#this is the best writing process i've ever had for a novel in terms of balancing my needs + getting the results i want so YAY!!!!!!

[dallonwrites]

i love not counting word count literally only just found out that lover boy is past 10k. just a fun thursday night revelation

[deputyrook]

2024 Writing Round-Up

Thanks @soupandsorcery for tagging me!

Tagging: @ex0rin @the-darklings @glitteringdust @darethshirl @gastlygallows @brightaxe @envysnest @fenharael and anyone else who would like to!

words posted: 29,066 on A03 | 3508 misc. on tumblr | 9601 on pythium (some of that is coding, though, so I'm going to count ~7000)

additional words written: 8439

grand total of words: 48,013 (slower year, most of this was written in the last few months- I blame crazy work burnout and recovery)

fandoms: dragon age, rogue trader, saw, bg3, original fiction

highest kudos: 837 on Playing Cards (!!!)

highest hit oneshot: Same fic, Playing Cards, with 5984

new things I tried: Besides learning how to code an interactive fiction game (which has been a fun challenge), I also experimented more with writing in different perspectives.

fic I spent the most time on: I think probably Alliance of Three, I worked on it off and on for a week and then two days straight (20+ hours for sure.)

fic I spent the least time on: I banged out In Her Absence in around 2 hours.

favourite thing I wrote: Either of these drabbles: Chocolate/Kitchen Fluff, or Alliance of Three, though I think Mala Suledin Nadas is the best thing I wrote.

favourite thing(s) I read: In terms of novels/novellas, some of my favourites this year were Blood Standard by Laird Barron; The Murderbot Series by Martha Wells; Thrum by Meg Smitherman; and I've been loving Kushiel's Dart but I'm only 25% of the way through.

Favourite fics this year include (mind the warnings):

River Rushing Through My Veins - LunarLich/ @nerendus

I've read this fic like at least once a month since it was posted. One of those rare fics that hits every note perfectly for me specifically, on top of being gorgeously written.

the hand you deal & pray for rain - mafalda_157/ @darethshirl

Absolutely stunning command of language- and the characterization work that gets done through the prose! Not a sentence is wasted. Also, so hot?

How the Game is Played (series) - TheEvilScribbler

This series had my jaw on the floor. Not just from how brilliantly it's written and how wonderfully in-character everyone is, but from the places the fic is willing to go. Truly, I was gagged.

To Tame a Wild Yakboy - BeeKazoo

In contrast to some of my other favs, this fic is just incredibly wholesome, and was a lovely read. It takes the bones of the good romance story from the game, and makes it a great romance story.

Uccellino - 2Wardens1Blight/ @2wardens1blight

This fic is exactly what I wanted to read after finishing Veilguard. I've read it a few times, and it's made me cry each times. It just brings me a lot of happiness to read.

Pity the Mayfly- envysnest/ @envysnest

Speaking of fics with unbelievably good character writing. The Tav in this fic is one of my favourites that I've ever read. She's a likeable, relatable protagonist, and both she and all of the companions are written with depth and a particularly strong character voice.

Inferior- Anonymous

I would be remiss if I didn't mention this mysterious little fic, which was deleted two days after I bookmarked it. I somehow found it again via Wayback Machine (and saved a copy). The dirty talk in this fic... woof. I'm taking notes.

Finally, everything I've reblogged in my fic-rec tag. I've saved many incredible fics and drabbles there. In addition to those I've mentioned, some of my favourite dragon age writers right now include (in no particular order) @glitteringdust, @writerfromshikahr, @soupandsorcery @ode-to-fury and a number of others!

writing goals for 2025: Definitely to both read and write more in general! I would love to really concentrate on writing this year, both more fanfiction and original fiction. It's something that fell a bit by the wayside this year, and rediscovering how much I enjoy writing has been a really fun process (now that I'm not being crushed by crippling work stress and burnout).

new works: Alliance of Three for my most recent full-length fic; this little Illario/Rook drabble; this fluffy drabble about Lucanis and Rook cooking.

There are so many inspiring fic writers out there whose work I enjoyed this year ♥ There was no way I could include every fic that left an impact on me. But thank you!!!

[intheorangebedroom]

Hi Maddie! I hope you are having a wonderful September and you are enjoying the start of autumn. This might sound obsessed or weird, but PTMY and TYBTM are seriously some of my favorite things I've ever read... ever, like I'm putting it up there with novels I've read. It is insane to me how much talent there is in this fandom. Like the Pedro girlies are literal authors, putting out works of art. For me, you are the best of the best! Obviously, both stories have me very hot and bothered lol, but it's just the way you write intimacy and relationships, the peculiarities of your characters and the world's they inhabit so brilliantly, beautifully. I'm sure you know that at times you write like it is poetry! It is so immersive and I love it deeply. My question (apologies in advance) is about writing. I was wondering if you have any tips on (a) how you have improved as a writer, like in terms of how you've been to find your style? (b) how to overcome perfectionism? I've been wanting to take a crack at some Frankie ideas I've had, but I get so weighed down by self doubt and inertia. And also, I worry it's just not original enough. Okay, sorry for the rant! I will never be as good as you OBVIOUSLY lol, but for you I am grateful. I'm so excited for the next part of TYBTM and sad we are almost halfway to the end. I'm so excited for whatever you have in store for the future. Sending you so much love and hope you're having a great day.

Hey Nonnie 🧡

I apologise in advance for the length of this answer. 

Your kindness, your generosity and your time mean everything to me. I’m the worst at expressing gratitude when I’m paid a compliment. "Compliment" doesn't cut it to qualify what you said about my stories, it’s too much, it’s so incredibly kind. You made me so soft but also so much stronger. Thank you 🧡 My first impulse upon reading your message was to throw away my phone and scream I’VE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK I’M DOING but I owe it to you to at least try to answer you. Also do you need some blood? A kidney? I have two. You name it it's yours.

I would like to start with the second part of your question, if you don’t mind. 

I have never ever thought any given piece I wrote to be perfect. At best, I think it’s not that bad, but that’s when I read it again a month after posting, because at the time I post it, it’s more like omfg if I read that shit one more time I’m gonna stab myself in the eye.” 

But life is too short for perfectionism. I’m sorry to be speaking like an old fart, but it is. You blink and it’s over. If you have a milligram of creativity in you, do not hesitate. Channel it. Create what you want, what you like. I’m serious. DO IT. Enjoy doing it. 

Self-doubt is a fucking bag of dicks. I’m riddled with it. In every corner of my existence. Every step of the way. Every word I type (not in my mother tongue…). How many times have I wanted to give up, especially during PTMY. The current tybtm chapter has fucking killed me dead. I hate it. It’s not good. Bad. But I’m forty fucking five years old and I’ll be damned if I let self-doubt and fear prevent me from achieving what I set out to do.

When I came back to tumblr in 2020, I saw numerous posts saying “you write for yourself first,” and I did not really understand what they meant. It’s nice to have an audience! It’s nice to be liked and validated! It’s nice to connect with people over something you’ve created. Musicians play live, and get a hell of a kick out of it, right? Why not us, writers? And one day, I think at the beginning of tybtm, it hit me. I understood. Fuck yeah I’m doing this for me. Because I need it. I need to tell this story. I need the satisfaction of having done it. The entire process makes me both incandescently happy and abysmally miserable, and you know what? That’s the fucking spice of life. I want both. I am alive when I write. Through the pleasure and the pain. So if you need it too, well, go for it. Don't let anyone, including you, tell you you're not good enough. Got for it.

There are 99% of chances that what you’re gonna write has already been written. So what? It hasn’t been written by you. No one sees people, life, or Frankie the way you do. Even if you write an age-old trope, even if you write the same trope over and over again in every story (me!), you’ll still bring your own precious singularity to the story, the characters, and the narration. That’s worth EVERYTHING. Please trust me. Maybe no one will like it. Maybe every one will like it. Whatever. At the end of the day, you still did what you set your heart on. I cannot stress enough how important this is. Carpe diem, baby.

Then, how did I improve as a writer, oh Nonnie, I’ve no idea. I don’t think I’m any good. I don’t think I am legitimate to give you any advice. 49.5% of the time, I think I’m too much (too gothic, too lyrical, too big with the feelings and emotions). 49.5% of the time, I think I’m not enough (not precise, concise, clear, good enough). But alright, I’ll try. For you. But please bear in mind I say all this in the most humble spirit.  

I write. All the time. In my head, in the shower, walking in the street, driving, aaaaaall the time. And then I type it down in a doc. And edit it and revise it again and again and again, until it feels smoother and/or I want to puke at the thought of having to go through it again. 

I try to take my time without panicking. If I’m stuck or in a bad mental place, I try to let it rest a bit.

My first year at uni, I studied screenplay writing. I would be unable to tell you precisely what I learned, but I think some of it is ingrained? In terms of conveying intentions through actions and dialogues (I know I tend to write pages and pages of introspection, and I swear I try to restrain myself, even if it doesn’t always translate to the doc).

Then, I’m an art vampire. I soak up everything I can, especially painting, music, and movies. I let it inspire me. I take notes on my feelings, fleeting emotions that I can’t articulate at first, and reflect and work on them until they become fully formed ideas I can inject in the writing. 

I read. A lot. And sometimes not at all when it feeds the self-doubt (comparison, you bitch!). I wait until I feel better, stronger. It may take time. 

With books/fanfics and movies, I analyse the narrative process employed. What I liked or disliked, what moved me, what didn’t. I take notes. To that effect, you can read reblogs of your favourite fics! Sometimes people reblog with some pretty neat analyses, just soak it up!

My obsession is finding the Right Word. I can spend days on the quest. A thesaurus helps. And sometimes it doesn’t. I also read my stuff out loud, because I like when it has a certain rhythm. And when the meaning of a sentence doesn’t work in a rhythm, I rework it tirelessly until it does. Fun times... 

I want to say that if you take the leap and start writing, after a while, you will feel instinctually what works for you. What feels right in terms of personal style. Maybe at the beginning you'll subconsciously write like someone else, but with practice and patience, your style will come out. If you need someone to cheer you on, I'm here.

Oh yeah because, very important, I whine to the very good angel friends in my phone whenever I’m stuck (they will recognise themselves if they read this)(okay they are @dreamymyrrh and @pedrit0-pascalit0). I forfeit all dignity and beg them for virtual hugs. I don't know what I did to deserve them.

And lastly, I have been privileged to witness the genius of Kelli ( @frannyzooey ) in the works and wow. She's it for me. Everything she writes resonates with me, so I just soak. it. up.  

So yeah. to sum it up: carpe diem and be a vampire 🦇

Hope that helps 🧡

I’m also gonna leave that here: 

Claire ( @just-here-for-the-moment ) is one of the best people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet here. She’s patient, sweet, kind, and SO FUCKING SMART. Don't be afraid to reach out.

Nonnie, again, I'm so sorry this is so long. I sincerely hope you'll find something useful in all this gibberish. If not, come back to my ask box with any question. And again, thank you 🧡 From the bottom of my broken vampire heart, thank you 🧡

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I've just finished Heart of The World and it was delightful! Frank the vampire minion and that mystery of his missing boss forever going unanswered is truly a tragedy.

I've not looked at any Lily and Sisyphus stuff but gathered Ilyn originated from Snape at some point in the development process. I truly enjoyed the "They put him in charge of children!?" realisation, but what had you decide he was going to be notorious as a warlord primarily for blowing things up with fire? Ilyn's hilarious retrieval mission blowing up cars, setting a house on fire, abducting a child and then not commenting on the most convenient portal you've ever seen form works brilliantly naturally, but when did you know that was the direction you were going?

Your remarkably nuanced handling of the very fraught political tensions among factions was very cool to see. It ends up making you feel bad for essentially everyone in some capacity (maybe not Questburger, he seemed like he was doing quite well for himself).

The Heart of the World (by me!) @janedoewrites

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! Really, this is very high praise indeed and I'm not only flattered but very glad to hear that I did what I set out to do successfully. (And yes, Questburger's done great for himself, at least so far.)

And that's a very interesting question.

So, Ilyn obviously started as a Snape counterpoint, same as Elizabeth is clearly what Hermione was, Theyn is clearly some mix of Dead Last and Neville, so on and so forth but he deviated in a large way very early/had that personality when he got introduced as a character in the first draft.

I don't think there was ever a draft where he hadn't set Lily's house on fire for no reason and was always this very taciturn/stoic/least talkative person you can ever find. @therealvinelle who helped with a lot of the editing maybe remembers better than I do but I think his characterization was set very early and the big surprise for me writing when it worked out and for her on editing is that he and Lily end the novel on very good terms.

I actually don't think characters changed that much in general between drafts. They changed a lot from the fic and in the outline for obvious reasons, the primary one being that they had different backgrounds now, different roles in the story, and that would inform who they were as people and how they best served the story but once they were decided on early in, they didn't change much in terms of personality. They've been very stable. The one who changed the most in a nitpicky manner was Lily herself who was made more... noble I suppose is the word for it in part of things happening or not happening to her in her youth, and being with the Tylors who are just absent versus the Dursleys who are present and awful. A lot of things about her and her lines changed between drafts and it took a bit to settle on just what her personality would be like with these changed circumstances and events.

But yeah, Ilyn's pretty much always been Ilyn, which is great because I love him and other people better like him because he's not going away any time soon.

[badbatchposts]

🎱 🍓 🌵🔪🪲. I reblogged the ask game from you, so I wanted to be courteous and send you an ask! I'm honestly curious about these.

Thanks for the ask, friend! It's really nice to be able to reflect on some of these things!! Sorry in advance for the super long responses lol.

🎱 ⇢ post your AO3 total stats:

Works: 2

User Subscriptions: 6

Kudos: 204

Comment Threads: 84

Bookmarks: 67

Subscriptions: 51

Word Count: 67,351

Hits: 4,652

I honestly have no sense of how these stats compare for the usual fanfic writer, but it makes me happy to see how many people have subscribed to my longfic, especially since I don't always get a ton of comments on new chapters. But it seems people are reading! And definitely more people than read my dissertation, lol.

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 

I used to write a lot of original work in high school and early college, but then as things got busy--and as I convinced myself my writing wasn't good enough to be worth it--I largely stopped. I always felt guilty about it. I really enjoyed writing, but didn't think I was creative enough or had the right amount of stamina that it took to complete a long work, and I had this perfectionist idea where it felt like it wasn't worth doing if I couldn't be the best at it.

Then right as the new Bad Batch season came out this year I was struggling a lot with burnout and found that I was spending a lot of time thinking about the show, and decided that I might as well start reading some fanfiction--for the first time ever--and felt like writing it would be a nice creative outlet that might help me recover from my burnout. It really has been great, and some of what's made it so good is actually exactly the sort of things that used to make me think writing fanfiction wasn't worth it. Namely: it's not professionally publishable.

That is, legally, I will never be able to professionally publish and profit from any of what I write--it can only be posted and enjoyed. This actually just took so much of the pressure off. It doesn't have to be perfect--it doesn't even have to be very good, because that's not what it's for.

I started thinking of it more as an exercise for working on my writing skills (things like, okay, in this chapter I'm going to practice writing dialogue, or in this next one I'm going to work more on establishing an interesting setting). As a result, I'm now thinking more about the writing process and improving my storytelling, rather than worrying about trying to make it perfect or good enough to publish or feeling competitive or down on myself when I encounter writing that I feel is much better than my own. It's been really freeing.

All of this happened over ten years since I stopped writing in college, and the other great thing has been seeing that my writing skills didn't disappear. In fact, they've gotten better and grown as a result of the learning I did in the meantime. I'm now much better at envisioning narrative arcs, outlining, getting myself to write consistently instead of just waiting for inspiration to strike me, and a whole load of other skills. It's really helped soothe a part of me that worried that I had abandoned writing, that it was too late for me to "do" anything with it, or that I only would have gotten worse.

🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love

Parasailing in Rio de Janeiro with a Caipirinha in Your Hand

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I've been spending a lot of time researching historical kitchens on sailing ships and historical brothels for the Pirate AU that I'm working on. Once for an academic paper I was working on a novel that depicts a (non-sexual) human-animal relationship but through very intimate and erotic terms, and I accidentally googled a combination of terms that came back with information on bestiality while on my university's wi-fi.

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

The most recent thing I wrote for my Pirate AU (I'm skipping ahead SEVERAL chapters to inspire myself with the steamy bits haha)

“I hardly think I can get into much trouble here. Your crew have been perfect gentlemen.”

Hunter’s eyes glinted in the half-light of the lamps. Though he didn’t move, all of a sudden she was all-too-aware of how close he was, how easy it would be for him to reach out and touch her. “And what about me?” he murmured. “Haven’t you heard from the ladies in port? I’m a scoundrel. A very dangerous man. Maybe you ought to be afraid of me.”

Thanks again, this was a lot of fun!!

[goodluckclove]

Things You Might Want to Know

So I recently realized that I spend most of my time here talking and forming relationships with young creatives, and that might look weird in a vacuum. Especially since it's something I plan to continue doing along with all my other machinations.

So I thought I'd give some information about myself all in one place. It's more than I might need to give, but it might put someone at ease.

My name is Clover Gardener, and I'm in my late 20s. I am an Agender individual in an asexual marriage and I'm in the process of medically transitioning. Currently I work as an author, but I have experience in technical writing, ghostwriting, social media management, food service and administrative work. Oh and theater. I worked backstage for some community theater productions. These are all like Employment Jobs I've Had to Include On My Taxes, but I've also done more short term gig work/weird jobs that didn't work out. I dropped out of college.

At 16 my first one-act play was produced. I proceeded to form a small youth theater troupe just out of high school where I wrote, directed, and produced three full length plays at festivals and other venues. I also took a play I wrote at like 19 and got invited to a reading at the Last Frontier Theater Festival in Valdez, Alaska a year later.

In regards to writing, I completed my first novel when I was 13 after only making it through a fifth of NaNoWriMo the year before. I've completed 11-14 novels since then. I honestly can't really remember at this point. Only maybe four of them left the first draft stage. One novel, Blind Trust, is self-published online. I also have a few short stories available in online literary journals. At one point I had an arts column on a small culture website but they're harder to find now.

I have taken three writing classes at varying points in my life and didn't find them helpful other than as an opportunity to keep practicing writing and maybe get some good feedback.

In terms of interacting with young people, there was actually a six year period of my life that was primarily dedicated to youth mentorship and advocacy - specifically for queer, neurodivergent, and abused youth, a lot of whom were passionate about the arts. I was way less stable enough to do it then compared to now, but I tried my very best. Supporting young artists and queer youth has been an intense passion for mine since I was 14.

It's my ultimate dream in life to form some sort of youth empowerment program in the arts, or at least a writing program where everyone is respected regardless of age or experience. I'm kind of working towards making that happen. I just want to see how accessible I can make it as opposed to doing something just within my city.

Anywho, those are my general qualifications for talking to teens about writing and creativity. I also have a full history of trauma and disability, but this seems slightly less important to talk about here.

I will say though that if you are a person, of any age frankly, who is ever looking to compare notes or seek support or guidance on anything mentioned above, my DMs are always open. You can also email me at luckyclovegardener@gmail.com if you'd like. I like getting emails and I would love to gain new perspectives.

[hms-no-fun]

do you have any advice for getting better at writing? More specifically, any books, lectures, or talks about writing that you would recommend?

i know i'm not gonna be able to give a super satisfying answer here because i don't really read/watch much on the topic of getting better at writing. the most important book in my early development as a writer was Stephen King's On Writing, which does a very good job distilling the essence of the job to certain tools in a toolkit and helped me come to terms with how disposable a lot of my writing is. i recently picked up Steering the Craft by Ursula K Leguin, because i read Left Hand of Darkness for the first time and it rewired my brain. i haven't spent much time with it because it's meant to be an exercise book that you write along with, but i feel it will be useful.

otherwise, i know from experience and from the mouths of many other writers that the only way to get better at writing is to write more. a big part of my early development came from a desire to always push myself with each project. if i detected a weakness in one story, i wanted my next thing to be about that weakness in some way. i pushed myself to write more dialect, to switch tenses and persons, to go out of my comfort zone and write from the perspective of (GASP) a woman. things of this nature. much of what resulted from those exercises was not particularly good, but that's not really the point. you do the best you can in the moment, but never let yourself feel wholly satisfied. there are always improvements to be made, new ideas to explore, more diverse modes of expression to play with.

i'd say the best thing you can do when looking for writing advice is to look to the writers whose stuff you like. i guarantee anyone who's been published will have a talk available on youtube somewhere. in the past i've gone ga-ga for the lectures of Neil Gaiman and China Mieville, because i like their books and wanted to know how that sausage got made. understanding other people's process is a good way to understand your own. pay attention to things you identify with, but pay especial attention to the things you feel a natural disagreement with. a procedural thing, say, that just doesn't make sense to you. a BIG part of becoming a better writer, in the "maintaining a self-confidence equilibrium" sense, is recognizing what parts of the process are yours. whatever it is the comes naturally to you, that draws you in, you'll invariably have strong opinions about that someone in some writing institution or other would tut-tut at. i find it's very difficult to really take something worthwhile from criticism unless you know what you're about on some level. i have a pretty good sense at this point of my strengths and weaknesses as a writer; i know the difference between a qualitative misstep and a choice that won't resonate with every reader.

it helps if you can find some like-minded people to write with in a low-stakes environment. or maybe not low-stakes! the only read i ever finished my first novel was because i was writing towards a contest deadline. deadlines can be good! but sharing stories around with some friends and giving each other feedback is a great way to build up some confidence. collaborating on a shared world or story can be immensely rewarding, as long as you don't go into it expecting to make money or get famous. don't put pressure on yourself to Make A Real Thing On A Schedule unless you really trust the people you're working with and have had a lot of conversations about professional conduct.

but otherwise, it all comes back to write more. don't be afraid to leave a graveyard behind you of countless unfinished works. the vast majority of things i started writing from when i was 14 to like 25 i never finished, then i finished a book and almost never wrote again. it's all part of the process, and it's not linear or obvious in any meaningful way. the trickiest part, for me, is learning how to write for your current project even when you don't feel the ~passion~ and ~inspiration~. and that's just a matter of time and honesty and elbow grease.

all any writer can ever tell you is how *they* write. they can give you signposts and guides and best practices, but ultimately no one will ever be able to teach *you* how to write for *yourself*. that only comes with practice. but it's doable and very worth the doing, in my opinion

[nanowrimo]

Back to School: Interview with Sarah Lile, Young Writers Program Educator

NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program helps over 85,000 kids, teens, teachers, and families set creative goals and tell stories they care about. We asked some of our amazing YWP educators to share how they take on the NaNoWriMo challenge in their classroom. Today’s advice comes from Sarah, a middle school ELA teacher in Richmond, Virginia.

Q: What grade/ age level do you work with? What type of NaNoWriMo group is it (whole class, club, homeschool, elective, etc.)?

A: Whole classes, grades 6-8

Q: How long have you been doing NaNoWriMo with your students?

A: Since 2019

Q: How do you structure the entire project (for example, do you start prepping in October and write in November, do you have kids work on it all year, etc.)?

A: We don't do much prep and I always regret it. Students use class time to write throughout November. Some students already have an idea of what they'd like to write, others are pantsers like me!

Q: What does a normal NaNoWriMo day look like for your students?

A: Arrive to class and settle in, open laptops and begin feverishly typing!

Q: How do you set and manage word-count goals?

A: I allow students to set their own goals, though I've started to require no less than 7,000 words.

Q: How do you manage grading? Do you grade?

A: I ask students to submit an excerpt of their novel each week and post them on the wall in the classroom. This helps with accountability and sharing.

Q: How do you approach revision/ publishing (if at all)?

A: I don't grade their novels, instead they revise an excerpt for a grade and a public reading.

Q: Any NaNoWriMo tips or tricks to share with other educators? Hard-won lessons? Ah-ha moments?

A: Every year I wish we had done more prep.

It's more fun when I write WITH them.

Students really like it when I read their work, so the excerpts are key.

My writers always hit a wall at some point, but I trust the process (and tell them to just keep typing) and the NaNoWriMo tools and they always get through it! They are natural-born storytellers.

Q: Have you ever run into resistance from your administration about doing NaNoWriMo, and if so, how did you manage it? What do you say to people who don’t see the point of having students write novels? 

A: Thankfully, no. I do send the Common Core standards to parents and admin so they see how this aligns.

Q: What are the most meaningful things you or your students take away from the project? What's your best NaNoWriMo memory?

A: That they CAN DO IT! The first class that participated set their own goals and wrote feverishly every class period and during the weekends. One student was out of town for the last couple days, sick in a hotel bed, and stayed up to meet her goal. Her parents were absolutely amazed at her commitment.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add?

A: In order for this to really work, students need to write everyday. It's hard to keep momentum over weekends and especially over a week-long Thanksgiving break. I'd love advice on how to keep students writing at these times—maybe set short term word count goals?

Sarah is a middle school ELA teacher at Sabot School in Richmond, Virginia, a progressive Reggio-Inspired school for children ages 2-14. She is a wife, mother, dog-mom, writer, food-lover, and amateur potter.

[victorianpining]

Rebs! writer ask game for you!! <3

1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 14, 25, 28, 32 (if you want), 34!

Thank you Emrys!

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

I go for something that looks "bookish," so my defaults are bookman old style, baskerville, or garamond. Vampire fic is currently being written in the Google font Spectral.

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

I have to be listening to music, either a playlist I am listening to to death so the words aren't distracting to me, or music without lyrics that matches the vibe. I always hope my session will start with me feeling really inspired but that almost never happens so I guess that's where the cursed part comes in. When I am having an absolutely awful time but know I need to get work done, I will break out my 20 sided die and roll it for how many minutes I have to focus before I get to take another break.

6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

My greatest fear is that my work will have some kind of fatal flaw in it that I am blind to while working on it but that I will feel like I should have been able to see in retrospect that will lead to people getting hurt. And yet I've decided to go on writing knowing that is a very real possibility (it's happened before).

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

When I'm in a writing session and it's one of those times when it's all falling into place effortlessly and I feel like I'm not even really me anymore, just a conduit for the words, and at the same time more like me than I ever do the entire rest of my life, like that's what I'm always meant to be doing.

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

For me, it's an idea that lingers in my head that I either can't quite make sense of, am not willing to come to terms with, or causes me some other kind of lasting sadness, something that feels unresolved to me, basically. I'm learning that the best way for me to become un-haunted is to reclaim those ideas and use them myself (though the story that comes out of that process can become a new ghost).

14. Do you lend your books to people? Are people scared to borrow books from you? Do you know exactly where all your “lost” books are and which specific friend from school you haven’t seen in twelve years still possesses them? Will you ever get them back?

This is an interesting question, and I think I have an easy out as a librarian, I'll be like "oh did you want to read that? Here I'll place it on ILL for you," but I hadn't realized until right now that no, I do not ever lend my books to people ghsahglhds. Listen they don't need to see all my unhinged notes.

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

My writing process works in a way that I don't usually *have* details that aren't relevant to the story, because it's so much work for me to come up with details I feel like they all have to have some additional utility. Even if I spend time on something that doesn't end up being mentioned, they still originally had a point I was trying to hint at with them. I really admire people who come up with all these backstory details just to flesh out the world!

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

Ooh, I feel like I can't really go in detail on that one, so I'll just say a minor character in the original story I'm still in the planning stages for is an absolute treat.

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

Oh, there are literally so many. I'm going to go with this part from the One Story interlude in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I could quote the entire chapter, but the ending is my favorite:

Stories are like that, too. That one story that has been going on forever is all around us. We- as readers or writers, tellers or listeners- understand each other, we share knowledge of the structures of our myths, we comprehend the logic of symbols., largely because we have access to the same swirl of story. We have only to reach out into the air and pluck a piece of it.

34. Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go:

It is small, elegant, and precise. But also, if someone doesn't write with them and it's still clear what they mean, who cares?

[lesbxdyke]

So today I got two new comments on fics of mine.

(related but neither of the fics listed have anything to do with sex of any type)

This is to do with something I've spoken about before.

Quite a few years ago at this point, I wrote a Clexa fic. Other than my novel, it remains the longest thing I ever finished. It was a story about abuse, about recovering from it. And I wrote it because I was struggling to come to terms with my own abusive relationship. It is, in my opinion, not my best written piece, in terms of technical skill, but it is one of my pieces most full of bits of my Soul. Because (as I often made the point of saying in the notes) it was a greatly greatly GREATLY scaled up version of what I had experienced to help me process through what had happened to me.

I made a decision in my writing to have the proxy character forgive the people that hurt her. Because, at the time, that had been what I was aiming for. I was aiming for forgiveness, because I believed that would help me move on. (I've long since changed track on that point, but as I said, this fic was quite a few years old)

I had always planned for, in the next chapter, there to be some violent revenge. Because I understand narrative payoff, and because part of ME still wanted that revenge.

But people didn't want to understand cliffhangers. And went on the attack. I was called a rape apologist, I was told I must have deserved what happened to me, I was told all manner of triggering things. I didn't want to finish after that. Luckily, I was able to see my therapist, who encouraged me to finish because writing it had become an important part of my healing. So I did.

And now, so many years later, someone has decided that it's not okay that I've moved on with my life, and has decided to try and decimate my self esteem a second time. And they almost did, Honestly. Because these messages came on the back of a family emergency and on the morning of some medical tests I was needing. Exactly the worst time, right?

I'm lucky, I guess, because I have people on side who have spent most of the day sending me messages of support.

I know that what this person wants is for me to stop writing. And they nearly got their wish. This morning, I was ready to never touch my keyboard again. But fuck them. Fuck EVERYONE that said those horrible things to me. I will keep writing, because I love doing it. And I will not let you make me afraid to get messages from AO3. Not again.

If you're following me and you think it's okay to leave comments like this for people because you disagree with what they've written or how they've written it, block me. Right the fuck now.

(also I've deleted both of these reviews. I don't need that shit staining my fics)

[ouyangzizhensdad]

I'm gonna go on a limb here and say something I've been thinking about. So, I watched cql before reading the novel, and when I first read mdzs I have to say I was a bit thrown off by the Phoenix Mountain kiss, so of course my first instinct was to come to this hellsite and try to find what other people thought of it. The more I looked into it, the more I was convinced that the reason so many people hate it so irrationally and why it is apparently so hard for some to analyse any possible meaning beyond the obvious things in that scene, is because people that were introduced to mdzs via cql often go into the novel trying to get some sort of "fandom experience".

What I mean is that people will read mxtx's work and expect to get the same gratification they get whenever they find a good fic. Something tailored to their taste and characters built upon the preconceived ideas (often fanon) they have of each of them. It's a problem I've noticed a lot with queer media reception by people who are active in fandom. It's one of the things I am critical of and why I am so adamant to join fandom discussions, because I feel like many fandoms have created spaces where the queer characters are made to be these perfect examples of representation, so whenever queer characters are allowed to be flawed and make bad decisions people often jump on the bandwagon of calling it problematic and homophobic, instead of putting some effort into reading further than what is in plain sight and being critical of the possible meaning behind the character's actions.

Sorry for the long ask, but I wanted to get this out of my system. Tried my best, but English is not my first language, so I'm sorry if anything is weird or hard to understand.

Hi anon, 

I think you are definitely unto something when you say: “people will read mxtx's work and expect to get the same gratification they get whenever they find a good fic. Something tailored to their taste and characters built upon the preconceived ideas (often fanon) they have of each of them.” It certainly would explain why so many people, even while aware that the series is an adaptation of the book, say stuff like “novel!LWJ is OOC”. They might have approached the novel as just the “fanfic” of CQL that includes “canon Wangxian”, without considering how much had been potentially changed through the process of adapting MDZS and making it palatable according to censorship.

I agree with you that the current state of fandom, where fic writers seem focused on avoiding being Problématique at all cost, has not only stiffled creativity but created in certain fans unreasonable expectations towards other works. Fandom, as a creative context, is generally focused on (self-)indulgence, on feel-goodness, and is largely pretty dry in terms of themes. But to expect all creatives to have the same “goal” or approach when it comes to art is simply ridiculous. For some people, art is a safe means through which to explore difficult, violent or outlandish set-ups. Art can be used to make people feel uncomfortable, unsettled just as it can be used to make people feel uplifted and moved. Art can be focused on exploring nuanced and controversial topics. Art can be used to portray irredeemable assholes, losers or monsters. Art can be depressing and deny us any feelings of satisfaction. Art can do so many things! And, yes, sometimes creativity is mobilised in the service of writing the nth wholesome gay coffee store AU for a popular anglo property: but that’s neither the norm nor the rule. 

I think as well in terms of queer representation that we lose a lot when we try to argue that the only way to “fight” homophobia is to present queer characters and queer relationships that are Unproblématique and fit a constantly-shifting standard of what is “not-homophobic”. Take the current obsession with the idea that all gay men must be vers or otherwise be a homophobic stereotype: putting aside all that needs to be unpacked in that belief, imagine a world where it’s the accepted idea everywhere that you can’t write about gay men lest they be vers. How many queer experiences would we be erasing in the process? Or, again, this weird idea that it’s “bad” to write in fem queer men because that’s a stereotype, when the real issue is just that fem queer men have generally only been written as one-dimensional characters present in the narrative for comedic purposes or stereotypes, and not as fully-fledged humans with complex internal lives and relationships. As a Problématique Gay, I hate the idea that only perfect queer narratives can exist. Nah, people, queer existence is complex, and queer people are not perfect (although we’re cooler than the str8s). It’s just.... believe me, the continued existence of homophobia is not determined by whether characters in books have the “correct-according-to-you” kind of sex or whatever. 

NB: I have to say, as well, that the first time I came across the Phoenix Mountain kiss, I thought (in bad faith) that it had been added just as a sort of unfortunate fan service since the novel was published chapter by chapter. But when I finished the book and thought back on it, the inclusion of the Phoenix Mountain kiss made sense, narratively and thematically. It also forced me to recognise that, even if I had read MDZS before I ever watched CQL, I had started reading MDZS with my own preconceptions (which were certainly not helped by the framing of the translation) : that it would be a middling danmei full of the same tired tropes. I was glad to be proven wrong!

[glorious-blackout]

3, 21, 23, 30, 43 for the writer ask 😘

Thank you! 🥰

3. Are there any fics that inspired you to write what you do?

There must have been so many over the years! In terms of my writing style/favourite genres I've probably been inspired more by novels than fic ('A Series of Unfortunate Events' and '1984' have a lot to answer for), but I remember a couple of fics in the Muse fandom that I fell in love with when I first started out eleven(!) years ago.

One was called Wires which was an exercise in heartbreak and well-utilised present-tense, while another was called Synapse which was a wonderfully weird sci-fi story. Sadly Wires was deleted ages ago and I've never been able to find a copy of it, but Synapse has been preserved on AO3 😊

21. What’s your least favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

The final few edits, where you've read the story so many times that you're sick of the sight of it 😅 I tend to overthink things like word-choice and sentence structure to the story's detriment by that point.

I think that's partly why feedback is so important for writers. Seeing someone's reaction to experiencing your story for the first time can mean the world when you've been hyper-critical of it for so long.

23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?

Does 'Main Character Being Put Through All the Wringers' count? 😅 I am an angst-junkie at heart... I don't usually think of tropes when I'm writing, but 'friends to lovers' has a habit of cropping up in my Milex fics 🥰

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words

I'll refrain from posting a snippet of my current WIP as it's technically a surprise, but I can share this (hopefully) non-spoilery bit from my big-bang fic:

"It was a sweat-soaked, sultry summer that heralded the birth of their third baby.  

At the height of an oppressive heatwave, the fierce sun had radiated the sleepy London streets, projecting illusions of melted tarmac and puddles that vanished the instant one drew near. News channels became preoccupied with reports of the third record-breaking summer in a row, the south of England depicted in blistering red on their displayed maps, and Alex’s delicate skin had adopted a permanent pink hue in spite of his ritualistic applications of suncream. 

It had been easy to ignore the fact that the planet was on fire. Within the safe, air-conditioned confines of Abbey Road Studios, Alex and Miles had shed all thoughts of the outside world as they noodled away on guitars and drew up new melodies on the piano. During lunch breaks they sat together, knee to knee like the old days, poring over lyrics and celebrating whenever a perfect metaphor joined their frantic scribbles. Within their safe cocoon, inspiration flared like an Olympic flame, unflinching and undying even in rare moments of creative conflict. The album came together almost too smoothly – certainly too quickly for Alex’s taste – as Miles’s reawakened love for Northern Soul married Alex’s seventies head in perfect harmony."

43. Talk about a positive experience with fanfiction or the fanfiction community that you will always remember

One of the best experiences I've ever had was writing a fic called 'Watch Our Souls Fade Away' which I'd initially posted as a one-shot, expecting it to be quickly forgotten, only to receive a humungous wave of support for it. The wonderful feedback inspired me to add several more chapters and it remains one of the most positive writing experiences I've ever had.

Another was sharing 'You've Always Been Here' which I again expected to just be a little project shared between friends, but @elorianna stumbled upon it and convinced me to post it on AO3. Thanks to that story I've met some wonderful friends within the Milex fandom, and it also marks the first time someone else has written something based on my own fic (@alexxturner-me-on's wonderful 'T-Minus Your Last Five Minutes') which might just be the coolest feeling in the world 😭🥰

[words-after-midnight]

Read a post earlier about conceptualizing the darkest scene in a wip (won't say by who as i'm not sure if they're comfortable being tagged), which reminded me of my own rather bizarre story about the darkest scenes (three) of my own wip. I won't say what happens in the scenes, nor where they fit in the story. The scenes are not actually included in the novel, and they were written around two years after I finished the first draft of the novel. They compose a "companion piece" (for lack of a better term) that, other than myself, one person has read (though I've offered it to three other beta readers, one of whom declined to read it and two others who want to wait until they're in the right headspace).

The piece is 2,288 words and was drafted on February 25th, 2013. The only reason I know this is because I kept a novel diary throughout the drafting process of the novel, up to the first version of the manuscript (2008-2013). I don't actually remember writing the piece at all. I'm not just saying that to be dramatic. I don't remember where I was, what I was doing, writing any specific passages, nothing. I do, strangely enough, remember the dream it was based on. I say "strangely" because I almost never remember my dreams.

The general sequence of events covered by the piece was planned in advance, but the dream gave me vivid details, an ambiance, and emotional context - even a few specific lines. The dream was essentially the entire sequence from beginning to end. I had the dream on January 4th, 2011 - a little over a month before the pre-planned "deadline" on which I would finish the draft of the novel - but I tried really hard not to write the piece. I honestly didn't feel like the sequence itself needed to be in the novel (and I still, firmly, don't). But, as many of you know, the thing about ideas is that sometimes, they won't leave you alone until you just fucking write them. And I really, really wanted this particular one to leave me the fuck alone. So finally, two years later, I wrote it. In one shot, apparently. And then I basically didn't look at it for nine years.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. I tried to revise it multiple times in that time period, but every time, I'd get to the end of the first scene, remember what came next, and nope out. I finally forced myself to revise it in March 2022, because I just wanted it to be done. Hand to god, I'm never touching that thing again.

It's the best thing I've ever written. Not because the prose is particularly good, or because it has the tightest structure, or because it's "original" or whatever, but because it's the only thing I've written, to this day, that I've been able to put on paper exactly the way I saw it in my head.

Anyway. I'll never publish it as long as I live, but it's the piece of writing I'm proudest of, and probably always will be. The whole thing was also a pretty interesting and unique (to me) writing experience.

[the-celluloid-correspondent]

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

While Frodo and Sam edge closer to Mordor with the help of Gollum, the divided fellowship makes its stand against Sauron's new ally, Saruman, and his new army from Isengard.

There seems to be a curse with film series that the sequels in the series take a heavy dip in terms of quality. This is primarily due to producers and corporate boards taking over the creative process of the film away from the creators. Thankfully the entire trilogy was filmed back to back, so corporate boards had no chance in taking over the film trilogy because the Two Towers keeps up with the same quality as the Fellowship of the Ring. Again the cast and crew put their entire creative hearts into this film and have created another masterpiece.

They again pull off the impossible by masterfully adapting the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. Unlike so many other middle installments, the Two Towers does now feel like filler and the story actually progresses in this film. The stakes ever continue to increase as the story progresses as the filmmakers bring forth one of the best sieges in cinematic history. All of the action pieces are spectacular, grounded, and the stakes are felt throughout all of them. Again for the film being over three hours long, it does not feel like it. It is masterfully pace and they never sacrifice the story in order to keep the pacing tight. The writing is again elevated and intelligent, which still feels like a breath of fresh air to the fantasy genre. The crew truly deserved every award they won for this film.

Again in The Two Towers, all of the actors give it they're all in this film and show that they were perfectly casted in their respective roles. All of the returning actors again give Oscar-worthy performances as their characters. Furthermore, all of the new cast members add to this impressive cast ensemble. Newcomers Miranda Otto, Carl Urban, and Bernard Hill bring forth life into the beautiful country of Rohan. All of them play their respective roles at a masterclass level. David Wenham enters the mix as the honorable Faramir. Even though the writing was not quite like book Faramir, Wenham gave it his all and truly showed how honorable Faramir is. However, the real show-stealer in this film is Andy Serkis as Gollum. It still amazes me that he was not nominated for an academy award for his performances because he truly gives the most iconic performances within this trilogy and gave motion capture/voice actors the respect that they deserve.

Again the creative team continues with the masterclass of visuals in this film. The cinematography is again outstanding. Howard Shore's score is again impeccable and is a masterclass of film scoring. The visual effects again have aged marvelously and still look better than the majority of films today. The production and costume design are again immersive in every aspect. They truly brought the world of Middle Earth to life and the Helms Deep set is still one of the most impressive that I've seen in the film.

Again I really don't have any complaints about this film besides me not agreeing with some changes from the books. However, with many of these changes, I can still understand because some of these would not have adapted well in a visual medium.

Again, the entire cast and crew pull off the impossible in the Two Towers. Not only do they pull off a masterful adaptation of the novels but also bring forth a cinematic masterpiece that stands the test of time.

I am giving The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, an A+.

[bluejayblueskies]

Hi, I hope I'm not too late to ask some Weird Writer Questions cause they sound fun! Number 24, 19, 13, and 17 (that last one for whisky would be cool but all your WIPS are lovely so pick whichever you want!) hope you have a nice day Jay!!

weird questions for writers!

(you're absolutely not too late--thank you for messaging! i hope you have a nice day as well 🥰)

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

for prep work, i used to (pre-tma and a little bit into the beginning of writing for tma) jump right into multichapter stories with a vague premise and no clue of the actual plot or ending, but i found it's easier to actually complete multichapter stuff if i have an outline and an idea of where i want the story to go, lol who knew? so my prep work now consists of, at minimum, a rough outline of the entire story arc from beginning to end, but usually a chapter-by-chapter outline of major story beats, approximate scenes, etc.. for whisky, i jumped in with a rough story arc and then made the chapter-by-chapter outline around chapter three when i started to get bogged down in 'what scene should i do next?' details. i usually don't do any prep at all for one-shots, since they're typically 1-2 scenes, but for longer ones i may throw together a quick bullet list of where i want the story to go

and i do not like outlining alkdsgjsag. it's probably my least favorite part of the writing process. (i'm currently for example avoiding fixing my whisky outline, which i need to change the last chapter for slightly due to a piece of lore i added contradicting my current ending.) i think it's because outlining requires the most decision-making about my story and the most critical thinking about, 'okay, what do i actually want to say and when do i want to say it.' i'm always much happier when i have the outline because it's so much better to write with one, but the process of making it? detestable lol.

(more below the cut because i got predictably long-winded with this)

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

this answer got very long, so buckle in and bear with me lol:

i started writing very young (perhaps second or first grade?) partly because my father is a copywriter and thus encouraged it and partly because i read so many books as a child. my elementary school had this anthology that you could submit to starting in third grade, and i remember writing short stories for it (that always ended up being too long--turns out i had chronic 'can't shut up' disease even at the tender age of 8).

getting into middle school, i started to write longer things. it's hard for me to remember exact dates, but i know i finished my first novel-length story around ... 7th grade? it is Extremely Bad by virtue of being written by somebody who had only experienced the world for ~12 years, but it's also probably one of the most out-there things i've ever written in terms of plot so i still give it a solid 5/10. (i can elaborate on it if people are interested! an in-depth discussion of it is just a bit beyond the scope of this particular question lol).

(i also wrote several stories that could best be described as uh. RPF between me & my best friends and their middle school crushes. including a whole entire trilogy with novella-length stories. but we're not going to talk about those XD)

i started and did not finish uhhh probably 20-30 other original stories between the years of 2011 - 2017, most of which are also not very good but that taught me a lot about creating characters, worldbuilding, writing styles and SPAG, and other things that helped me develop as a writer. there are a few that i do genuinely want to pick back up someday, but it's hard to get motivated to write original stuff and is much easier to simply write an AU and stick my blorbos in as characters. i think 2017 is the last time i can really truly say i actively worked on original stuff, since i fell into writing mostly fic after i graduated high school.

i wrote fic in high school too--mostly supernatural, sherlock, and doctor who stuff, because i was very much into superwholock--and most of it is still on my ao3. occasionally, people will jumpscare me by commenting on one of my old spn fics because i genuinely forget that people still might read them lol. i started my fic publishing journey on quotev though, and a little bit on wattpad and ff.net, before moving to ao3 in 2015 and never looking back. my stance on my old writing is that even though i've generally moved on with my life and cringe a bit when i look at it, i did write it once upon a time and liked it then, so i won't take it down and/or disown it. i'm sure in 10 years i'll look back on the stuff i wrote now and cringe too. so it goes.

i took a break from writing for ~ 3 years when i went to college, with the exception of the one (1) voltron fic i wrote that i am still quite proud of. (a multichapter fic i finished without making anything remotely close to an outline! wow!). tma will always be so incredibly dear to me because it reignited my desire to write (like. with a blowtorch. i have written over 610k words since summer 2020 when i started listening to tma, which 12-year-old me would have gone nuts over), and so far, i'm still going strong!

i think i have much better writing habits than i had when i was younger. i try to make an effort to do it every day, even when i'm tired or not really feeling it, even if the words are absolute garbage, even if it's nothing related to my current projects, rather than just riding the tide of motivation. i'm hoping that that means i won't be giving it up anytime soon (i certainly have many more plans for malevolent fics in the future including at least one more involved multichapter fic riffing off episode 20 👀) and i'm also hoping that i can jump back into original stuff with a fresh perspective and new ideas. who knows!

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

the subject matter i have the most difficulty with is, funnily enough, romance arcs. i understand point A (characters meet and become friends) and i understand point B (characters are dating) but the stuff that comes in between??? it's a black box for me alskdjga. something happens there, but i (aro) could not tell you what it is. as such, i always feel like any romance arc i attempt in a multichapter fic has terrible pacing, where the characters are falling in love too quickly, deciding to declare their feelings too abruptly, etc.. i'm struggling with this a lot right now in ten thousand flowers in spring, and i'm glad people are leaving positive comments on the most recent chapter because i feel like the romantic pacing is all over the place but i genuinely do not know how to fix it. whisky doesn't suffer from the same issues for some reason. i think because both arthur and john are arospec, so i'm not technically writing a romance? john is very much in romantic love with arthur, but arthur is not--though as in canon, john is Arthur's Person Who He Cares About So Much. idk, i think their canon relationship is so intricate and complicated that i'm just going *shrug* about the whole thing and not worrying about it.

in terms of what's easy, i have a really easy time with fantasy--and, if that's too broad to be considered subject matter, then specifically the worldbuilding involved with fantasy. so i guess that would be fantastical environments? basically, i like a lot that there's no rules other than the ones that i create for myself, so i can do whatever the hell i want and it's correct because that's just how it is in this world! (see, again, ten thousand flowers in spring). of course, i still do research and think about what i want my world to look like, because going 'that's just how it is!' isn't a replacement for that and i don't want to be a lazy writer, but the flexibility is soooo nice. (i, for example, am not looking forward to researching how gangs actually work for whisky and will thus likely just. make some stuff up and hand-wave it away as being 'yeah that's just how the memphis gangs work, don't worry about it,' though i will also make an effort to learn the general structure of stuff.)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

hghhh the forbidden whisky lore 👀 there's a lot i can't say for fear of spoilers, but there is some stuff that probably won't make it into the story that isn't spoilery!

John was born on December 26, 1981 and is as of the most current whisky chapter 41 years old

Arthur was born on April 2, 1986 and is of the most current whisky chapter 37 years old

Arthur began touring around 2004 when he was 18 years old (he was recruited straight out of college/sixth form). However, he didn't begin composing professionally until 2005 and likely didn't get major movie gigs until closer to 2008. He was classically trained on the piano from a young age, though never on a university level, and his compositional and performance style has both popular and classical influences.

Arthur was born in the UK, recruited from the UK, and moved to LA as part of his contract. He met Bella in LA (so in this AU, Bella is American), and Faroe was born on November 13, 2006.

John started his pre-club career in 2002 at age 20, and quit that job and purchased the club around September 2016 at age 34.

Arthur wasn't lying in chapter one when he said that he comes to the club because he likes the wallpaper :) and John was not lying in chapter two when he said the club doesn't have wallpaper :) [this bit will make it into the fic, but i wanted to include it here anyway]

i also have a diagram of john's club that i keep forgetting to include in the end notes:

[ID: A sketched diagram of John's club. It is a square building with a front door on the bottom right side and a door to the basement on the upper right side. Along the left from bottom to top are John's office, the kitchen/food storage area, and the bathrooms. The backstage area lines the entire back wall, and in front of it is the stage, with doors on either side to access the backstage, a grand piano on the stage, and curtains separating the stage from the backstage. There are tables scattered across the main floor, and a wall with archway cutouts separates the main floor from the kitchen and John's office. Along the front wall is the bar, with seating in an L shape that leaves hallway space for John to access his office. The seat closest to John's office is labeled 'Arthur's seat.' A coat closet is in the bottom right corner. /End ID]

is this acoustically sound? don't ask me, i haven't finished that class yet alsdkjgsag. john has acoustic panels in the back to adjust the absorption of the room, i've made it canon XD

in terms of history, i genuinely don't remember where i got the idea for whisky from--i think i was just rotating piano player arthur in my mind one day, went 'hey what about famous arthur?', then went 'well what is john doing?', remembered how much i love small music clubs, and the rest is history. the entire second half of this fic (approx. ch. 8 onward) as well as john's backstory was not part of the initial concept at all, and i very much fleshed it out as i went while writing the first ~3 chapters. i think it's all fully fleshed out now though (excepting the little bit from the last chapter that i have to fix) and i am very excited for chapter 9 in particular :3

there is a scene that i really want to write that won't make it into the main story because it a) will only work from arthur's pov, and i want to keep whisky strictly john's pov, and b) because arthur is a smart dude and even though the scene would be very cool, it would 100% clue arthur in on some crucial things too early on. so alas, it will probably remain as an unrelated oneshot should i choose to write it in the future. (though it's also a scene that works better if the audience doesn't know what's going on either,,,,, but that could spoil them for things too soon as well because you all are also smart cookies, so,,,, much to consider)

aaaand for fun, here's an excerpt from the next chapter:

Buy him flowers, Lilly had said. Right, okay—which fucking ones? Does it matter? John feels like it matters, but he doesn’t have the first clue as to why or what the right choice would be. Is it weird to buy somebody flowers when they’re standing right next to you? That feels like something you get beforehand and then bring as a gift. Should he have planned ahead? Why is his heart beating so fucking loud in his ears?

[winterandwords]

WIP (and other stuff) update

It's been a while since I did one of these. My unofficial NaNoWriMo mission is complete and Project Storm has had the last major editing pass it's getting before it leaves my hands, or at least before it starts the process of being held by other hands too.

I still have a few minor bits to fiddle with - adding specific dates, deciding a chapter naming/numbering convention and implementing that - and then I'm going to do one final read through in December before editing-involving-other-people begins in January.

I'm excited! This whole book has been one new experience after another for me. I'm usually a compulsive planner, but I discovery wrote this book. I usually created detailed schedules filled with deadlines for anything I'm doing, but I let this book tell me how long to take over each part of the process.

It's also the first time I've ever written something that is purely what I wanted to write, with zero fucks to give about whether other people will like it, if it'll be marketable, who my audience will be etc. And this is the greatest feeling. This experience has inspired me to approach future projects differently and it feels like something has fallen into place that I've been reaching for over the last few years that I've been writing books but hadn't been able to grasp.

Taking all my writing offline in early 2021, dumping all my old plans and processes, and doing what I actually fucking wanted to do was the best thing I ever did in terms of creativity. I no longer had to give a shit (I mean, I never had to, but it was hard not to) whether something I wanted to write would fit with what I'd written before and I had the freedom to let go of all the shoulds that had built up in my head and become the way I had to do things.

As cheesy as it sounds, I found my voice this year. I let go of a lot of fear and a lot of pressure. Kind of related to writing but not just, I did a lot of deprogramming from the intensely toxic, morally judgmental, shame factories that were the online and offline communities I'd been part of before and started to fully peel myself away from over the last couple of years. That was a weird one. I never intentionally aligned myself with movements or philosophies I didn't agree with, but they existed in parallel to communities I was part of to the point where it was impossible to avoid.

I don't want to get into a big life story thing here, but the combination of past trauma (which I'm not going to talk about because part of recovering from the bullshit is remembering that I do not owe anyone those details) and extremely judgy and, honestly, cult-like social environments left me at mental health rock bottom and totally creatively paralysed. This last year and this book have helped me to work through those experiences.

I'll do some kind of WIP intro thing when I have something more solid to introduce, but my next project is going to be a total rewrite of a trilogy of novels I wrote between 2019 and early 2021. I don't hate the books as they are. They started life as a challenge to write a series, to write genre fiction and to write in third person past tense (first person present is my ride or die, but I like to push myself to try new things). The mood of those books was very much impacted by the pandemic and the story itself became, unintentionally, impacted by the social and creative environments I was part of at the time.

I did not write the story I wanted to write. I'm now going to do that. I'll probably rewrite the three short novels into one longer novel, keeping some parts, changing others and dumping a few. As soon as I decided to do that, the story as it was meant to be, the characters as I originally wanted them to be, started to appear in my head in beautiful detail and I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into this. I'll share more as I have more to share.

So, this is long. I'm going to shut up in a minute. If you've read this far, thank you and I love you. Hopefully, this provides a little more insight into why I reblog posts about not owing anyone details of your trauma, demographic info, medical history, background etc in order to have permission to write the stories you want to write, and posts about the value of dark, transgressive, subversive fiction for adults with morally grey or straight-up 'bad' characters.

Dump the bullshit. Write what the fuck you want. If people don't like it, they don't have to read it. Big love, friends <3