#i rarely take on longform fic these days where i write a lot of original stuff

[fumizous]

okay because i'm bored and currently procrastinating on a first draft project of mine (context: i wanna be an author, while i'm taking my undergraduate degree at uni i'm just churning out as many first drafts as i can, so i can later do revisions/editing as my adhd brain desires rather than feeling destroyed by a singular project), here's a small list of fumizou works i'd love to play around with someday but they'd probably require long-form fics and therefore i'm wary of sinking my teeth into them:

idol au - one of them is in those little baby (teen) groups based on nyakb and the other has a MASSIVE crush on them. 'harry styles notices y/n in a crowd when she reads' kinda stuff, satirical and silly style

coffee shop and flower shop au. no particular reason i just think it's standard for any pairing. would do the same for mariyuki

meeting each other as youkai but they can't remember each other despite knowing they recognise each other. whole song and dance about going down memory lane and grieving something they can't even remember, all while katie and nate reckon with the fact their lives have always been intertwined with youkai and with each other

[n7punk]

What's your writing ritual/routine like? I think it's really impressive how consistently you update and post your stories (and even have that words for the year goal on your blog). It's like you're a living representation of all those professional authors giving their advice to "write consistently on a schedule, whether you feel like it or not."

Okay, I’m going to publish this because this, and similar questions, come up for me a lot! This is going to be another addition in my meta series unrestricted to a single fic.

All fics: Writing process

First of all, that advice is actually Highly Accurate to what I do. Some days I write 200 words. Some days I write 12k. It is extremely rare for a day to pass when I do not write at least a few hundred words in at least one of my fics (usually I only write for my current fic, but I may outline others, or occasionally write a few scenes if they come to me and I don’t want to lose them). Part of the way I keep my motivation is sticking to one project: If I want to write that new, shiny idea, then I have to finish this one first.

My focus is scattered and all over the place. The difference between the 200 word and 12k days is not because I was busier on those lower days: those are two real days’ stats from when I did Nanowrimo this year, and I was actually busier on the 12k day. However, it was a mix of being hyperfocused (on writing and not studying, Oops) and having the motivation that made me pump out 12k that day.

I don’t have a writing “ritual” so much as writing is my primary focus. I take breaks from it to get on social media, do work, play video games, etc, but She-ra is my current hyperfixation and so writing for it - even disconnected scenes that don’t go in any fic, or fic ideas I’ll never write outside of my head - is kind of always on my mind in a way.

In general, I keep the word document for my current fic (and its additional extras/outline/cut scenes document, every fic gets two docs) open on my desktop at all times. I switch over to it often. If I have work to do, it’s always like I’m trying to get that work done so I can get back to the thing I really want to do and enjoy: writing. If I’m doing something else I enjoy, I’ll do it for a while (sometimes even hours) until it is no longer catching my interest, and then I return to writing.

When I write, I put a playlist or a song on loop (and if I can’t concentrate with one, I switch or put on white noise) and then I just. go. If something I’m writing is feeling off, or not capturing the right mood, or I get a better idea, or I’m just not vibing with it, I go back (sometimes a few lines, sometimes a few paragraphs, sometimes even a few scenes) and just start writing it over, sometimes with the same general setting/plot for the scene, and sometimes with a completely different one. I save the original take in case I like it better or can reuse it elsewhere, only getting rid of it if I don’t think I can repurpose it and I don’t like it better. Usually I get rid of the majority of or all of the cut scenes from a fic at the end of it, especially if they’re setting specific, but some of them go into my “random snippets” file for later reuse in other fics (fun fact: ‘a strange disease like me’ has a scene from SLAS in it lmao). I also occasionally post them here instead if I know I’m not reusing them but I still kinda like them.

Because the way I write is very much “coming and going” from the word doc, when I come back I usually go back to the beginning of the current scene, a few before that, or even the beginning of the chapter depending how far in I am, and reread/edit what I’ve written to “get back into it” and then pick up writing where I left off once I reach it. When I was writing ‘catcher’ (my first multichapter fic, so my longform skills weren’t as honed) I would literally start reading it from the very beginning all the way to the end of what I had written every morning when I sat down to work on it. I never do this now, at most starting with the chapter before (and that much is Very Rare, usually I just stay in the chapter I’m currently writing) when I’m trying to get back in the swing after a gap, whether that gap was a few minutes, hours, or even overnight. Exceptions to this are only if I really feel like I’ve lost the thread/vibe or am trying to make sure I’m not going through too big of a tone shift.

I “come and go” from my word document so much (I’ve been bouncing in and out even as I reply to this) that sometimes I even leave it off mid-sentence as I get distracted. I don’t have a dedicated time where I write - I’m just always writing around everything else I’m trying to do in a day. And honestly, I was this way even before I was writing fanfictions down on my computer. All my writing and stories happened in my head, but they were always happening. That is still where my fanfics start. A lot of them start with ideas and thoughts coming to me as I drive or go to sleep/wake up, since my brain is “unoccupied” then and makes its own entertainment. I often arrive at a location and pull out my phone to make a quick note/outline of the scene that just played out in my head (often, I’ll replay the same scene(s) until I can get to my computer to write things down).

After Chapter 6 of ASGNE (or perhaps after Chapter 7 to avoid spoilers, we’ll see), I’ll do a post comparing the outline with the final product and talking about how I go from those scenes in my head to the words on the page. This is pretty much my writing process for as far as writing my words down goes though.

Because I often restart/start rereading at the scene before to get back in the swing, I do editing as I write, but I consider the chapter after I have finished writing it the “rough draft” of that chapter. After I’ve written one chapter using this method, I move onto the next and repeat the process. Once the rough draft of that second chapter is done, I go back and edit the first chapter, going more in depth with my fixes, cutting lines and adding in entire paragraphs and sometimes scenes to make the whole thing flow better, both within itself and into the next chapter. I then post the first chapter and set to making my rough draft of the next chapter (the third one in this case). Once that’s done, I edit the second chapter and repeat, etc.

The editing process time varies wildly. I always post a chapter right after I finish editing, unless it’s late at night, in which case I post it first thing in the morning. Sometimes editing takes less than hour - sometimes it takes four, if major changes are needed (especially scene rewrites, additions, or reordering). I’d say the majority of the time it takes me less than two hours to do the final edit. However, keep in mind that I have already read/edited the scenes probably close to a dozen times (if not more, in some cases at least) already as I’ve written the other scenes in the chapter.

Alright, that’s about as comprehensive as I can get on my writing process! It’s probably (definitely) more than you were asking for, but it is something I get asked a lot in different variations, so I wanted to cover the various questions I get about it (especially the “how do you write this much?” question, seeing as there is no answer I can give to this other than I want to).