#i wrote half of it for nano a few years back

[who-is-page]

Fall 2024: Achievements, Goals, and Thoughts

[Crossposted from my Patreon]

The fall equinox is just around the corner, heralding the arrival of one of my favorite times of year (although our arthritis and its poor relationship with the cold certainly begs to differ). With a new season on the horizon, I wanted to get my bearings on where we're at, where we're going, and our thoughts about all of it.

Achievements. 💡

We were volunteer staff and lecturers at this year's OtherCon! We co-lectured the Alterhumans & Relationships panel with our husband Thomas, which involved going over some of the data gleaned in our Alterhumans & Relationships Survey. We also assisted with the data collection and visualization for our partner Orion Scribner's massive survey, boasting over 1,200 respondents, which was used in their OtherCon lecture Phantom Limbs and Phantom Sensations, Human and Otherwise.

The Alterhuman Archive has reached over 1,400 entries. This is not something that would have been possible without the incredible help of the other archivists and curators working on the project--our friend Nova, our partner system House of Chimeras, and our partner Orion just to name a few--but it's an absolutely phenomenal and unbelievable milestone to reach.

This year's first Centaurus Festival was a massive hit, with 150 people registering and a peak attendance of 134 people. There were 11 panels in total, not including movie showings. Once again not a project I could have wrangled on my own without the incredible support of my friends and the staff team.

Goals. ✒️

Inky Paws #3 has been put on the back burner for a significant part of this year while college and my job took precedence, but I'm set and determined to once again have it published by or before December 31st.

Retail Werewolf is a comedy-fantasy solo RPG about being--you guessed it!--a werewolf stuck in a awful and fantastical retail job, where you're just trying to get through your shift without mauling someone. It's something that I've had in the works for a few weeks now. It's around half-way to completion, and I hope to have it done in time for Black Friday.

The Centaurus Festival website, Discord, and Tumblr need to be updated in preparation for next year. I've already touched base with the staff team on this, and I'd theoretically like to have at least the website updated before the equinox. (With that said, I'm working 55 hours this week, have at least 15 hours of college work left to push through, and will be celebrating my four-year anniversary with House of Chimeras, so we'll see if that timetable holds.)

Thoughts. 💭

We were extremely disappointed to see NaNoWriMo's stance in favor of generative AI earlier this year. If you don't know what debacle we're referring to, I made a short post on my Dreamwidth about it, and several news organizations have written deep-dive articles discussing and dissecting the matter such as Slate's Inside the Heated Controversy That’s Tearing a Writing Community Apart. We grew up writing with NaNoWriMo, and we even won the challenge in 2013 with a cheesy horror story that will never see the light of day and again in 2021 with The Sol System’s Alterhuman Writing Project, where we wrote an alterhuman-themed piece for each day in November. But with that said, the enormous outpouring of support for archiving and creation that we've seen at both OtherCon and the Centaurus Festival and our own past success with NaNo for writing about alterhuman topics make us wonder if it might not be time to reclaim November, which also conveniently happens to be the month in which Therianthropy Day is celebrated, and create an alterhuman writing event or group for it. Let us know your thoughts on this idea, or if you're feeling like you want to take a whack at it yourself!

And on that note, we really want to see people rally and support some of the major community projects out there more-- things like the Otherkin Wiki, AnOtherWiki, Otherkin News, Radiant Obscurities, and similar! We also want people to feel more assured in their own capabilities to create projects themselves, either collaboratively or alone. Seeing Nova's plans for HowlCon next year is incredibly exciting.

In sadder thoughts and news on projects, we must all bid a sad farewell to Project Shift and the Werelibrary, which are currently no longer being maintained. These resources were some of my favorite when I was a high school otherkin over a decade ago, and were also a major inspiration for my creation of the Alterhuman Archive. Although some of the works hosted on them may have been dated, these sites will be sorely missed.

[andmakeithome]

as promised...

wip wednesday thursday

soulmate au was requested by the poll! ironically I don’t have any specific Icemav bits to share yet because the first draft was word vomit during nano and I’m slowly working my way back through and reworking a lot of stuff. haven’t gotten to the shippy part of things yet, but here’s a bit of the first chapter!

the soulmate connection in this fic is through letters folded as paper airplanes. I won’t go into too much detail, but this first letter from Mav is right after they find out Duke isn’t coming home, so he’s only 7 years old, which puts Ice at 9. this will be formatted as a 3+1; 3 times Ice couldn’t comfort his soulmate in person and 1 time he could :’)

so! without further ado:

It’s rare to receive a soulmate letter before the age of fifteen.

Tom’s seen it in every piece of media he’s been able to get his hands on. He’s seen the love stories in his mom’s soap operas and in the romance novels his big sister pretends to hate. He’s seen the friendships in the war documentaries his dad likes to watch, how soldiers’ bonds with their soulmates helped them keep their heads. He’s seen the friendship bonds too in the letters his cousin Oskar shares from time to time. He’s seen every conceivable folded paper plane his little nine-year-old brain can imagine flitting through the skies when his mom takes him to the park or the pool or even on the way to school. He knows everyone has a person that’s all theirs in whatever way that they need. He knows those bonds are for life.

But it's incredibly rare to receive one this early.

***

“Aren’t you lucky,” his sister says after a dinner in November, spinning round and around in his desk chair while he leans back against his pillows. He reads over the letter again, the words scrawled across the page in red crayon.

He’s not sure if lucky is an accurate description.

Hi I do not even know if this is going to work but I am writing to my soulmate. I know that I am not supposed to write until I’m 15 (I’m 7) but I have to try. Mama always wrote to dad but I’ve never met you so I am not sure this will work but it always made her happy. I guess I just need some happy. The movies say I can’t use my name or tell you where I am either. I don't know why I’m doing this really. Are you out there somewhere? P

He picks at a tear along one of the creases, the sheet crinkling under his hands.

“At least you don’t have a baby for a soulmate,” he grumbles half heartedly. There’s still a warmth in his chest, a comfort in knowing he has someone out there, some part of him whispering mineminemine and he can’t bear to put the letter down.

“At least you have one,” she snipes back. It’s past her due, he knows; she’ll be sixteen at the beginning of January. For as rare as it is for a letter to arrive before fifteen, it’s not unusual for someone not to receive a letter until years past the fifteen year mark.

Only a rare few don’t receive a letter at all.

[radiowrites]

2023 Writer Year-In-Review

Hi, I’m RaisedonRadio & FortressofmyPast on AO3 and FF.net. This is an on-going tradition since 2015. Check out my past year-end posts: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

Tagging a few, but if you come across this, consider it an open tag! You’re welcome to tag me back, I’d love to read it!

@writercorianarose @shesailsships @talesofsorrowandofruin @azdesertwillow @goneahead @littlemissfandomworld @dreams-of-kalopsia @halleyuhm

Big change for me compared to last year—in addition to NaNoWriMo, I actually posted fanfics! I tried to add some new questions to this year’s edition, I hope they might even move out of my tiny circle.

Total Word Counts: 51,920 for 2023 NaNoWriMo 15,570 on 2022 NaNoWriMo project 19,193 for July 2023 Camp NaNoWriMo (mostly fanfics) 28,310 in published fanfics (this number is overlapping with camp nano, I wasn’t paying attention, so I’m not going to add everything together)

Total Number Of Completed Works: 10 Total Number of WIPS worked on this year: 10 or so How Many WIPs do you still have: 23

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I wrote way more than expected! I seriously didn’t think I would do NaNoWriMo again. And I published ten fics! That’s ten more than last year!

Did you take any writing risks this year? The NaNoWriMo project was definitely a risk for me. I basically had an idea and no outline. It was quite a challenge to my perfectionism issues—I had to basically never reread anything and just keep going, fully aware that I can better foreshadow the ideas that came up halfway through in the next rewrite.

Biggest Surprise: I wrote for NaNoWriMo again, which I was pretty sure wouldn't happen lol, and hit the word count, all through discovery writing, and having very little idea where I was going with it.

Biggest Disappointment: I dropped that above mentioned project the moment November ended! I can tell it has potential, hidden in there. I will definitely return to it.

Do you have any writing goals for the new year? I’d love to at least finish the first draft of the 2023 NaNoWriMo project, bringing it to a tentative end so I can actually reread it and go from there. And keep writing fanfic, and maybe even work on the 2022 nanowrimo project…

Fanfiction Questions Below! (if you don’t write fanfiction feel free to skip or rework the questions for your original works.)

Fandoms I’ve written in this year: I wrote fics for 7 different fandoms! For the following kdramas: Island, Tale of the Nine Tailed, Memorist, Royal Secret Agent, W: Two Worlds, May I Help You?, and a little Korean Web drama called Handmade Love.

Your most popular story of the year? That would be Besides You with 327 hits and 47 kudos. However Superhero got the most comment interaction with 4!

The story that was easiest/or most fun to write: I Think He Knows was fun to write! I do just love brooding with a heart of gold formerly immortal male leads.

Hardest story to write: Rescue Me, Superhero, Restore, and Prayers & Promises were four works that I had left for dead, and came back and found them to be basically finished and just needed proofreading. (So just in case anyone wondered how I turned out three of those in like two days: they were actually done and I was hellbent on getting them out of my WIPs list)

Your sweetest story: That would definitely be Superhero. I altered my normal narrative style to better fit the child’s character, and I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Your saddest scene: I feel like I hit a lot of angst this year, but nothing really sad?

The sexiest moment you’ve written this year? *coughs* I wrote five pieces of smut. (Half of my fanfics were smut this year?!) Umm, I’m torn between Beside You and Don’t Blame Me? But also Never Be the Same and Take On Me???

Your favorite tag: (whether you use it the most or just something witty/perfect for the story) My brother announced to me that he reads all my tags (he was trying to embarrass me about one of my smut pieces) so I did a shout out to him in the next fic. He saw it within the day, I was actually impressed.

Most unintentionally telling story: (have you accidentally or purposefully exposed a detail about yourself?) Religious guilt seems to be a reoccurring tag this year. In all seriousness, not quite sure why, but yet it kinda makes sense? (its complicated lmao) And for some reason not one, but two fics ended with marriage proposals?! (I’m so single.)

Are any of your fics named after/heavily inspired by music? I’m RaisedonRadio and it would be concerning if—checks list—less than 8 of the 10 fics weren’t named after songs, haha! (I’m actually just really bad at naming fics…)

Good To You and Besides You are both songs by the band Marianas Trench, and are heavily inspired by the songs. Rescue Me is by OneRepublic, one of those more vibes than lyrics inspired. I Think He Knows by Taylor Swift was definitely on repeat for that fic, as well as Don't Blame Me. (Poems), Prayers, and Promises was more a steal the name of the song by John Denver, for some reason I think Cold by Corbyn was on repeat when writing that one. Take On Me was named more for the similarities between the MV and the series! Never Be The Same was for the vibes of the song by Camila Cabello but not really the lyrics.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Maybe it’s cheating but I’m not sure if I can really choose? I know it’s not a common writer sentiment but I really do like them all for different reasons.

Like I churned out Good To You and Besides You within ten days of each other in July, after not writing any fanfic basically for a year and a half.

And then I pulled Rescue Me out of the dead drafts pile and made myself work on more description.

I Think He Knows was my first foray into a brand new fandom.

Don’t Blame Me is one of my rare canon divergence fics.

Restore was another dead draft that I found to be mostly complete, and decide to release into the world even if I knew there was so much more I could have done with it.

Prayers and Promises was not only another new fandom, but for some reason, I decided to write for a side character. It’s still sitting on just 1 hit and that makes it all the better that I really wrote it for myself.

Superhero was out of my comfort zone of writing for a kid’s perspective and I was so happy with how it turned out.

Take On Me was a draft sitting at less than 1k words and I challenged myself to finish it before the new year, and got it done in two days.

And then, to finish it all off with the intense desire to have ten fics under the belt for 2023, I wrote Never Be The Same in less than two days for the last drama I had watched, and the speed that the last two fics were actually finished was a huge change for me.

Fanfiction risks you took this year? I wrote fanfic for not one, but two fandoms that I had to create the first tags for on AO3! Also, as I started to slip into just writing for kdramas this year, I’ve basically become my own proofreader and editor at this point. Any mistakes are my own, lol.

My favorite part of fandom this year: That would be getting two kudos and a comment on I Think He Knows, one of the fics that is the first in its fandom tag. To actually connect with more fans of such a tiny project was so cool!

Thanks for reading and here’s to next year!

[thesolarangel]

8 movie & TV show soundtracks that shaped my taste in music

I have always discovered new music I liked through soundtracks❤️ I'm a metalhead these days, but I still listen to other stuff and I wanna share some artists/songs I've only noticed because they were on a certain soundtrack...

Shrek (2001)

Ah being 9/10 years old and listening to Smash Mouth and Eels in my room on my CD Player. Big time nostalgia right there. (I almost wrote Joan Jett, but it's actually a cover by another band)

Billy Elliot (2000)

I watched this movie when I was maybe 12/13? The music of T.Rex really got across the freedom Billy must've felt while dancing. I still listen to "Cosmic Dancer" and sway around in my room, pretending I'm Florence Welch and wearing a long dress with a cape wishing to be free...

A Knight's Tale (2001)

This was my first time actually listening to a David Bowie song! What a great dancing scene... Of course I knew Queen and "We will rock you" before this movie, but it was so much fun how they used it! Queen and David Bowie had a huge impact on my music taste...

10 things I hate about you (1999)

My Heath Ledger era.... It broke my heart when I heard the news in 2008. I'm a huge fan. I watched this a few years after "A Knight's Tale". This songs from this soundtrack feel so romantic and nostalgic to me, I love it. I have a playlist with several songs from 90s/00s romcoms like this and Clueless, Freaky Friday,...

Here is my whole playlist

Elizabethtown (2005)

My Orlando Bloom era. I remember it well. I was 13 when this one came out. My dad is from NY (I live in Germany. Long story short: paternal grandparents are from Germany, moved to the US in the 50s, settled there, had 3 kids, then moved back to Germany in the 70s) and I grew up bilingual. Although there's a lot of stuff that separates me from the American lifestyle and my family members who still live there... this movie somehow sparks a deeply cozy feeling inside me and a longing for the friendliness and warm attitude of US-Americans that I experienced in my visits in 2005 and 2016. And the soundtrack plays a big role in that.

Twilight (2008)

Paramore & Muse, 2 bands I still listen to occasionally. Both have changed greatly and I like to listen to the old stuff. It takes me back to the long train rides to school when I was 16-18 I think.. I had an orange iPod nano!

Starter for 10 (2006)

I found this during my James McAvoy era! It's really cute! Idk when I watched it exactly. I know I had heard of The Cure, The Undertones, Tears for Fears before, but this time I really listening to their songs!

Good Vibrations (2012)

I absolutely love music films... This one is based on a true story about the punk rock scene of Belfast in the 70s and it's amazing.

Here's my complete playlist of my fav 70s/80s punk rock

Originally this list had Supernatural and Stranger Things on it, but that's just basically my love for 80s pop and dad rock and they don't need a mention :D

Tagging everyone who might want to know more about me: @fenharel-enaste @lotrnonsense @lazymeriadoc @elrondscalaquendi @starlady66 @elronds-pointy-ears @bananaphanta @runawaymun @jefferson-in-the-tardis @depressedplatypus @kesiadebv @moriondors @corrodedbisexual @goldfearless

[whimsyswastry]

AO3 Asks

Tagged by @quietborderline 💛 (I'm still working on the last writing asks you sent me! But this one looks like is much easier than picking out specific lines from my writing, so hopefully it won't take two months plus to publish lol)

Tagging: All you writers out there. I'll tag a couple of you directly, but please don't feel pressured to answer. And if I didn't tag you, it's my lizard brain. Please answer them and tag me so I can read your wonderful answers 💛

@flamehairedsiren @pigeontheoneandonly @greypetrel @destiel-wings

How many works do you have on AO3? 39 (Mostly one shots)

What's your total AO3 words count? 105,481

What fandoms do you write for? The last year has been Mass Effect only, but I have a few Dragon Age and Greedfall pieces as well. And there might be an Anthem ficlet? I can't remember.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? (1) Masquerade & Mysteries (Greedfall) (2) 31 Days of Kurtober (Greedfall) (3) The Hot Zone (Mass Effect: Andromeda) (4) Unharrowed (Dragon Age) (5) Operation Leviathan (Mass Effect)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Almost always. I really enjoy getting comments and even though I get incredibly anxious to respond because even though I feel like an imposter to be like "OMG THANKS!!!" I am truly thankful for the time they took to not only read, but to reach out, too.

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Unharrowed; but only because it's plotted out to be a trilogy. So the first book ends with a high level of angst. Unfortunately, the one that's currently published to AO3 is not only unfinished, but also COMPLETELY different from the re-write I'm working on.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Masquerades & Mysteries, but technically it's not done yet. Because...I feel way too intimidated to finish the story, because in truly 10K story fashion, it ends with a smut chapter. And I don't really do that.

Do you get hate on fics? I've gotten some...disappointing comments that paraded under the false pretenses of "constructive criticism" but as they were from strangers, it mostly just felt like criticism. But only on Unharrowed which makes sense because Unharrowed (the version that's published on AO3) is very weak. It was my first story coming back from a 15 year hiatus of writing fiction (I'd been too busy writing academic research papers). And...you can tell.

Do you write smut. If so what kind? I do, but usually fade-to-black scenarios before it gets explicit. I have one story that I wasn't planning on fading to black, and it has been sitting in limbo for like 3 years because I'm too intimidated to try and write it.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I don't do DIRECT crossovers, but I will definitely take pieces of other fandoms and just apply them to my own. I haven't written it yet, but I do have a pretty wild pseudo-crossover planned. It's the plot of House of Ashes by Supermassive, but instead of the HOA characters, they're all the characters from Mass Effect.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of, but that's probably because every single fic I have published so far is only half done. And also because I have a couple dedicated readers, but I don't advertise my writing very often (not advertise, but things like blogging the links)

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not that I'm aware of.

Have you ever cowritten a fic before? I've never co-written, but I've had the opportunity to give my input while beta-ing my best friends Dragon Age fic.

What's your all-time favourite ship? I can choose favorites in each fandom, but probably not all time. Kaidan and Shepard have been reining supreme lately though.

What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? I am uncertain I'll ever finish Unharrowed. I had planned on writing 50k of it this year for NaNo, but due to health issues, I have chosen to not participate in NaNo this November. Hopefully I can still crank out 50K in April during camp.

What are your writing strengths? Plot. My plots are banger. Dialogue sounds pretty natural, I think.

What are your writing weaknesses? CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Which sucks, because you can have a weak story, that people will still love if your characters are strong. And my character aren't weak, but they are not dynamic. They don't tend to grow. Hopefully, realizing that about myself over the last year, maybe I can change that.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I don't mind if it makes sense storywise, or if it's a nickname for another character. But in general, I think it just creates more work for the reader, which isn't always a good decision.

First fandom you wrote for? Ever? Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place way back in 2002. It still gets a few likes every couple years and it startles me lol but it's on FF.Net, not AO3. The first for AO3 was Dragon Age.

Favourite fic you've ever written? It's not done, but The Hot Zone is definitely one of my favorites.

Answering these made me realize I really need to finish a story. Like..badly. Lmao they're all half drafted or half edited or just pseudo-abandoned.

[tanukifucker91]

2023 obituary

It was a weird year, I had so many plans and was so so so excited for 2023 bc of my improved health. But in the end I managed less than half of what I wanted to do, things just kept happening to me and putting me in situations where I felt like I had no power over my own time. But I guess that's just what life is like.

I had eye surgery and it was time consuming and frustrating to recover but in the end it was a success. Vanguard zero shut down... But I was able to send the game off properly with my streams which honestly felt like a huge personal accomplishment. I really didn't think I'd actually come through and do it but I did. I had a lot of plans for the summer but then I caught covid and was sick for months, and I'm still not fully recovered. I couldn't afford go back to Venice like I wanted and I bc I got sick I couldn't go back to Värmland either. I was so goddamn miserable but in all that I pushed myself to get back into my writing which I'd neglected, except for a few smaller projects, for over six months.

I read a lot of books and watched a lot of classic movies, both which were way more fun than I'd expected. I did NaNo and total I think I wrote over 120k between June and November.

It's been a weird year of frustrations but ultimately I think, at least on a personal level, I was able to feel mostly satisfied in the end. My expectations were too high anyway, and I think even with my improved health I need to accept that change takes time

Next year I want to go back to locals, I want to play more video games and I want to travel... And I'd like to write lots and lots and lots and maybe even finish my novel.

Thank you all on here and I hope 2004 is a better year for everyone

[cecexwrites]

2023 wrap up

How does a year feel so short but infinitely long at the same time?

Honestly I think 2023 has been one of the worst years I've had. And all of it happened in the last half of the year. I don't really want to dwell on the bad stuff too much but I went from happily living on my own to having to live with my aunt and my mother- not because of my circumstances but because of theirs. As well as a few other things that I can't think about too long because it twists my organs in a way that can't be good for me. the last half of 2023 taught me just how little control I have over anything in my life and wow that fucking sucks.

But anyway

What are the good things that happened in 2023?

I went on two trips, I got to go to Florida to see my best friend and meet her son for the first time, then in September they came up here to Kansas and that was so much fun.

I went to California, I went to my first ever reader convention and it was so much fun. I went with my other best friend and got to hang out with her IRL for the first time in nearly two years which is also awesome. And at the event I made two new friends who I'm still really close to. We're all going back in 2024 and I can't wait.

I wrote two whole books! One was my fic Prince of Ruin and one was an actual book who's title is tentatively Win or Lose.

I wrote 10 chapters of Prince of Wrath, I plotted out a huge massive fanfic universe that I'm going to be writing over the next several years.

I read 170 books, some were amazing, some were shit.

I made new tumblr friends, I got closer to old tumblr friends (This btw will be something I want to focus a little harder on in 2024 but we will get to that in the next post)

I won Nano, I lost two rounds of Camp Nano. I came up with dozens of ideas some of them good, some of them not so good.

So yeah, 2023 sucked ass, but it wasn't all bad. And the good things were really good. I refuse to give 2024 too much hope but I have some goals and plans for the year that I want to write out in a separate post, so that will be coming later on today.

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

16, 30, and 75??

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them?

Okay, so I have the final chapter of Gravity Well vibrating in my head and the entire rest of The Stars screaming at me to fucking get on with it already, but I also have a Mummy AU that I talked about before, and then a very little mostly visual idea I chatted about with one of my mutuals where Anakin is MENA and Padme is Mongolian. In a more interesting timeline....

There's also a little seed of an idea for a one-shot sequel to Sweater Weather where Din and Grogu meets Luke's family and that would end with Din half-joking about taking Luke to Mandalore, but I don't know if anything will come of that. Guess we'll see when actual sweater weather swings around my neck of the woods again.

30. Do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished?

I used to post WIPs and they weren't all that edited either, but I had a few formative experiences that made me go the "don't post until polished" route. One was readers at FFN getting fuck-off angry that I took down a Transformers WIP because I was going to rewrite and polish the story. I never posted it back up. I'm so mad I didn't because now the only copies I have left of that fic are oooooooooold word docs and text files, and they're incomplete. Another was just... the sheer number of abandoned WIPs because I didn't plot well and wrote myself into walls. It was really discouraging and I got used to expecting myself to fail whenever I started a longfic. Then I really got into the habit of participating in NaNo every year, and the NaNo method of writing balls to the wall, like you're running out of time, until you hit the end of Nov. 30th. really changed the game for me. Like, oh, I should just writewritewrite until I reach the end, and now I have all this time to go back and see what I can cut out, what I can add, what I can do to put out a finished product.

I think the finest exampe and experience I had with that method was The Storm. It was originally a lot shorter because I was in such a hurry to finish this story that wouldn't leave my ass alone and I really wanted to get the fic out there while the dinluke ship and fandom were starting to take off, but when I was going over what I wrote, I realized that the story was missing time and I needed to create more time for these characters to sit in their heads, listening to the rain and to each other, and to get to know each other better. So I wrote in enough scenes to add a new chapter and create a story with a much better tempo and pace, and that story gave me a massive fic series for the ship. What the fuck.

75. What scene in [Fanfic Name] took the longest to write? What was difficult about it? 

Umm.... not sure which fic we're talking about here. But like, just assume that either all the scenes in the chapter after the story's climax or all the scenes in the last chapter of a story take the longest to write. They always do. Coming down from the high of a story's climax (lol) or tying up every loose thread that needs tying up to finish a story is just insanely hard to do. I'm trying to wrap up Gravity Well right now AND I AM STRUGGLING. I've also been working tons of overtime while living in an environment where I can't ever relax, so it's a struggle and a fight to write everything down and feel satisfied.

Play ask games, win ask prizes!

[officerjennie]

AO3 Wrapped - 2022

Tagged by @bi-aragorn - thank you!!

All but one fic the last year was for The Witcher (the one being for Naruto), and I admittedly wrote a Lot more than I posted. Also I have a secondary account that I won't be counting in all of this for simplicity's sake.

...technically I have three, but one has been neglected for a few years now. We won't talk about that.

Works Published: 43, unless I counted wrong

Word Count: 101,754

Hits: 27,901

Bookmarks: 490

Most Popular By Kudos: better than a hot bottle of water - which just recently got a sequel

By Hits: the softest of treasures. I really need to get back to writing this one, I was just about to be (somewhat) nice to Geralt

Longest: also the softest of treasures.

Shortest: Single Child Confusion, which I wrote while in the car with @fontegagrilledcheese for one of her cheesy flash fic challenges

Most Comments: also the softest of treasures xD I really need to get back to that fic, I don't even remember if I started writing the next chapter tho...

Fic that made me cry: Both Stepping Stones and If only I could have, I would have for you - they're very personal to me, and even just thinking about them makes my stomach feel heavy. They were extremely cathartic and were things that I Needed to write, for myself more than anyone else

Fic that made me smile: a good bargain. Occasionally I hear about people stumbling upon the fic, and it makes me happy every time - I'm fond of it :D Geralt needs to fuck more melons

Gift: to someone - I can't remember when, but at one point I was throwing so many fic ideas at @geraltrogerericduhautebellegarde and they eventually demanded I start writing them. So, to let the world know who was subjecting them to my ideas, I gifted all of those fics to her. the ruin in me is one of my favorites.

Please ignore the fact that it's not finished

From someone - Orange and Honey by @kueble which I shall be rereading as soon as I post this. Also @jaskierswolf gifted me like 7 fics and I loved each and every one of them.

Events: We held a lot of events in the Passiflora discord, and I believe I participated in most of them! Tho I don't typically bother with series or adding my fics to collections. We had team bingo, trans week, soft tummy week, NaNo, drabble challenges, flash fics, DDmas, WIP week, art train - those are all of the ones I remember participating in, though I believe there were a few others.

All in all, a more productive year than I thought, even if I posted almost half as many words as the year before xD I'm trying to step my game up for this year. Who knows, maybe I'll even finish some WIPs

...I say, procrastinating that damn siren fic

Tagging @comfyswitcherblanketfort @luteandsword and anyone else who hasn't been tagged yet?

[angst-in-space]

april ‘23 writing progress

words written: 17.5k

most words written in a day: 2269

least words written in a day: 13

current yearly total: 59.1k

projects worked on:

- ya sci-fi book revisions - adult fantasy book - spy x vacation zine piece - kazurei post-canon fic - re-outlining red skies

works published in april:

none

april goals:

- write 30k total for camp nano - work on ya sci-fi book revisions - work on adult fantasy - submit final spy x vacation zine piece - finish editing ch 9 of sylvix dreamscape - work on sylvix pacrim - start buddy daddies fic maybe?? lol? - work on a couple other fics if i have time may goals:

- write about 20k total - work on ya sci-fi book revisions (rewrite like, 2-3 more chapters?) - maybe work on adult fantasy book more?? - finish editing ch 9 of sylvix dreamscape - work on sylvix pacrim - work on kazurei fic - finish new red skies outline - maybe actually....keep writing red skies?? - work on misc other fics if i have time

notes:

SOOOO being my usual self i aimed a bit too high for april.... had hoped to write 30k for camp nano and only wrote a lil more than half of that, but hey it’s still something!!

most of my focus was on doing rewrites for my ya sci-fi book which is...still going. very slowly. but going! i’m only like a third of the way through doing my total rewrite but i feel like i’m getting a bit more into the swing of it at least lol. been trying something where i write about 500 words of it a day so i’m hoping that’ll get me through about 2 or 3 more chapters this month!

i also made a little bit of progress on my adult monster romance fantasy book lol. i kinda... fell off track with that one, though. i’ve been having some trouble getting through the beginning of it and i’m not sure if i’ll have the time/motivation to delve back into it during may but, who knows! 

i....still have not finished editing ch 9 of sylvix dreamscape. and i feel awful about it lmao. i know it’s been many months at this point... buuut i am actually almost done editing it i think. perhaps i can finally finish that by the end of this month??

speaking of sylvix, i somehow neglected the pacrim au during all of april. hoping i can get back to that soon. i miss it!

i instead started a brand new fic.... a post-canon buddy daddies kazurei fic ahahaha. so uh!! i haven’t gotten very far but hope to make some more progress on it soon. hoping this one won’t be SUPER long, but... i’m me. 

AND. within the past few days i’ve suddenly been possessed to work on red skies, my very old kl space opera au lmao. except i realized 1) i’d never finished outlining it, 2) the outline i had was...a mess. so i have to go back and fix/change a lot of stuff. but, i’m hoping to finish the new outline soon and delve back into actually working on that fic. yes it’s been like four and a half years since i updated it but i miss it okay :’) 

SO yeah definitely a lot of stuff to do this month but i’m looking forward to it!!! 

[writingmoth]

my struggles with fantasy romance wip, part 123123

as i said before, i used to be a plotter through and through. like, i wrote outlines, planned scenes, mapped character arcs, etc, but it did end up burning me out a bit (plus, real life issues, pandemic, etc) and i didn't write much of anything for a couple years. so my idea with fantasy romance wip was to be super self-indulgent and not plan a single thing. which worked well enough for nano!! i have 3 and half chapters written, i actually liked them well enough, i like the characters, the world, etc.

...but i only have a bunch of plot points in my mind, scenes i'd like to read, and not much about how the ending happens beyond "oh x happens i guess". and thats been holding me back for weeks. which is super annoying bc the goal was to be super free with this story. but i guess my brain just isn't wired this way. but!! ive been thinking and wondering if my problem isnt exactly that i dont know how the story goes as much as i didn't know what i wanted to say with it. mind, im not talking about a life lesson or a philosophical question or whatever, but i do believe most books end up having a core message/theme. and i didnt have fantasy romance wip's core message figured out.

i think i do now, though. ive been thinking a lot about it these past few days and maybe i finally have it. im free from work (thank goodness for carnaval) until next friday so i guess i will trying to write again for this story for the first time in weeks lol wish me luck!!

[amandamacncheese]

I'm not Neil Gaiman. I'm not anyone yet, really. But I've been through something like this.

First I wrote, badly, in order to process abuse I didn't even have adequate vocabulary for, and the fallout of that abuse that fell more on me and my family than the abuser.

I ran away to college to try to figure myself out, and get out of an on-again-off-again high school romance that was just never going to work no matter how many times we were on-again, and like... not kill myself, because I was thinking about it. And I figured a few things out that had little or nothing to do with me. I wrote academic research paper after research paper. I lived on the street, and then in a group home. I fell into a deep depression that I didn't get professional treatment for for a long time. I wrote more research papers. I worked one job, then two, then three.

I stopped writing stories or poetry. I stopped writing anything that felt alive, because I didn't feel like I had the time to feel alive. I wrote more research papers. I even wrote research papers for math classes.

I assumed that I had just... run out of words.

And then one day I agreed to talk to a stranger on the internet because my cousin said he was her friend. And we talked, and flirted, and flirted some more. I refused to take him seriously because I was determined to be a spinster crazy cat lady at the time. Like, if I had known about vision boards back then, my vision board would have been me in the middle of a bunch of cats and books and yarn and a herd of horses in the huge backyard of my teeny tiny cottage where I lived all alone... but I digress. Even though I was actively, determinedly not taking him seriously, I kept talking to him because he was fun to talk to.

Fast forward three more years, ish, he was the only reason I actually finished that goddamn college degree, because I was ready to quit when I was half of one last final fucking research paper away from graduating, and he kicked my butt to finish it. The school closed for lack of funds *the next academic term* after they sent me my diploma.

We both have very similar trauma, and we haven't always been good for/to each other. But we try, and we learn from mistakes, and we support each other in our individual journeys to heal and become better people. We were each other's only support for a very dark sixish months where even as we tried to heal and grow closer, life kept pouring on trauma after injury after catastrophe on us, nonstop, and all we got from almost everyone around us was judgment and abandonment. We kept each other afloat and we learned to heal, individually and together, in ways we didn't even know we needed.

And now, about a decade after I stopped writing creatively at all, my words are back, and boy howdy did they come back.

I wrote 80k words of "short story" in about 2 months, without even realizing it until someone asked me at the end of October last year if I was doing NaNo... and I decided not to because I realized I already had 👀😅

I wrote about 7 other short stories that actually stayed short, mostly. Some of them might be decent with some tweaking, but it felt so good just to write them at all.

I've got a kid's book in progress that I'm seeking to self publish, soon. It's in what I hope will be the final round of edits right now. Then I get to do illustrations.

I've written another novel that is going through the 3rd, ish, round of edits and which I want to publish eventually but which needs a lot more work. I'm building a whole planet around it; a whole universe, really. I suspect I may tell a lot more stories from there. I'm inventing languages for it -- words have come back to me that literally didn't even exist before they found me. I'm taking my time with it, because I want it to be good and to feel good to me every step of the way.

I have so many other ideas now.

Take your time and heal. I can say from experience, the words will come back. They'll surprise you with how abundant and vibrant they'll be.

Neil, can you tell me the truth? I’m terrified of my future right now, and not for no reason

I crashed and burned. I did it to myself, I knew what I was doing and I didn’t stop and now I’m paying the price. There were… other factors. I was driving myself to work pretty much from the moment the pandemic started, way more than I should have, because I didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about how terrible everything was. And then I fell into an abusive relationship and I never stopped working because if I stopped, my abuser would stop loving me and start abusing me

And I knew, on a level. My subconscious tried to warn me, a lot, because I was born into this particular pattern of abuse and I didn’t recognize it in time. This year, my subconscious took drastic measures and made me very, very sick to get me the hell out of there. The inevitable abuse part of the abusive relationship happened as a result, and I ran because I’m not a complete idiot. Now I recognize the abuse for what it was, but now I am sick and paying for my crimes of not resting at all for over three years and letting someone use me as a punching bag

I can’t write. I can’t sleep unaided. I can’t barely eat. I spend most of my days in the dark because the light hurts. I still have ideas, but I am so tired and in so much pain I struggled just to write this

I know I need to rest. I know I need to give myself time to heal. I know I need medical attention and therapy, probably lots of it, before I will be capable of living in any meaningful fashion

But… please sir… Please, can you tell me my words will be waiting for me at the end of this dark road? If I still want them to be, if I take the time and steps to heal, if I’m patient and successful… Please tell me my words will be waiting when the damage is repaired enough for me to have them again?

Heal and rest and heal some more. Your words will be there for you when you need them.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Decommission Protocol; or, I Accidentally Wrote A Book, I Guess??

So. I've been trying to take a break from a taxing revision project *shoves Driscoll and friends under the rug*, and I thought the best way to do that was to write self-indulgent fluff and angst and horrible AUs and bridge material for my favorite idiot birdkids (foolproof). And I thought (like a dumbass) that this would be a few collections of short stories, and random standalone scenes, and neat bits I've been hoarding on Post-Its since 2019.

I wanted to start with the Jorge Stuff, because it's been bugging me longest, and I'd written something similar for a different character, and that wound up being like 10 pages, which is kind of a lot but not ~Unreasonable~. So I figured I'd write About The Same Amount for this, and that'd be cool, and then I could move on to a zillion other smaller ideas, and I'd have a grand time :)

Reader: I started this back in February. And I accidentally wrote sixty-four (64) pages about it. Which. When I compare that to my NaNo Notebook of two (2) years ago (because it's the same size paper). I realize. It will probably turn out to be about 50k.

Oops?

Anyway, this got just slightly away from me, but I had a very good time, and I finished it today!! I think I'm doomed to type it, though, because there's some deeper worldbuilding and interesting character development in here that I'd be sad to lose, and right now it only exists in this notebook (yikes).

Pictured above: The Notebook, the Pen and a Half that I killed writing this, and the scraps of paper and Post-Its I loosely planned scenes/tested dialogue exchanges on--I didn't plot notecards for this because I thought it'd be just a little guy, so this is all I have by way of prep work!

[emilykaldwen]

11, 12 and 26 for the bts fic asks (the maiden and the drowning boy)?

Behind the Scenes Fic Asks

Thank you so much for sending this!!! Okay *cracks knuckles* let's see what thinky thoughts I need to make coherent.

11. Was there a scene that you hadn't originally planned to include? Why did you decide to fit it in?

Ooooh nice! So this is the first fic I've like truly outlined because there's so many plots and subplots and moving parts that I need to be aware of. Like putting a bunch of feral toddlers on leashes! The thing I make sure I do though, is to leave breathing room for scenes exactly like this where they come up because you find the story needs it in that moment. I think I have to go with... (me checking what I've written so far) So there's a scene in chapter 14 (the ball!) that I ended up writing between Abby and her grandfather, Rodrick Reyne that I'm incredibly pleased about because the man isn't dumb. He's totally acknowledging that Alicent is picking Abby to be queen, but he will absolutely fight against the betrothal if it isn't what Abby wants. And it just made my heart incredibly full because there is one fucking adult in her life that isn't trying to use Abby to their own ends/mold in their own image/try control Aegon through her. He cares about her and there is absolutely an AU somewhere where Abby goes to foster at Castamere after Lyonel's death.

12. Was there a scene you wished you could have included? Why didn't it fit in?

So I had wanted to do a scene with Aegon and Viserys where Aegon is asking permission to go into the royal treasury to get some jewels for Abby to make a necklace. This was meant to be right after the gallery scene in Chapter Nine. I scrapped it for a few reasons, I think mainly due to length? And Tonally in this chapter I wanted to keep it between Abby and Aegon in terms of them feeling like their relationship is changing before knocking them apart for the next chapters. If I can find a place to include it in the back half of the chapters, I absolutely will though because I really do need a scene with Aegon and Viserys. (Initially I thought of posting it as it's own outtake/one shot side story but it really is something I need to include)

26. Wild Card! A fun fact about this fic!

Well fuck LOL man, what's a fun fact... So I had come up with the concept of this story... fuck. It was the week that The Princess and the Queen aired, or the following week (I had created Abby back in August pretty quickly, although she was her canonical age at that point) and started writing mid-october or the week before nano started. It all began with what I intended ot be a one shot, with 15k words of young!Alicent and I wrote about... 32k of backstory route. There was going to be... 10? chapters of Alicent/Abby/Aegon rotating POV through Driftmark, and then time jump 3 years later to what is our opening chapter in Maiden. However I was really struggling with young!Abby POVs because she was such a happy kid? and she doesn't have the language or understanding or self realization to understand the 'Oh I need to be happy all the time because my dad was sad mom was dying and everyone around me is mentally unwell so I need to be happy because it makes other people happy'. And then I ended up scrapping that essentially and starting over and then at that point I got a very quick surgery approval and immediately started in on my fasting diet which took away any ability to string words together. Some of it is actually getting recycled for some stuff: there's a scene in particular where Daemon showed up for Aegon's 13th nameday, and Daemon was the one who introduced Aegon to Mysaria (because I had been trying to figure out how this little menace ended up becoming a regular fixture in flea bottom). Anyway, there was a really good dragon face off scene that will be repurposed for a later chapter in arc one!

[entityupdates]

November 2022 General Update

Writing this at the end of November so it’s not my usual update where I write my plans for the month. It is currently Nano but I wasn’t really participating. I currently have about 35,000 words. I don’t plan on pushing it.

This month, I worked on my in progress fic They’ll Have Someone To Care For Them and finished Glitch’s Spark. I finished outlining They’ll Have Someone To Care For Them. I aim to finish it in the early months of 2023.

My main project was resuming my most popular atla fic The Spirits Threw Down Their Spears And Watered Heaven With Their Tears, which I finished in 2021 but decided to continue due to popular demand. The new portion is about half done and I hope to finish it and begin posting it this year.

I also wrote quite a bit for the new movie Spirited. I am the primary person posting fics for it therefore I am very motivated but I am only writing oneshots, which I think is good for me since I wanted to practice writing oneshots.

For Spirited, this month I posted a three part series and two requests. Tonight I’ve written two more self indulgent oneshots that I plan to post tomorrow.

Regarding my Rook Gets the Omnitrix AU, it hasn’t been updated in a few months. I just have writer’s block but I don’t want to abandon it/ put it on hiatus like Voiceless considering it’s nearing its end. It should be finished in 2023 but I don’t know when the next update will come. In 2021, I stopped writing for about a 7 month period starting around September. The only difference here is that I don’t have chapters backed up.

[writingwithchoco]

Seeing people react and reblog stuff I wrote again makes me so happy! I am also participating in nano this year to try and get myself back to writing and it is hard! I am very self doubting and see a lot of “flaws” that I want to change and make better. I did almost finish my first draft though! Probably this week! I also managed to read a lot this year and that is awesome because it helps me with writing too and it means I can relax enough to do so. Little update too: The last few months I have been doing half of my courses so I could have some time for myself and get back to hobbies and be less stressed and tired all the time. I think looking back and looking at what I am doing now I can say that, even though I didn’t want to do half of my courses, it was a good choice. I finally started writing again and reading and slowly feeling better. So yes for that! Seeing the support from people on @hotchocolatewriting actually means the world to me and it also helps a lot with the self doubt. So thanks again everyone!