for reminding me to drink water!!! it's highly necessary haha. AND YES I LOVE CHILDHOOD FRIENDS TO LOVERS BRO. i can't wait till this fic is finished <3 now this answer got WAYYY fucking long but i hope you enjoyed reading my answer regardless.