bedes | Entries tagged with topic:writing

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

I could've answered with a few different creative processes (art, editing, coding, essay writing, etc), but ended up going with fanfic writing, because it's definitely the most uniform!

1) Inspiration
Sometimes, the ideas that pop into my head get added to my big document of fic ideas to write at a later date! Other times, it takes over my soul and torments me until I exorcise it via writing.

~~1.5) Make sure that you take your attention medication on the day(s) that you're planning to work~~

2) Outline
Basically every writing community I've joined seems to expect outlines to come in paragraphs. My outlines, however, have always come in bullet point lists. This stage is extremely informal, to the point that I will often slip in little jokes for myself. (Probably my favorite example: a bullet point dedicated to the statement, "KEEP IT LIGHTHEARTED, YOU ANGST-LOVING FUCK!!")

Sometimes, I'll have multiple bullet point lists. The one that I always have is the plot outline. Other, optional lists include inspiration for the intended tone (lines from movies, poetry, etc), ideas I'd like to touch on at some point without knowing where they would fit (for example: "I'd like to imply that this character has (XYZ disorder)," when that's not the focus of the fic), and/or notes on the research I've done for the fic. (Research is a part of the outlining phase, as well, when applicable!)

( Continue? )

I saw this being used by

tinkaton and thought it looked fun! I love statistics.

Go to your Works page on AO3, look at the tags, and see what the answers to these questions are. (Or any other site that has tags)

( Continue? )

That ended up... a lot more reflective than I expected it to. Stars, I have GOT to shake off this perfectionism and just WRITE MORE!

Current Mood: reflective

I hate having to write down my coherent thoughts on Siffrin having implied internalized homophobia for this analysis essay. Can’t I just point to Siffrin saying that he wishes he didn’t experience romantic attraction, Bad Touch, and their religion being implied to be based in ideas of unchanging fate, and then gesture at all that vaguely for a while

Current Mood: frustrated

Path: Moonlight Trail
My goal: 20,000
Current word count: 20,402

Wordcount goal: GET!!

I'm super proud of myself!! It's not like the first time I passed a revised goal -- I feel like I worked for it, and succeeded at a challenge. As-of now, I'm also 4th on the Moonlight Trail leaderboard out of 24!

For my last few projects, I finalized my suicidism article, wrote the text for a small zine I'm making about my favorite fanfic tropes, wrote a template for one of those DeviantArt-style "journal memes" for Sheezy.Art (a website I might dedicate a whole blog post to someday soon), and outlined a fic!

Said fic is extremely self-indulgent. I've been rewatching Shugo Chara with my partner lately, because it's extremely nostalgic for me, and it reminded me, in part, how much I love Tadase, but also... God! The Shugo Chara fandom was just so weirdly homophobic towards him! (The first time I ever heard or read the f-slur was actually by a Shugo Chara fan, directed towards Tadase. True story!) So, of course, I've taken to headcanoning him as queer in earnestness, to reclaim All That Shit that I had to see as a latent queer child. Which is basically what the fic is about -- Tadase being queer, treated genuinely, in a "5+1 things" format!

I don't know if I'll ever finish it. The Shugo Chara fandom is, like, super-mega-dead at this point, and Shugo Chara feels a little bit... embarrassing to write for? Especially this kind of fic, where the point is (not to be cheesy) trying to heal my inner child. Although, maybe that's a reason why I should write it. The only reason why I'm embarrassed about it is because it's a really old fandom, mostly for young girls, and the subject is that of queerness. None of that should be considered embarrassing! Maybe considering writing for my elementary school interests is bringing out the "elementary schooler bullied for his interests" in me again...

Writing it all out like this... yeah, I think I am going to finish it! But definitely not right now. I need a break from writing for a while, as I do after every writing challenge. Especially since I went from one writing challenge (drabblefest) right into another (Rough Draft Month)! But I feel like I've earned my break. I'm happy with myself.

Current Mood: proud
Current Music: The Little Prince - Shugo Chara OST

Path: Moonlight Trail
My goal: 20,000
Current word count: 16,543

I wrote my review for Cold Front, and I started outlining my article about suicidism. I'm hoping to start writing that article today, or tomorrow. Fingers crossed! Especially because I have this week off from college.

As you can see, I bumped my wordcount goal down. I initially bumped it down to 15k, and then ended up passing it while outlining my article. I tried really hard to let myself be proud, but it was hard, because I was basically almost at 15k when I chose to bump it down. So, I chose to bump it back up again to 20k. I think that's doable for me even at this point, so here's hoping!

Of course, my mental health is still, as the kids say, Bad. But I feel a lot better about this challenge after changing the word count goal, and stopping that "daily minimum word count" nonsense.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Complicated - Avril Lavigne

Path: Moonlight Trail
My goal: 25,000
Minimum words to hit each day: 834
Current word count: 11,837
Current average words per day: 789

My motivation was temporarily boosted by writing "An Excerpt From the Biography of the Devourer of All Things Horrible" (under the temp title "History Hates Lovers"), and I've gotten more comments on it in just a few days than I have on all of my works combined for the past few months. People are very sweet, and that makes me happy.

But, immediately after that, my mental got bad again. I've been struggling really hard to write. I literally only got out of bed at 6pm today; I spent the rest of the day sleeping. I wrote precisely 33 words yesterday, and that was a bullet point list of low-effort things I could write today. Today, this blog is probably all I'll write, but I might make a small attempt at writing a review of the game Cold Front.

Again, I feel the urge to quit the challenge entirely. But I'm trying to compromise with myself first, see if that's a possible way to go about things. Even if I don't meet my goal, that's okay, right...? I didn't make my goal last year, and that was fine. Or maybe I could adjust my goal to 20k, or maybe even just 15k.

I think what's really killing me is this idea of an "average daily word count". Missing even one day messes with the average so bad, and I feel like I've failed massively every time I fuck up and can't do my 834. Which isn't great when you're currently fighting with everything you have to just keep staying alive.

I dunno. I'm tired, even though I slept in as much as I did... I think I'll consider changing my word count goal the most heavily. I need a win right now.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Music: That's So True - Gracie Abrams

Path: Moonlight Trail
My goal: 25,000
Minimum words to hit each day: 834
Current word count: 7,659
Current average words per day: 851

It's no secret that my mental health's been in the gutter, so I've been struggling to write. Still, I've managed to keep my average word count per day above my goal. Thankfully, just before The Big Incident, I started a sillier, more low-pressure project to write an article rating all of my pride flags. I just finished and uploaded that to my personal site today. It made for a good buffer while I tried to get my act together. I even had the 2nd highest wordcount out of everyone on the Moonlight Trail at one point, so that was cool!

I'm going to be starting on a project that I'm very excited about next: the one I've temporarily named "History Hates Lovers", until I come up with something better. I hope that doing a project I've looked forward to will motivate me, and not just end up making it come out like garbage. A lot of today was pooling together the research and resources regarding the relevant topics. Research is one of my favorite parts of writing, especially for something like "History Hates Lovers" which largely relies on historical elements, so I'm having fun with it.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Bake no Hana - ami

Path: Moonlight Trail
My goal: 25,000
Minimum words to hit each day: 834
Current word count: 1,647
Current average words per day: 549

Feeling super hyped for RDMO!! The community is super kind and supportive, and the leaderboard does a hell of a lot for my motivation. (I've been in 4th place this whole time, and I wanna break top 3 so bad...!)

I'm a little worried about the upcoming days, though. As much as November has been codified as THE writing challenge month, it's such an inconvenient time... Exams are coming up for me!! I have a midterm this week, and I'm worried that I'm gonna be burnt out from it. I've purposefully been trying to cut myself off relatively early each day, to pace myself, but with the way things are lining up, I may have to end up taking days off anyway. Sigh... I wish these events took place in any month except for November...

Nonetheless, I'm full of motivation and not feeling even a little bit tired, which is awesome! I'll do my best to address the test when I get to it, and not let it stress me out.

Below are the graphics that I've made with the official affiliated templates! Open them in a new tab to get a closer look! (Since I'm not working on one project, but multiple, I just used a project I'm particularly excited about for the blueprint graphic!)

Graphic about a writing work in progress

Current Mood: motivated
Current Music: Fresh Laundry - Allie X

Series Title: How to Act Like a Human
Fandom: Delicious in Dungeon
Rating: General Audiences
Pairings: Kabru & Laios Touden, Kabru & Milsiril
Prompts: Masking, "Doesn't Everybody Do That?", Stop Treating Me Like a Child, Two Disabled Characters' Relationships
Achievements: Diamonds and Dynamite, All the Same Source, Gensplosion
Series Summary: My fics for the People with Disabilities Drabblefest Bingo! All featuring autistic Kabru, and a multiple of 100 for the wordcount (up to 400).
Links: Archive of Our Own | Squidgeworld | Dreamwidth

Above is a copy of what I just posted to

allbingo! Super excited to have completed (and blacked out!) my first-ever fic bingo.

Not that I have time to rest, of course! This was the only writing project I had left over from October... so now, it's time to LOCK THE FUCK IN for Rough Draft Month!!!

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: IDSMILE - moon jelly x rachie

You'll recall I previously posted about being interested in NaNoWriMo alternatives. As such, I've gone through some of the most commonly-recommended ones, and written up a list of relevant information! This was originally written just for myself, but I thought it might be useful to others, too.

I considered:

Timing
Professionalism
Inclusiveness
Community
Gamification
AI stance
And anything else that may be interesting or relevant!

So, here is the information I've gathered!

( Continue? )

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Positive - Legally Blonde: The Musical

Right now, I've got a few things I need to work on!

Vgen art commission (priority, gonna work on this when my boyfriend can call! it's yumeship art so I'm excited)
Winter Wonderland Pokemon Zine writing entry (secondary priority, must be done before October 21st)
Disabled Character Drabblefest (not a priority, just for fun, but I want to get the last two prompts done before October ends)
Eventually, the Consumed By Desire Flash Exchange! (Will be priority once it comes around)

( Non-explicit talk on the subject of kink under the cut... Continue? )

I'm also debating whether or not I should participate in NaNoWriMo. After all of their bullshittery with AI, I really do not want to support them, but also, I really liked doing NaNoWriMo last year!! I might just search for an alternative that anti-AI writers have put together. I don't have any doubts that it's been done already... But I dunno, the whole thing of "writing as much as you can in November" started because of NaNoWriMo. It feels more in line with what I want to do to do it in another month entirely. But the whole reason why NaNoWriMo was so good wasn't because of the whole "a month to focus on your writing" thing; it was the community, the fact that so many writers were also doing the same thing that you were doing, at the same time.

It is still wild to me that, after over 2 decades, AI was the hill that NaNoWriMo ultimately chose to die on. Even after so many writers quit and they lost sponsors, their one singular AI sponsor was enough for them to kill their community for. Capitalism truly is the antithesis of community, I suppose. (Linked is an article on the subject that I would tattoo on my forehead if I could.)

On the bright side, at least their pro-AI stance is what introduced me to Ellipsus, a fantastic Google Doc alternative! ... through it publicly retracting its sponsor of NaNoWriMo because of its AI stance! It's so much better than Google Docs, ugh. It's obviously anti-AI, but also it has a chat function, and the people who run it are anti-capitalists (hell yeah) who claim their mission statement is putting writers first. It also, of course, has all the great features of Google Docs, like commenting and suggesting edits. I don't fully trust any companies on principle, but you can bet your ass I at least trust this company more than goddamn Google.

Current Mood: rejuvenated
Current Music: Duvet - bôa

This is my card for the People With Disabilities Drabble Fest over in

allbingo! I'm going to try to get a blackout, so I can get some practice in for writing shorter-form fanfic.

I don't know if all of them will be drabbles exactly, but I'm going to try to go for a quintuple-drabble (500 words) at most, and to land on an exact multiple of 100. Which is to say, I'll making my fics either 100, 200, 300, 400 or 500 words exactly! (Or will be trying to, anyways.) Also, all of them will probably be about Kabru because I am, as they say, very Not Normal about Dungeon Meshi at the moment. In fact, the perfection of the suggested prompt "stop treating me like a child" for Kabru is what made me want to try this in the first place.

My first ever writing bingo challenge! Let's get to it!

Masking	"Doesn't Everybody Do That?"
Stop Treating Me Like a Child	Two Disabled Characters' Relationship

Current Mood: thoughtful

You're afraid to be corny, but I was born on the cob

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