#tldr: I missed my self imposed deadline by lightyears

[dragonsorceress22]

Wait, this isn’t a Blackout teaser...

And there’s a very good reason for that.

The reason being... I ran out of Blackout to tease.

So here’s the sitch. The next chapter (The Final Proposal) is only about halfway done. It’s been a tough one for me - a lot of research and begging people for help and me getting stuck.

Clearly my goal of becoming a super productive human via this this new “writing strategy” of posting a weekly teaser has failed utterly.

So what now?

Well, I’m trying out a new strategy.

I’d noticed one weekend that I was being particularly productive. Not in writing, just in general - gettin’ shit done. And I thought, “Okay. What was different about today. How’d I do that? And how can I recreate it?”

The answer was that I’d had a LOT I’d wanted to get done, so I’d very naturally resorted to making a list, just so I wouldn’t forget anything.

But that meant I had a ✨list✨ which is apparently a thing that makes my brain happy. By breaking things into little pieces - just little steps I can take rather than a massive scary slog of THINGS THAT NEED DOING in my head, it’s so much easier to tackle. I don’t have to Do All the Things, I just have to pick one thing off the list and not think about ANYTHING else until that’s done, because the list got my back.

And this may seem like such an obvious thing, but I just didn’t realize until that moment what a difference it makes for me.

So then I thought, “Okay, how can I use this? How can I turn the powers of the List into fanfic power?”

The answer (because I am me) was a spreadsheet.

I opened up every single one of my WIPs (there are 44 of them developed enough to be included. which is a lot.) and broke them down into elements. For each WIP, I assigned tasks and task types.

Now I have a list. And when I have time to sit down with my computer, I’m not staring at the daunting MASS of folders upon folders of fics and notes files and MESS, which my brain tends to reject. I do NOT like clutter.

So instead, I can open my list

I can say, “I’m in research mode tonight”

and filter by task type “research”.

Maybe I’m in outline mode

Or writing mode

Maybe all I wanna do is rewatch that scene I need to rewatch in order to do the next part of one fic or another

I CAN DO THAT NOW

And I hope to hell and back that it helps cause I don’t know what else to try.

Anyway, with any luck, I’ll have more updates for tumblr in the near future. Or even updates for AO3! (My optimism is a cockroach - undying and ugly.)

Really, I just wanted y’all to know I’m trying so hard to figure this all out, and I wanted to share this in case anyone with the same troubles finds it helpful.

💕