#sicktemberposting 2023

[ethereousdelirious]

4 prompts left on Sicktember and I'm running out of steam 😭😭😭

Hesitantly taking character/pairing suggestions for prompts 27-29 if you got em

For reference:

27. Uncooperative patient

28. "I should have stayed home"

29. Side effects/adverse reaction

Or you know. If anyone wants to be a superhero and hand me 3 extremely detailed fic plots on a silver platter 🙈🥴

[ethereousdelirious]

*bonking myself with a stick* self indulgent means self INDULGENT if you want to write all your Sicktember fills about a blorbo nobody else cares about YOU! ARE! ALLOWED! stop making up fake rules for yourself

[ethereousdelirious]

Sicktember check-in bc I feel like it

I'm on a "fever + some other vague symptoms" kick rn

Glasses count: 5/8

[ethereousdelirious]

*bleary-eyed, over-caffeinated, burnt-out mess* I'm a sickma they/them on my grindset. is that anything.

[ethereousdelirious]

*stumbles out of the Google Doc covered in blood* First Sicktember prompt complete

[ethereousdelirious]

This year my Sicktember birthday prompt is "hiding an illness" (prompt #4)

This is generally one of my least-favorite tropes but I already assigned all the alts to other days so *cracks knuckles*

I'm gonna find a way to make this the most self-indulgent fill EVER

[ethereousdelirious]

I'm gonna have the most self-indulgent Sicktember EVER

[ethereousdelirious]

God okay so I've been trying to write a sort of 'personal reflections of Sicktember' type post because i do sort of view writing as my primary chosen craft and I would like to keep improving at it but I keep not having time but I think I have time now

(Nobody has to read this lmao it's not necessarily "for" something)

So I've tried to participate in a few month-long community writing challenges over the years (Sicktember, Whumptober, Emetovember) and for the most part. Okay I'm trying to avoid the word "failed" because that implies there's a right and wrong way to participate, but uh. I guess quit? I failed to meet my own expectations.

Okay, wait.

I'm a completionist. That is the manner of participation in these events that is fun for me. So if I make another reference to "failing," I mean I failed to complete the challenge in my preferred way.

So yeah anyway I repeatedly failed these challenges. And Sicktember 2023 is the first year I was able to identify why I failed, remedy it, and succeed. (Though it is worth noting that I did complete Whumptober 2019, which was my first attempt at a challenge. We'll get to that.)

Let me chalk it up to 3 interconnected factors: Burnout, Skill Issues, Adverse Events

Burnout

On the surface, it seems simple. Read the prompt, get an idea, write a fill.

Yeah, it's not that simple.

For the longest time, I would just pursue the first idea that popped into my head, regardless of whether I would actually enjoy writing the fill. I would write for fandoms I wasn't really feeling at the moment because I thought they fit the best, forcing my ADHD brain through boring torture for no reward because "oh, but I used to like this thing and it just fits so well."

So when I finished, I would get no dopamine reward. Plus, my challenge fills have historically garnered very little attention (which is fine; I'm not entitled to that), which means that I also received no external reward.

The result is a string of short, dry, passionless fills that no one rightly should want to read. Why would anyone want to read something that I didn't want to write?

And that, my friends, is a recipe for burnout. So obviously I would get discouraged and quit.

That's why my Sicktember 2023 fills are so often repetitive. I forced myself to stick with the thing I really wanted to write even if i felt like I "should" have been writing something else.

Although I have to say, I did start running into problems at the end end where I started getting bored with my own self-indulgence, so I'll have to find a way to counter that next year.

Of course, being unable to write something to your own satisfaction is also a......

Skill Issue

I recently learned that the nebulous concept of "creativity" is a trainable skill. In fact, over Sicktember 2023, I honed my ability to come up with a tiny plot, creating a formula to help me come up with fills. These ideas can come in any order, but the idea is to identify a character, a want, and an illness/obstacle. All the fills I like use this formula and most of the fills I hate do not.

Incidentally, I think that coming up with a different obstacle or changing the way a character's illness impedes them is the key to writing the legendary "slowburn sickfic with plot," but that's a pursuit for another day.

Anyway, yeah, part of the reason I had to be so dependent on the first idea that popped into my head was because I didn't have the skills needed to develop a story.

If the prompt was "stitches" and the first thing that popped into my head was for a fic where Thor has to do field medicine on Loki, that's what I would write. Never mind the fact that I haven't cared about the MCU since 2012. Even though I'm really feeling Ace Attorney right now, past!me lacked the ability (or honestly, the confidence in my abilities) to develop a plot I would have actually cared about.

Also, because I was nervous about my ability to meet the challenge deadlines, I would focus on writing as quickly as possible, leading me to trip up in the face of...

Adverse Events

I don't know if this is confirmation bias or what, but something heinous always happens to me when I'm prepping for a writing challenge. It's been a variety of things over the years, each one legitimately upsetting and sometimes actually clinically traumatic.

Not to mention all the mundane stuff like trips, hangouts, parties, etc. I'm hyperactive and ambiverted, I have a bustling social life and a full schedule.

Regardless, if I missed a few days of writing, I would spiral. That was it, I was too far behind, I was never gonna make it, I should just give up.

Combine that with burnout as well and I really had no good reason to push through. Why should I grind on a project that wasn't even fun in the first place?

Something world-shatteringly horrible happened to me this Sicktember (being vague because it's still really hard to think about), and I did take a few days off because I was a traumatized mess-- crying, flashbacks, dissociation, the whole shebang.

And then, the craziest thing happened. After letting myself off the hook and taking care of myself, I regained some stability and wanted to come back.

So I did, and I just kept chugging away at the prompts. And I finished despite the setback!

Conclusion

I dealt with all the above shit and, for the first time ever, managed to complete a challenge to my satisfaction!

There are fills I'm less fond of based on prompts I don't really care for, but that's the nature of a challenge. I'm not ashamed of anything I wrote (unlike my past Whumptober fills *shudders* Those were all aggressively mediocre at best).

I'm happy! I enjoyed this challenge and I'm excited to take a crack at Whumptober.

[ethereousdelirious]

Thank you Sicktember for finally giving me the strength to finish this unrequited Fra.drian piece I've been working on 🙏🏼

[ethereousdelirious]

*staggers out of the post editor covered in blood* just queued 3 Sicktember fics

[ethereousdelirious]

Slightly longer Sicktemberposting:

I'm almost done! I'm thinking of it in phases and my goal was to finish Phase 2, but since I no longer have my phone to distract me at work (which is where I usually write), I might end up at Phase 3 or 4

Phase 1: Write a 1k minimum fill for 30 prompts, using the alts as desired

(I have 2 fills left and I'll be done with this phase)

Phase 2: Develop fills into longer stories

Phase 3: Write 1k minimum fills for the prompts I initially used alts on

Phase 4: Develop these fills into longer stories

Bc my phone is gone, I've been writing on an old iPhone that can connect to the internet but can't load any social media sites, Gmail, or Drive. I've been writing in the Notes app, then uploading my work to AO3, saving as draft, logging in on my laptop, and copy/pasting it into my Drive. Fic writers make do!

[ethereousdelirious]

I'm going thru a serious "stern, haughty character getting babied & treated like an actual child" phase

BUT NOT IN AN A.GE RE.GRESSION WAY (YKINMKATO)

[ethereousdelirious]

I swear something traumatic always happens to me while I'm working on Sicktember prompts and throws me off my schedule 😭 But I'm back at it after an 8-day hiatus, ready to keep trying!

My goal is to write a 1k minimum oneshot for each prompt, using the alternates as desired. It's actually still going well so far! I'm almost halfway through and I'm pretty happy with everything I've written

[ethereousdelirious]

Okay I kind of got bored being self-indulgent 🙈 No guarantees, but if anyone has any characters/ships they'd wanna see show up in my Sicktember fills, ask box is open

[ethereousdelirious]

Preliminary Sicktember Roundup

AKA I felt like sharing little teasers for my fills now that I have something written for each one:

*stars indicate fics that feature any amount of vomiting*

1. Hopelessly Bad at Self-Care: Ephem\eralArtShipping, sick Bra\ssius

2. Alt. I Could Really Use a Hug Right About Now”: Snaz\zyShipping, sick Luc\ian*

3. “What happened to your phenomenal immune system, huh?”: Sacr\edShipping, sick Eu\sine

4. Hiding an Illness: (my birthday!) SnazzyShi\pping, sick Luci\an*

5. Preventative Measures (Not Taken): no ship, sick Kun\ikida

6. Sick and Injured: no ship, sick Sigma

7. “You’re a Jerk When You’re Sick”: no ship, sick William T Spears

8. Persistent Fever: no ship, sick Molayne

9. Alt. Fuzzy Socks: no ship, sick Kunikida

10. “The only place we’re going is to the pharmacy”: Franmaya, sick Franziska

11. Alt. Pounding Headache: no ship, sick Lucian*

12. Home Remedy/Old Wives Tale: PleinAirShipping, sick Brassius

13. Anxious Stomach: no ship, sick Sigma*

14. ‘‘I shouldn’t be worried about you, but for some reason I am’’: no ship, sick Johannes Cabal

15. Sick in an Inconvenient Place: no ship, sick Ango

16. Consulting the Internet/Web MD: no ship, sick Remus/Dark Creativity

17. Alt. Forehead Kisses: one-sided Valant/Thalassa, sick Valant Gramarye

18. “Wear Your Coat, You’ll Catch a Cold”: Krisnix, sick Kristoph Gavin

19. Curled Up With a Pet: Klapollo, sick Klavier Gavin

20. Cramping Pain: Krisnix, sick Kristoph Gavin*

21. “But if you stay, you’ll get sick too”: one-sided Fradrian, sick Adrian Andrews

22. Terms of Endearment/Nicknames: Geeta x Diantha, sick Geeta

23. Coughing Fit: SnazzyShipping, sick Lucian

24. “Did you just sneeze?”: no ship, sick Kristoph Gavin

25. Confused/Disoriented: Grelliam, sick William T Spears

26. Alt. "I'm so sorry": SnazzyShipping, sick Lucian

27. Uncooperative Patient: mentioned Franmaya, sick Franziska

28. “I should have stayed home”: OriginShipping, sick Wallace*

29. Side Effects/Adverse Reaction: IgnitionShipping, sick Volkner

30. Patient 0: no ship, sick Paldea League (Poppy is only mentioned)

Final Glasses Count: 15/30 (16 if you count me giving glasses to a character who canonically does not wear them)

Unluckiest Blorbo: Lucian, with 5 fics

Top Fandom: Pokemon, with 12 fics

Emeto Mentions: 6

[ethereousdelirious]

Hit prompt 7 and promptly (hehe) blanked out on every character, trope, and ship I have ever loved. What do you mean i've already written about 6 discrete characters no I haven't. Faves who? I have no Blorbos.