#i'm down to 4 work days a week! wanting to see if i can restructure how i view money and bills and start taking it even easier

[autistic-shaiapouf]

What do you mean I have to get up and do the work if I wanna try to make money <- guy who has been doing work nonstop and needs to give it a fucking rest

[kadoodles-on-ao3]

Hey there!! Thank you for the kind ask (this is Zanthe's "Main" blog) I didn't want to reply to it directly because i'd like to keep it in my inbox to treasure, but I wanted to say thank you. It truly means a lot!

We are 🤝 over rarepairs in this tiny little fandom, though I do admit I love the anonymity nowadays! I've been here for years and it's very comfortable and nice being an older, more obscure artist lol.

I do recommend at the very least, sitting down and writing down your amv ideas. There are many i've never drawn, but i have a ton written down to chip away at the day I have the energy to, and it's very good to keep those ideas with you, i hope you're able to realize them one day, I'd love to see them!

Also, I'm glad my checklist can be of help!! If you're curious, it took about 4 days to make it, in which i was completely hyperfixated on it!spreadsheets my beloved. Good luck on your project!! If you'd ever like to chat, feel free to send a message ^w^ have a lovely day

Oh!! Of course, I'm glad it made you happy! To hear you liked it so much you want to preserve it is really touching and made me smile, thank you! :>

(I hope it's alright that I'm replying to your ask directly, if not let me know and I'll take this down and copy-paste what I said below to you in a DM if you'd like!)

Haha it's really true that rarepair fans are like their own group that crosses fandoms and/or specific ships, a little subculture inside a subculture of a subculture :)

I definitely can't blame you for not wanting a lot of attention since I feel the same way, I'd be terrified to be a big name haha.

Oh I really appreciate the advice! The fact that you think my ideas are worth preserving is very kind of you haha :) I'm very much the type who gets random inspiration at 3 AM or while eating dinner, and would otherwise forget my epiphanies if I didn't write them down. So ever since I was a kid I made a habit of it! Although back then I used pencil and paper haha, but now I have a 22-page-long semi-organized google doc. The AMV outlines are in there somewhere! Knowing there's even one person out there who wants to see something I've made or plan to make is an incredible feeling, thank you so much ;v;

Anyway, how did you learn to animate and make AMVs? And what drawing software do you use? If you don't mind me asking of course!

Oh thank you again for that checklist!! Wow 4 days seems like nothing compared to how extensive it is, that's amazing! I've been working on my own Xenoblade excel sheet project for a long time now, and it took me months and months to get that near completion. But if you're much better at organizing/planning than I am it saves a ton of time, I went through like 3 major restructurings of stuff that took days to finish... only to redo everything like a week later haha

And you're also very kind to read my silly tags and wish me luck on my project!! (It's a different one from before haha, that one is a comprehensive list of when all the party members' and bosses' voice lines play and under what circumstances. I'll be making it public on the upcoming anniversary!) For this other one, it's a challenge run of XC1 of sorts! But I have a dumb irrational fear that if I go into detail about what it is, someone else will swoop in before I get a chance to do it myself and take the world-first credit of it hahaha. But one day I will do it, I really want to, and your checklist will be immensely super helpful in planning my route and keeping track of everything, so thank you again! And thank you again (again) for this wonderful message, it really brightened my whole day! :))

[livlepretre]

I'm so glad you decided to do this ask game. I love your writing style and have been curious about 4, 11, and 54 for a while. Thank you for being so interactive about your writing!

💙💙💙 honestly thank you for asking! I love interacting with all of you here on tumblr, and honestly, talking about writing gives me a lot of energy to see through really long projects (you all know which one). 

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?

Yes! The most helpful habit I’ve developed is actually finding the right time of day (for me) to write-- I’m best in the mornings, so the first thing I do 2-4 mornings a week is caffeinate and open up my word doc with my wip. Often I’ll reread a few scenes from where I left off to get myself going, and then I write for an hour or two. My thoughts are so much clearer in the early mornings, before I head to work and exhaust my mental energies, that the work flows really freely-- I can often cover the same terrain by writing first thing that I might take all day to cover if I get started, say, on a Saturday in the early afternoon (sad but true). 

I also do like to amp myself up with songs, but I don’t listen to any music WHILE writing-- only beforehand. I find music during writing to be way too distracting. 

I only ever write sober, because I find even a glass of wine throws me way too far off my game (and I hate squinting at my screen). But the more caffeine the better. 

Also, detailed below: I OUTLINE LIKE A FIEND

11. Describe your writing process from scratch to finish.

hmmm okay

so, often an idea will hit me and I will immediately have maybe 3-10 pages that flow really fast... but then I’ll stutter out 

so after that comes the outline. 

and I mean: OUTLINE 

I put my outline at the bottom of my word document, below the scenes that I’ve already written-- for FE this started as a pretty basic series of like, maybe a dozen bullet points overall. As I kept brainstorming and writing and thinking about it, I started having more specific plot points. Every time an idea occurred to me, I added it to the outline. In the beginning this was a very flow of consciousness outline, not even bullet-pointed, just paragraphs and paragraphs detailing in often vague terms the broad strokes of what I wanted to happen and what the emotional beats would be. I think it really has helped me with FE that I had a lot of the BIG moments outlined before I started writing, including the ending, so I knew the narrative arcs and could foreshadow a lot of things, even if a lot of the chapters get written between updates and I have added in a lot of things that have just sort of naturally developed. The good news is that if you overall stick the outline, you can also add a lot of other things in. 

I review my outline A LOT. 

Before I write any particular chapter, I look through the outline, and figure out which pieces I want to include in the chapter. I then go through and MINIMUM outline by bullet point the scenes that will be in that chapter-- although, I like to have the next 5-10 chapters outlined that thoroughly so that I know exactly where I am heading. I cannot stress enough how hard it is for me to write without a blue print. 

Sometimes I write a scene that I end up not using. Rather than deleting it, I move it to the bottom of my word document-- often these scenes can be revised later to fit into the story. 

I also write at the bottom of my outline any scenes/dialogue that pops into my head that I know will happen later. This way, I have it on hand when I get to it. 

For the actual writing, once I start writing a chapter, I pretty much work on it every day until it’s done-- sometimes all I do is tinker with the outline, or write a few sentences, and sometimes I wrote 4,000 words-- it doesn’t matter how much or how little, because in writing, every word is a victory. 

I try to apply the same rule to my creative writing as to my essay writing--just get the idea/emotions/plot out, describe it as clearly as possible, and any finangling with words can be wrestled with on a later pass. 

I usually reread each chapter 5 or 6 times before posting-- often it’s the first thing I do when I open the doc up to write. This is often a good chance to add in connecting scenes, change sentences slightly, or revise paragraphs so that they fit into any emotional arcs/discoveries later in the chapter. I often change lines because earlier writing contradicts something I want to say later in the chapter, or use the chance of the reread to change words/restructure sentences. 

When I get lost, I make character motive charts. Like, I write down each character’s name, and I come up with a list of what each person’s motive is. I then try to come up with a definitive action each person can take to accomplish their goals. Hopefully at least some of these characters will be in conflict. 

Whenever I get to a major inflection point in the story, like, whenever I am about to drop a major plot reveal or change the course of events in some way, I do a major reread-- I reread my whole fic start to finish and use the notes app to copy and paste any paragraphs that are important (from my view as the writer) into a note so that I can keep track. This could include any paragraphs with foreshadowing, plot threads that have not been tied up, characterization notes I’ve forgotten about... anything at all that will help me wrap up anything I may have forgotten about. 

For that matter, the notes app on my phone is also where I punch in anything that occurs to me in the middle of the night or when I’m at work, running errands, etc. 

I basically repeat this process, until I find myself at the end. 

Long story short: It’s all about the outline!

54. Any writing advice you want to share? 

Find your best time to write and take advantage-- when do you feel most mentally alert? when do you feel most inspired? for me it’s early in the morning-- I could potentially write 7 days a week if I wrote at night, but I find I can get a ton more done in 2-4 days of 1 or 2 hours of focused writing than I could blearily staring at my screen. So, even if your BEST window is only available a couple of days a week, that is still a HUGELY productive window of time that will lead to good things!

Outline. As mentioned above. 

If you only write one sentence today, you’ve done the hardest thing: you’ve written. One sentence as often as possible will eventually make it easier to write two sentences as often as possible, and so on. 

Writing is a continuous act of self-improvement. I try not to worry about revising my work too much after I’ve hit publish, instead recognizing that there are fics easily accessible on the internet that I wrote when I was sixteen and yes they are highkey embarrassing but they’re also kind of a badge of honor because wow, I’ve gone from struggling to write a short 2,000 word story to working on an epic length novel. And what people say is true: it is an agonizing process to hit publish, full of self-doubt and hand-wringing (I cannot tell you how often FE has made me NERVOUS because of the content), but the beautiful thing about writing is that when you put it out into the world, you’re giving it over as a gift for everyone else. So, try to let yourself just write as much as possible. 

Be honest in your writing. Go ahead and squash that little voice in your head telling you to hold back on the emotions, to be more solemn, more restrained. So long as you write your heart, it will be true, and there will be people who will connect with the writing because of that.