scribblemyname | Entries tagged with state of the writer

So I’m writing a story again, go me. I’m actually writing stories all the time and there’s of course, the commission and the Big One hiding out in my Big Fear timeline that I don’t even know when it’s supposedly due. Ahem, anyway.

Then there’s this thing. I brainstormed it over the last two days basically and lo and behold! a story! I know how it’s supposed to end and I know all the big emotional stuff going on through the two big mains and absolutely no clue how much of the backstory’s going in or how to organize any of it.

Yeah, so thoughts about structure. I’ve never been big on the idea of this straightforward plot nonsense. It just really doesn’t quite work for me. I’m far more into the business of structuring an emotional journey. And right now, I know absolutely the emotional journey I’m going to throw these characters through, but how that’s going to play out for the reader is a whole different ballgame.

There’s backstory, the first. There’s backstory, the second. There’s present time over a longer period of time where the two mains meet and one gets over her natural skepticism and one gets over (or at least finds more peace with) his overwhelming longstanding grief and then there’s the wrap-up for those two.

I’m absolutely not going to write three stories and marry them, so good luck to me figuring out how much of this stuff is needed.

Plus main storyline invites some meta and in-world nonstandard texts, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great idea for me to get sidetracked by that.

In short, I’m gonna do the thing I do when I’m writing about a universe I know too much about: I’m going to write the main story as if the reader knows everything I do. Then good luck to future me editing in all the pieces necessary to understand.

What kind of structure does one plan for a three in one story? In my case, as little as possible.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/423260.html

Wrote:

12 poems and 70 lines, crossposted nothing

6 unrevealed ficlets and 1 just not crossposted

a scene list sort of thingy on my WIP

Not what I was hoping but not half bad. I was hoping to get more down on WIP. I know where I’m heading with it, just haven’t had time/energy/headspace to get it down yet.

I’ve also finished getting a PDF file ready of What Lies Before, a collection of original short stories, which I will get into download access and possibly a gumroad before I try and figure out how to actually publish it properly, because that last sounds more tiring than it ought.

Still, that’s prepped, which is great.

I also pulled 5 pieces out of first access into freely available, so I’ll get there on posting links to those soon too.

On the health front, I went to a new doctor yesterday for insurance reasons to establish care, who is willing to keep my other doctor in the loop, which is awesome. And lo! There is hope for me yet. I have a structural issue apparently that’s preventing my getting enough oxygen or draining stuff the way I should, which technically I always kind of knew. From childhood, my breathing options were constrained, I just didn’t realize they meant I’m literally never getting enough oxygen, and I’ve always been so stuffed up, I can barely smell.

Shocker. These things have health consequences, so my doctor gave me a potential nonsurgical option to check out, which I will do as soon as we wrap up all this car and post-vacation business. Because quality of life! Not dragging around tired and depressed all the time! This would be good!

About that, CAR! I loved our beautiful, old faithful, 2005 sedan but it was… time to retire it. We got a new car on Friday, which has eaten a chunk into budget and time bank, but so worth it. A beautiful Hyundai Santa Fe Sport and I will eventually get used to how her responsiveness differs greatly from the sedan. Mostly, I will eventually stop turning on the windshield wipers when I’m trying to reverse because our gear shaft is now in between the seats instead of on the steering wheel. I drove like an amateur yesterday on my first time out in her. Oh well.

Hope you’re all doing well! Lots of love!

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/422432.html

So I was horrible at running Patreon and crossposting last year and here’s hoping to be slightly better. I intend to take everything posted on first access in 2019 and make it free by the end of the month.

Posted for first access ($1/mo.) today are three poems, all written today:

labels – I could be bold / like the colors of ancient crayons / unlikely adjectives sprawled / over the yellow labels…

a name – call me something, anything, / I used to say, / as though just having a name / was good, though it wasn’t…

lamp on the wood – bright lamp on the wood beside my window / keeping watch with steady eye and yellow…

Available for free on website and AO3, fanfic:

In Small Moments (Bourne Movies): Nicky Parsons/Jason Bourne – The asset wasn’t known for tender compassion or warmth. If he was, Nicky assumed, he wouldn’t be an asset. But there was a certain amount of liability in being an obvious plant that disappeared at irregular intervals, always when someone of import within the country died, and there was something to be said for the traditional old standbys for covers. [on AO3], [on website]

The last was written for Happy Belated Treatmas 2019 for Ashling, who prompted arranged marriage and tenderness and hurt/comfort and upon discovering Bourne was an option, this AU just sprang into my head, basically because arranged marriage fit so well with the whole undercover asset thing and having a relationship that was both professional and intensely personal. I really loved stepping back into Nicky’s head for a minute and was really happy the recipient liked it.

I’ll get my other Treatmas fics crossposted soonish.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/421446.html

I could totally do goals! I could. I had a good 2019 for writing goals, bad on some fronts, but better than if I hadn’t had the goals.

2019’s Writing Goals:

Finish 1000 poems

Finish 365 ficlets (fanfic one-shots count here even if longer)

Finish 52 original short stories

2019’s Accomplishments: Well, to start off with, I haven’t properly run all the numbers, but I’ll take a stab at the poetry despite not having finished typing things up.

Finished more than 1000 poems (980ish typed and we won’t discuss the backlog of in notebook, not typed)

Finished 213 fanfic or original ficlets

Finished 9 original short stories

Boy, do I want to move that #3 needle, but that wasn’t a bad 3rd run at writing prose daily. Not what I wanted, but not bad.

So next year: I want to do all the things, to be honest. I want to finish writing books, compiling anthologies, finish those gift stories I never did because the guilt hangs over my head all the time, and I want to finish short stories too. I want to crosspost things to patreon and publish every week, so people have a reason to subscribe, and collect the month’s haul of writing into something publishable, and the truth is I haven’t compiled reasonable goals yet. I could keep up with the average 3 poems/day and that wouldn’t be hard, but I truly want to focus in on producing and making available fiction.

Ah, we’ll see what happens.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/420655.html

New stickers arrived! They’re so pretty. Except what’s with this custom stickers getting less and less space for letters. I don’t care for this new font. Ah well, still overall pretty and functional and I needed that.

Reading Clean Coder for work. My devs don’t do the whole tweak code every time, because yeah, code is already rigid and risky in the biggest areas of opportunity and the oldest code is affected by changes to new code. We keep breaking stuff when touching supposedly low scope stuff. So aspirational.

Listening to Dynasty by MIIA on repeat. I love this song, despite the everything lost vibe of it. Very evocative for fiction.

There are so many stories tumbling through my head all the time, all the lost, unforgotten, unfinished stories; all the new, bright and complicated new ones—I can’t write them all. It’s hard because I could write any. It freezes me up a lot. I owe so much fiction though everyone’s been nice enough to treat me as having gone bankrupt and expect nothing. I feel that. I feel the want to finish all these stories. They’re still there, this mighty shadow of the iceberg beneath stories written, “complete”. They aren’t all complete. So many need more. I’m going to expand “The Legendary”, but the truth is, most of Kingdoms and Thorn still demands the linchpin stories or more on any of the ficlets. And that’s the best developed of all my worlds.

I haven’t lost interest. I don’t lose interest when I write something short and move on. I’m so full up and I contain each bit as fast and tight as I can so I don’t lose it.

To say nothing of fanfic. Will I ever finish all these half-written pieces, some of which I love sooooo much? History says no. I don’t like that answer. I don’t know how to change it.

I’ve been watching so much anime, so much, an odd change of pace for me in a way, but seriously, it’s many flaws don’t bother me as much as the flaws in my old live action western tv/movie stomping grounds, and there’s this thing called arcs that are definitely used in western tv, but they’re kind of a lot clearer to me as I’m watching anime. I’m thinking I’m going to try writing down the arcs of all my different storyworlds and maybe I can get bigger pieces moving on a more regular basis. Which would require cutting back exchanges dramatically.

Gift exchanges keep me writing fiction when little else does, but they take a particular production schedule mindset which interferes with the way I write longer fiction. I only write in a focused drilled down way on one piece of longer fiction at a time, and right now I have the working novel I started so long ago to relearn how to write long and a book my family can read (they would not approve of my SFF / “what terrible things I have done” backstory proclivities) and a major exchange fic. I like writing longer works for exchanges. It has helped me relearn how to write long(er) despite my lack of finishing working title: canaf. Even so. There are a lot of original pieces I want done more than the exchange ones that aren’t going to happen if I don’t curtail my love of exchange fandom quite a bit.

I don’t like that answer either. But I really cannot change it.

Most interesting to me is my inability to fully prioritize publishing any of this stuff right now, though I have Patreoned up (for original fiction, fanfic will ever remain free) to at least attempt to maximize my efforts. Because publishing takes a lot of effort. I’ve been cleaning up the typesetting, adding optional hyphens and tweaking kerning as necessary, on a collection for several weeks now. And my efforts tend to go to creating. It’s more important to me to create than to package something to sell. My budget disagrees, the hours I’m capable of working to increase said budget disagrees, but my health comes first and if I stop creating, publishing hardly matters.

So I wasn’t expecting to start talking about all this stuff, but yeah, thoughts there. And bandwidth. Bandwidth is the thing I really want more of—that confluence of time, opportunity, energy, and memory. I’m grateful for what I have. I’m trying to be a good steward of it. Maybe I’m not there yet.

I’m not too fond of that answer, but at least that, I might be able to change.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/419476.html

A third nonnie likes my original WIP! <3

I’m at 410 poems this year out of a goal of 306.

I’m at 88 out of a goal of 102 ficlets, which isn’t half bad.

The Kings are still the frontrunner for winning World of Dance. Which I’ll miss The Heima so bad, but the Kings deserve it and I’m really happy about it.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/416993.html

April Numbers:

Original Fiction Totals: 2 ficlets, 200 words
Fanfic Totals: 20 ficlets, 2638 words
Poetry Totals: 95 poems (line count uncertain)

So 22 ficlets and almost 100 poems is not bad.

And one of those ficlets was one I really owed someone. Now, to wrap the other one I really owe someone... Also wrote a BSD Season 3 ficlet today. Gotta crosspost everything but still.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/417229.html

Sometimes I write things. Lots of things. And don’t get them posted anywhere right away. I have a little WordPress site that’s password protected where I’ve been dumping inventory, original and fanfic both but not poetry because apparently, I’ll never get the hang of crossposting that. It’s behind. Not sure if I want to go ahead and unlock it or not because it’s anything but complete and it reveals every sock I ever had.

I’ve got a little wiki where I log stuff as I write. The poems go on one page with the actual title and body of the poem and no stats or data beyond date written and their chronological order (aka, this is where I post them for my own self but without metadata except as implied), and the fiction of all kinds gets logged in stats and linked form but no content, which is making it a lot easier to figure out where all my stuff is and isn’t without getting bogged down in crossposting. I have a lot of stuff and going back more than ten years of didn’t log it right.

Progress.

In other words, I’ve written this week and no one can read what I’ve written this week because I’m behind on getting stuff out to the world. It’s kind of frustrating. Let alone the stuff I’m supposed to publish. I’m sooooo behind on doing that kind of thing. But my sister got me a graphics program again, so there’s that.

I have a list of people I’ve carried four, five weeks now that I want to actually sit down and write and connect with because I’ve been heads down, keep head above water, crash at the first sign of duties done lately. This extends as far as I’ve seen friends’ posts and prayed for them but didn’t comment. Oops. I love you all really. This too shall pass.

That said, lots of work work today on the day job. And also, huge shoutout to Erin Condren and their life planners, more importantly the stickers. I’ve been trying to use lists, planners, and every organizational thing under the sun to keep taking all my stuff even when I’m so sick I forget and to DO all my stuff even when I start forgetting. It’s never worked. Until the stickers.

I’m a fan.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/414568.html

Something accomplished, something done, has earned a night’s repose…

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/413230.html

I think I’m going to write myself a letter like I was signing up for an exchange with the stories I want myself to write so I can read them. Because I want to write original short stories this year and I’ve written one out of seven weeks and it was for an exchange.

Speaking of exchanges, there are now three original fiction exchanges! I’m just going to do veonat’s in the fall. I wrote Shelter for the last one.

I’m trying out Canva for online graphic design and really am going to settle down and get back to publishing and also start packaging up the monthly inventory in PDFs I think. I have a ko-fi now where the poetry will go once I get some finished and I have covers done for a month or two.

Also, on things I run:

Multifandom Drabble is starting up nominations for round 1 on Sunday, the 24th.

Conlang is a post-imzy site for the conlang comm I started there. I haven’t been conlanging much, but I post the daily posts and am trying to get back on the pony of maybe at least putting what I’ve got in a lexicon spreadsheet.

I handed off Multifandom Tropefest to longficmod, who was my co-mod first round and ended up taking it over when my grandmother died while it was running. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever even participate in this fest as my associations with it are all terrible.

I’m considering running (somebody stop me) an exchange where you can throw in your original fiction, comics, or art as fandoms and request fanwork. Like the usual remix though, it wouldn’t be a proper exchange. You get to specify NSFW and medium of the fanwork in your request but nothing else really. It’d match on genre, warnings, rating, and medium. I don’t know. Been noodling in my head. I really shouldn’t run this.

Just a bunch of different thoughts. I’ve got so many stories in progress it’s scary. I’m behind on talking to people. My crossposting is terribly behind. But I’m starting to feel human a bit, despite being exhausted and pushing at work enough that I came home yesterday and just wanted to cry rather than work anymore. And I have so much to do there. I’ve got a nasty bug with too many potential permutations and it’s still not quantified. I was supposed to clear out several columns on the bug board and didn’t succeed at that at all.

I’ve been trying, just trying, a new legume and grain free diet, which is anti-inflammatory, a chronic problem of mine, seeing as I have both sciatica and tendonitis, and I’ve been thinking clearer and dragging less and able to do things and I really hope it’s not the diet because it’s hard. I have enough food allergies that not eating any beans and grains is actually a problem sometimes. But it’s good to feel human, so we’ll just have to see how it all turns out.

Hope you all are doing well!

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/412227.html

That’s something I learned from a writer who does a lot of challenges: failing to success. So I failed to write anything longer than 1400 words, aka those short stories I want to get done. I also failed to finish the particular treats and late treats I wanted to.

That said, I wrote 100 poems and 33 ficlets in January. Not all of which are posted on AO3 yet or in the case of the poems, to tumblr. Still, that makes me super happy. Next month, short stories!

Hope you’re all doing well on your own goals.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/411875.html

So the goal by the end of the month is to have:

27 ficlets

4 short stories

93 poems

At the moment, I’ve logged:

24 ficlets

91 poems

0 short stories

Despite my best efforts. Technically, there are 11 poems waiting to be typed up, so I’m on track for poetry and three days to add three ficlets, so doing fine there too. It’s the short stories that is a slight problem. And of course, there’s Chocolate Box, which could either help or hinder. We’ll have to see which.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/411459.html

Today is Day 140 in the year and I have written:

95 drabbles, 66 of which were fanfic

279 poems

Poem a day is going splendidly. I’m pleased at the absolute number of drabbles, but I also definitely want to pick it up.

In non-drabble fiction, I’ve posted 10 non-drabble fanfics this year that didn’t end up under a sock. So not bad, even if not where I want to end up. Started original fic novel but it’s not done yet, so does it count? In the interest of full stats, I’m 16,000 words into that.

So I’m telling my brain, this ain’t been a bad year so far.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/405129.html

I’ve been quietly attempting to write a drabble a day along with my poem a day and on the averages, which is all I care about, it’s been happening. I’m also signed up for two exchanges and am attempting a rewatch of a series in the middle of a crazy amount of workload at work and the only thing I’ve been making steady progress on is scribbling away at an original story because I decided to try and write something every post on a certain comm.

So in short, win some, lose some.

I’ve also been easily sidetracked into watching AMVs when I’m trying to brace myself for some of the parts of the series I’m rewatching that I don’t like and I really need to stop doing that. Distraction is terrible.

So all that off my chest…

Guys, I have totally picked up two new fandom obsessions, mentioned before as K and Bungou Stray Dogs, and I don’t know why I loved Fate/ just about as much, but I can’t seem to get comfortable enough to write much in it. It’s easier to get into K and BSD and feel like I’m writing something worthwhile and even potentially in character and I’m just more obsessed with them than others.

I haven’t written meta yet, haven’t recced art or AMVs or even fic again, despite encountering many favorites, and most of my WIPs are still exactly that: WIPs. I haven’t even talked about all of my favorites with any one person.

I love the juggernauts, which makes it easy to ignore the fact that I’m not squeeing over all my favorites. So I’m going to stop and do a little bit of love here.

In the first season of K, my favorite characters were Kurou, Anna, Mikoto, and Yata with a surprising amount of love for the Awashima/Kusanagi relationship, a wholly expected amount of love for Anna & Mikoto as a gen relationship, and also a lot of love for Mikoto/Munakata. My oddball rarepair I kind of wanted was Kurou/Kukuri, and why she never became a member of the Silver Clan is beyond me. Then I watched the second series and the movie (in that order too, the wrong order, ugh). And guys, guys, guys, I came out loving and wanting so many more things, like Mikoto/Totsuka and all the Kurou and Yukari gen fic with poetry and sword-fighting and being a good big brother in all the wrong ways and goodness, I just want Seri and Izumo to get married and I want AU fic where Mikoto and Totsuka are married and raise Anna together and I’ll never get over all the UST and pining that would still be between Mikoto and Munakata and I don’t like cheating but ugh, they have destroyed my feels, and yes, I love Fushimi/Yata, don’t get me wrong, but by the end of the second season, I loved Shiro even, who I started out disliking and didn’t actually like until he started getting his real memories back and then only loved after the whole damocles healing scene, and him and the lieutenant and Klaudia make me cry as much as Tatara. I still cry most over Mikoto, but this is the most feelsy show for me ever.

So I kind of love everybody?

I also have a mostly written Awashima/Kusanagi fic that I ought to finish and post but I’m experiencing stage fright for both BSD and K, in that I haven’t read all the manga most fans have and I’m kinda terrified of getting characterization or precanon/postcanon stories wrong, but I also really want to write them.

It’s easier to post Fushimi/Yata and Double Black fic because they’re the juggernauts and really active with fannish content, but the rarer pairings have me a little more nervous. And I’m trying to write these fandoms for exchanges and late treats and just in general, and I’m trying to remind myself of what it was like when I first dove into writing X-Men fiction in media I was unable to consume readily, and I was a brave little thing back then. I’m not little anymore and I’m not really in the same mental space as when I was a teenager. I didn’t care then about almost anything. Now I do care, a lot.

Just some thoughts.

Also, for the record, I love Kyouka/Atsushi and Lucy/Atsushi and really need to write something for them. Just saying.

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/402475.html

Secret Project #1 has finally started to come together.

Secret Writing Projects have definitively not.

Same for crossovering and fandom growth exchange fics.

I’ve got a chapter to read for a friend and have been tired with the snifflies all day (wild temperature swings and that time of month mostly).

Looking forward to the weekend. May yours be great!

Crossposts: https://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/396075.html

On fannish things:

my recipient may hate this story as much as I don’t love it, but I am going to finish it, so help me

I’m going to have to write Maria + her gen relationships in most situations, because I actually want to write tielan some Maria Hill, but every time MCU gets me even slightly interested in Steve, they then go and ruin it. I’m never going to love his character, so I’m going to accept that and resolve to write more gen. I do like gen. I just wanted to write shipfic. 🙁

On conlang things:

I updated my consonant phonology table: basically does a much better job with the clicks

I did other work in a notebook that hasn’t been digitalized yet

On real life:

We’re moving in a week. I’m not ready. :screams:

Crossposts: http://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/390897.html

Like lots of stuff:

I wrote two poems: “Arm in Arm” and “Spark”.

I updated my continuity wiki with a bunch of stuff, but particularly worked on adding my starter vocabulary for Akachenti.

Also wrote up a basic summary of the mythic stuff in my head, complete with typos and missing story detail.

Tried to dig up the stuff on the story I’ll be doing for Treat Yo Self. Didn’t do as well on that. Working…

Now, I just need to start my reading for the month. 🙂

Crossposts: http://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/378941.html

Rather than do something productive and useful with today’s break time, I worked on documenting the teams in Kingdoms and Thorn here: http://continuity.lianamir.com/Team_Operatives. Which is especially interesting because it’s just a high level anyway. It’s not all the actual stories and relationships, just stuff to help me remember who’s who at a glance. Most of which I already know off the top of my head pretty much always. :sigh:

That said, I did actually write a snippet of fic that’s been bouncing in my head for two days. It just doesn’t belong to anything I’ve been trying to finish or the two longer stories also bouncing in my head with the same characters.

If they didn’t arrive three at a time, I might get fiction written faster, you know. :headdesk:

Crossposts: http://scribble-myname.livejournal.com/374848.html

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Story Structure: the Ad Hoc and the Uncertain
Since We Talked Last
Today's Haul: Poetry and Prose
A New Year
Answers I Don't Quite Like
Stuff That Made My Day
Failing to Success Again
Writing, Life Planning, Etc.
Worldbuildex Done!
State of the Scribbler
Failing to Success
In the Course of Challenge Events
Day 140 of the Daily Challenges
Fannish Update
Secret Projects
Driveby Journaling
I actually did stuff...
So...

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Entries tagged with state of the writer

Story Structure: the Ad Hoc and the Uncertain

Since We Talked Last

Today's Haul: Poetry and Prose

A New Year

Answers I Don't Quite Like

Stuff That Made My Day

Failing to Success Again

Writing, Life Planning, Etc.

Worldbuildex Done!

State of the Scribbler

Failing to Success

In the Course of Challenge Events

Day 140 of the Daily Challenges

Fannish Update

Secret Projects

Driveby Journaling

I actually did stuff...

So...