How it works
Jan. 6th, 2016 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceuI haven't been asked directly how my creative process works (though it was a ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge last year) but I like talking about it! Mostly because I like sharing it and also because I like reading how other people write and create, so hopefully this motivates someone? to also write about how they write stuff :D
I'm a really spontaneous person and almost every time I do something different to change my creative process, because I like seeing if stuff works or doesn't for me. And even if it doesn't the first time around, I might end up trying it again in the future in case I've changed, or if that was just a fluke or whatever... but the point is, I like to try different things, and I like to see if old habits have changed or certain strategies just really don't work for me.
PLANNING
So! Sometimes I plan, sometimes I don't. GRRM says writers are either gardeners or architects, where you either plan shit or you're spontaneous. Stephen King calls them plotters and pantsers. Both of them are pansters/gardeners - they just start somewhere, anywhere, and go off without really having an outline. But JKR and several other authors I admire are architects/plotters - they outline!
For me, it depends on the length. And even then, it just depends on the story. Earlier this year I wrote a 15k thing without plotting a single scene; I had vague ideas for what I wanted to happen in it, but I didn't even bother writing it down. I just started writing and went to see what happened with it.
I have four different planning strategies: no plan, plan as I go, full brief plan, and full detailed plan. I find that plan as I go/full brief plan tend to be the easiest and also most effective for me, in terms of enjoying writing and being effective.
No plan is essentially what it sounds like - I don't write with a plan, but I have a really solid premise. I have a direction that I want the story to go in. If I'm planning on writing a practice kissing fic, I don't start with writing the kissing - I start writing the scene(s) beforehand and eventually try to pander the scenes to lead up to that event. And while I'm writing those scenes, I don't plan or outline what's going to happen next. I just keep going - I focus toward that end goal, keep driving towards it, while keeping the pacing and trying to build enough tension so that end goal feels like a victory.
Sometimes this can be really short, if the distance between the starting point and the end goal are short. It can also be really long - for Placebo Effect, my end goal was Sugapieissofly's art scene, because that was what inspired me. My beginning point was Cartman's missing presence in the art. Where was he? He was dead. How did he become dead? How old was he? That was where I started writing that fic - I didn't plan any of it beforehand, I started from Cartman's death and built up to that scene.
Of course, not every story I write spontaneously is going to have that beginning-to-end goal relationship. A lot of times, actually, the "end goal" - the idea, the prompt - that is the beginning, or it's not even a scene but just a general idea, mood, tone, or plot I want to have for the story without having many concrete ideas. This is when this can get more unreliable, as I try to work with the first thing that comes to mind, or I have to trust my creative brain and my words to come up with the scenes and plot points that follow without planning. It can happen - a number of my successes have turned out this way - but it can also flop, badly, which is also why I have so many stories I don't ever plan on finishing because the process I used didn't work and I can't come up with any better ideas for them.
Plan as I go kind of builds off no plan - that always starts with me writing the first scene, or the first few scenes, then taking a break and determining where I want the fic to go from there. This usually has to do with pacing and major scenes/conflicts (like confessions, breakups, etc.) and/or shit that I want to happen later. I also might just have scenes in mind to put in the fic but I don't actually know when they'll happen, so I'll splash them down and keep glancing at the note until I finally get to it.
For my long NaNo fic this year, actually, I think it falls under this category. I honestly had no idea how long time-wise the fic would be (that it would span over a year or so) but I had a starting point and scattered few scenes I wanted to do in the future. I'd plan maybe a month's worth of events of the fic, write that, then plan the next month/significant chunk of time. I divided the fic into arcs, though I didn't know how many arcs it would be - I just knew when the current arc would end; after that, I'd stop and plan the next arc.
To be honest, I like this best, because it lets me build off of new ideas I might get while writing, while not pushing for me to look too much into the future, with what I have. But on the other end it can be really unreliable, especially when I'm done a scene and I don't have any ideas or inspiration with what might happen later, but I know the story's not over. So it can be fickle, and lead to roadblocks - I have a lot of WIPs on my computer because of this, haha.
Full brief plan is nice, but can also fuck with my pacing and make me excited to work on more fun scenes, haha. Basically I outline the whole thing before I write, but it's really not much: I'll have things like:
e.g. with Lose Lose, I wrote things like "4k of sex" and "6k of angst" to balance out the time the reader spends enduring the sex and angst and the polarizing time or mood switch. That's what's successful a lot about my outlines like this: I can control the emotive pacing really well when I know how long the reader is going to spend in one atmosphere before I begin to alter it to another. Similarly, for NMW I had all the childhood friends scene ideas splashed down, then I organized them in a timely fashion and tried to make it so the balance spent from when they were 10 to when they're 15 were all pretty equal, or at least felt so in a way where a single day in elementary school can feel like a lifetime, but when you're in middle school everything that happens feels like a major life event.
A full brief plan can also look like this (written down, because handwriting outlines is easier for me since I can hold onto it and I tend to be more concise):
To be fair this was for a fic that ended up 15k (and then 23k when I rewrote it, because the first draft was terrible) but this is pretty much how brief I get. And if it's hard to read, I pretty much briefly wrote what happens in 20 scenes on this single page. The side bracket says "kisses her in every scene."
Full detailed plan can be a good thing. It can also be a bad thing. A lot of times it burns me out; I've fully outlined a lot of stories but never wrote them, and eventually I gave up. I only full-detail plan stories that probably break 35k, and they sometimes have dialogue. I've only actually fully written a full detail planned story twice iirc (maybe three or four times), because outlining takes so much out of me.
For outlines like this, I tend to add more than just the general premise of each scene - in my brief outlines, I plan the scenes to drive the motion and pacing of the fic, not the actual plot. If I'm detailing every scene, it usually means that I'm trying to figure out how each of them contributes to the story. I add what characters talk about, the emotion of the scene, the length of the scene, and in-scene transitions if they stay in that section.
On the topic of writing conversations, for any sort of outline (brief and as I go included) I oftentimes splash down conversation ideas (e.g. "characters talk about their first times," "characters brag about x," "character reveals that they x") because dialogue can be difficult for me sometimes, just in filling up space. A lot of times I go "what do people even talk about;" so just having topics of discussion listed or having places to go off is useful.
A full detailed outline of mine can look like this (written, this one ended up being 28k so I didn't divide it by time like I usually do):
or this (unwritten... lol. most of my outlines end up being this length or longer):
If you try to read, you'll see that I refer to characters by their first initial in my outlines - which is a pretty consistent habit of mine P:
Honestly most of my outlines end up looking a lot clunkier like a giant paragraph so I'm not sure how I found two that look relatively less like that ahaha... Usually (not like the ones above) they're just giant blocks of info dumps! But apparently these times I was feeling less bulky or something.
ETA: This post has better examples of what my outlines look like most of the time.
Like I said before, I tend to separate my detailed outlines by sections/chapters, that are usually defined by time. I like knowing how long each chapter takes place so I know how much immediacy or prose focus to use and what kind of transition strategies to use, though that sort of thing comes up subconsciously. I'm really obsessive about pacing and how much time a reader might spend in a chapter; and the emotional, physical, and psychological transition between scenes/events/chapters. This is pretty much my priority when I'm doing detailed outlines.
But yeah, most of my planning happens on actual pencil and paper. I don't really plan on my computer unless it's straight on the doc for the story itself, which I usually only do for planning as I go, or having the full brief outline. If I fully plan on the computer, I've found that it just feels too much like writing the actual story that I'll get tired; being able to physically carry my plans around and pore over them when I've closed my computer or when I'm just waking up or about to go to sleep - it helps me think more intricately of my story, and get immersed in the world.
Anyway, when I do actually do outline on the computer - meaning, straight in the doc, not in a separate one - it typically looks something like:
I put a lot of line breaks so seeing the outline doesn't distract me from actually writing the fic! But my outlines on my computer are generally in this format, otherwise it'll just be harder for me to access and/or it's unnecessary. I guess technically speaking I work better as a plotter, though I don't necessarily rely on it.
WRITING
The Inspiration
Usually I don't need to cull my inspiration, especially since I tend to write shorter fics, and a lot of them aren't inspired anything external. If I'm driven, I write; even if I'm not driven, I trudge through every sentence until I get something coherent at the end.
For longer fics, sometimes I need to refresh my inspiration. This often (though not always) happens with music; sometimes it can be done from reading other people's fics (like during my H/D phase); other times it's just any piece of media, or even non-media, that fits the tone of my story and helps me feel like I'm a part of the story.
I'm a really empathetic writer - I like to feel like I'm the character, or in their head, or can at least dig into their psyche and temporarily apply it to my own.necessarian asked me a while back what the most important thing for me in my fic is, and I guess generally it would be perspective - knowing the mindset I have to have before writing a fic - but closer and more specifically it would be the id. It would be how I can feel like I'm in the story, so I can get more comfortable with other things, like dialogue and action and reaction and other sorts of things. This is mostly a mental process, though; but knowing who I am in relation to the story is a strong inspiration and strategy of mine.
And then there's the more common (and more obvious) source of inspiration - music. For me, the application of music to my writing really depends on how long I plan on writing the fic! If it spans for more than two days and it's long, I like to create playlists, or at least a single song. I don't like writing while listening to music so it's more for me to get into the mood to write than to write along with it. Like, for my NaNo longfic, I had a playlist that I would listen to almost every day while I wasn't writing, just to get me emotional and to think about my fic because all together the songs put me into the mood. It especially worked since I tried to emotionally transition the fic, deliberately, so the songs I pieced together also transitioned in a similar fashion, in terms of style.
If the fic is particularly inspired or prompted by a certain song (e.g. High High, or Falling Slowly) I'd just listen to it while I'm doing random other things to bring it out of focus but keep my mind on it, since I'm a forgetful person. Once I feel like I've hit an emotional enough point to work on it, I'd pause and go to my fic :D This works with my playlist fics, too! Generally I live this on/off life with my music inspiration, but quite a lot of times it just helps me to the atmosphere and tone of the story down, before I actually write the words.
Sometimes my writing can be influenced by other people's writing - if the pace in someone else's story is fast or captures my attention, I'll want to take breaks every so often and reread theirs, to put me into that mindset of that person's prose. I don't actually deliberately try to emulate it, but it's a good driving force. I guess this is kind of vague; like in 2011 when I was descending into H/D a lot (lol) I read and reread Faith Wood's stuff all the time because her prose has a really good rhythm and it just made me want to write. Same with a lot of writers who I consider better than me - I usually can tell if a writer is better than me if I don't want to compare my prose to theirs, and if reading theirs motivates me to write. This isn't symptomatic, but after several years, it's a pretty good indicator for me.
If I'm prompted by something, like a poem or an image, I'll probably come back to it a lot to try to capture the atmosphere of it. Atmosphere is really important to me because it helps me arrange my syntax to thread the mood in. Same goes for music, though sound interpretation vs. visual interpretation might be different, I guess.
More or less, a lot of times inspiration doesn't matter to me, because I often work with more concrete ideas for shorter stuff, than an abstract idea and/or longer stories (which I definitely need constant inspiration for, unless it's really self-indulgent.) But when I do need it, I construct it on its own but separate from my actual prose; they're different entities for me.
The Research
Research! I actually research while I'm writing; unless I can't start a fic until I do research - and this usually has to do with when research is needed for a large basis of the fic, like if it's going to start in a library that exists in real life but I don't know what the library looks like. Or if I'm writing Pokemon fic - for which I pretty much forget everything, especially a character's backstory - and I have to reread like forty pages on Bulbapedia.
But otherwise, often I don't know what I have to research until I write the fic, or I'm just like "well I'm going to forget it if I research now but don't need it right away, so I'll just wait until I get to that point." Again this is really subjective stuff, but it's how it happens a lot - I'll be like "frick what do blue macaws eat" and go on Google Chrome and look up some stuff, go back to writing, then go "wait what's a restaurant near the Facebook offices," go back to Google Chrome and look up stuff before going back to writing.
On the occasion where I'm writing something where I don't trust my research abilities and/or I don't have internet at the moment, I'll put unknown information in a bracket, e.g. "Joaquin and Manolo ate [common homemade Mexican food]" so it's easy for me to find when I go back and edit. But usually if it's something I know I can find easily I'll look it up mid-writing; sometimes I do this on my phone instead if I'm writing on my computer and don't trust myself to not get distracted. Other times if I feel like personal experiences/anecdotes would be more helpful and I have a friend who can tell me (e.g. Japanese weddings), I'd ask them instead - I think personal experience from someone I know is a more reliable source than random internet searching.
On the whole, I don't like writing about stuff I don't know much about, or can't discover a lot about. This is why I like learning and experiencing new things! So I can find more stuff to write about :D
The Medium
In terms of writing, I always vary mediums. It's why I like asking people what they use to write, plus details.
I used to write longhand a lot - I'd always have to type up stuff. This was in high school, though, when I couldn't carry my laptop everywhere, so I always carried an actual physical notebook with me! My mood would vary if I would rather write in college-ruled notebooks or wide-ruled notebooks so sometimes I had two; I also prefer writing in pen because pencil is slow (and smudges) and my brain goes fast - though I guess when it's going slower I like pencil. Ink pens are also slow, but they're fun to use; I can write about five hundred words or so in them until I get tired. I generally prefer the pacing of ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils, since they're similar in pace for me and steady enough for me to use.
I also had small notebooks from like Asia and shit, or just other small notebooks! They were okay to write in, sometimes preferable if I was feeling more experimental or less obsessive. I've tried a whole bunch of things - on plain sheets of paper, on the back of church bulletins, things like that. I have folders and so many notebooks of stuff I handwrote. Sometimes if I was feeling weird or bad in the middle of using one writing instrument, I'd switch; or if I preferred a different color; so a lot of times mid-fic and mid-page it would just randomly change mid-sentence (and sometimes mid-word! or mid-paragraph, etc.) from a bright pink pen to a pencil or something.
On my computer, I'm no less different! These days I like to wordsprint, though I commonly associate writing wordsprint stories with longer fics - I wrote all of Early Ripe on it, as well as the NaNo longfic. It begins to lag at 4k though, so every 4k (which is about two hours for me) I cut and paste it all in Evernote or some other doc before moving on.
I also use Google docs/drive! This also depends on the fic, but usually if I don't anticipate the length, I'd be pretty comfortable with Google drive. I prefer not knowing the word count/page length of a story tbh (so why I keep using the MWC wordsprint is a mystery to me, not gonna lie) and Google docs tempts me a lot less. Plus, if I don't know what I'm actually doing with the fic, or I have a steady momentum, it's pretty good at blocking things out for me!
I've also written in Evernote, though I use it better when I'm writing something really private - that sounds diary-like, but I mostly just mean stuff I don't plan on posting, or something I'm writing more for myself. I wrote the kagetsuki thing in it, but that's because the kagetsuki thing was part of my October advent calendar - I wrote almost all of my advcal fics on Evernote because that was my goal rather than for something else. I don't like widening the evernote screen to block stuff out, though (and it begins lagging at a certain point, so I have to make it in a separate screen on my desktop and then narrow it) because then I start noticing lengths of paragraphs and I don't like noticing stuff like that, haha.
A lot of times I write in WordPress - directly on my website (arose.nu)! I have a page draft, actually, reserved for story writing. It's really nice for me because it doesn't separate by page, and it's formatted differently from most word processors. And sometimes wordcounts aren't as distracting as they are otherwise! I wrote all of Lose Lose (30k) on WP, as well as the first chapter of Solstice (15k) haha. The Georgia/monotype fonts are soothing to me, and WordPress is generally more convenient to format on, so I use it frequently for other things, too P:
On occasion I use MS Word, but not a lot. That's also for personal stuff (especially stuff I know I'm never gonna post/finish) because the momentum and association I have with it is that it's a separate app that's on my personal computer and not connected to the web. So that's how I feel usually when I'm writing in it.
I've also used my computer's raw text editor (this is TextEdit for Mac, though I do prefer PC's Notepad) because that's also more simplistic and lets me isolate myself and not really pay attention to length while I'm writing in it. I've used Onword once for a fic in the middle of writer's block; I've also written directly on AO3, LJ, and DW before! Though those were in the middle of writer's block, too. There was a chunk of time in 2012 where I wrote directly on Tumblr and then saved the stuff as drafts so they wouldn't post; when I write in more informal mediums like this, I pay less attention to length and more to content, which is my goal.
In 2010-2011 I also wrote a lot on 750words; and if I'm ever feeling like it sometimes I still do! Not so frequently, though - lately I've been writing in Evernote and MWC's wordsprints. But I don't run by any consistency - I might find a different medium in the future.
If I'm writing longfic, I like to divide the docs up (drive, Evernote, MWC, etc) while I write, because it usually tends to lag, or I like to split by momentum so when I start a new doc, I feel like I'm refreshing myself. I also like writing on my phone's notes if I'm feeling slower, or if it's more convenient. And when the situation provides, I like writing on desktops and other people's computers, to get the feel of their keyboard and see how their computer's dimensions compare to what I'm used to.
The Setting
I think I'm a pretty versatile writer; I can get a lot done in mornings, but since I procrastinate on sleep a lot, I also usually get a lot done at night. More often than not I'm writing at night because I'm such an awful procrastinator (though I really want to change that.) Writing during the day feels kind of weird for me, like standing under fluorescent lights or staying in Walmart for too long. I can do it and have done it and probably will still do it, of course; just in terms of mood it feels weird.
I like finishing things as soon as I start them, even if I don't always do. This is why I tend to stay up late if I'm in the middle of writing fic - I don't like waiting for a stopping point, really, especially if I'm particularly inspired. If I hit a stopping point, great. If I don't, it's time to keep going. I get really pissy if I'm interrupted or have to do something or go to class, if I'm in the zone; this is probably why it was a good thing I handwrote a lot in high school, as my brain was forced to work slower and I handled interruptions well.
I can write in public, but I prefer writing in private. It doesn't matter where I am as long as I feel closed off, wherever I am; if I was in my dorm room and my roommate knew I was writing and didn't try to interact with me that much; if I'm in my kitchen while everyone's asleep; if I'm in a restaurant by myself and have my laptop with me. Though usually these days I've been writing in the guest room in my house's study room (which is one of the most isolated rooms in my house) or my room. I like switching between lying horizontal (either leaned back or on my stomach - I like both positions), and sitting up with my legs perpendicular and my feet on the ground. If I'm writing in the guest study room I move between the desk and the couch - I can't stay in one position for too long, but I also don't want to get up and take a break, so I just change up the position I'm in to continue writing.
It's harder for me to write around friends unless we're all writing, or they're not trying to interact with me and I feel isolated. Basically, I need to trick myself into feeling alone so I can be productive; I also need to feel mostly physically competent, so if I feel achey or particularly tired, I'm a lot more reluctant to work (as is anyone) and sometimes just don't try to accomplish anything.
Sometimes I close Chrome and put DND on my phone while I'm working. And a couple of months ago, I used SelfControl on my computer to make me write and not check anything while writing; I know my own weaknesses, haha. It's a very mental thing but I know how to trigger it, and the convenient thing about owning a Mac is that there's no taskbar, so that can make me lose track of everything else while I'm writing, too.
The Process
I always write linearly. Always. I don't necessarily mean in time chronological order, because if I'm writing something nonlinear, I'll still start with the scene that the fic starts in, and end with the scene that the fic ends in. I write the fic like how it's meant to be read.
I do have a WIP, actually, that I've been attempting to write nonlinearly - it's really weird, to jump between scenes and change moods. I prefer linear writing because I'm a very "in the moment" person and I like experiencing scene transitions the way the reader might experience them, because it's important for me to capture that experience. This is what linear writing does, for me - I know people like to jump ahead and write scenes that they look forward to writing (and I did this, once - and I never wrote any other scene for it) - but the anticipation of writing all the scenes building up to the ones I want to write is important for me. Once I get there, I feel like I can perfectly capture the tone that I want to have.
I do my best to write without getting distracted (although sometimes I do.) Sometimes I even turn off grammar and spelling fixers - I actually prefer shit without grammar fixers, as I break rules all the time (fragments, prepositions at ends of sentences) and these things can be visual distractions to me. Spelling I can deal with, both in fixing as I go or just having typos and not noticing, since this happens to me if I'm using uncommon/non-English character names. But yeah, the grammar one is especially noticeable and interruptive for me.
I don't like editing as I go because of all of this - I like having momentum and pushing through stuff; I like running with my muse. Editing is always last for me, and I prefer to put the words down first! I usually trust myself to come back and edit later... even if I end up forgetting and not doing so.
The Schedule
For longer fics, sometimes I do schedule when and how much I write for certain days; but this only happens when I'm going off a full outline, either detailed or brief. I don't have word count goals as much as I have scene goals, especially since I tend to vastly underestimate my word counts for longer fics.
I don't really keep track - I'm really bad at keeping track, I gave up on MWC after a month (though I'll probably fix it.) If I really hit a roadblock or a major emotional turning point and I'm not on a deadline, I'll probably take a break for a bit before resuming, so it feels like I'm writing a new fic again. If I am on a deadline, I just keep pushing through as best as I can, writing during every bit of my free time, rather than planning myself out. This way I can finish sooner and polish stuff up later.
I'm really bad at keeping to a schedule too; sometimes I'll conjure one up to at least try to make myself productive. But in the end, I know that I probably won't stick to it. I write based on feeling, but that feeling includes my constant desire to finish, which can dominate laziness or lack of muse. This is generally what drives me to be such a fast writer and also to write so much - I never plan this shit, I'm always like, well, this is a thing that I want to write, and I should finish it as soon as I can with all the time and energy I can use. Who needs sleep.
TITILING
Titling usually comes last. Sometimes I can come up with a title while writing - and infrequently but not impossibly beforehand - but 90% of the time I do titles last. More often than not I title stuff after writing but before editing, just so I have a pretty name to save the story as. Sometimes I don't and title shit after I edit. Sometimes I title even after I've posted - I come up with something placeholder, and edit it later (e.g. Mintonette -> Far Between Victory; Colored Fields in Greyscale Hearts -> Crown of Thorns; Heart of Gold -> golden hearted.)
Depending on the fic, it can take me ages to come up with a title I'm happy with. Especially if it's something long and that I put a lot of heart in - I want the title to feel perfect for the fic. It took me about twenty-four hours to come up with the title for No Matter What; it took me almost a week to title two in a crowded room while others fade away (for the latter, I'd been trying to find a proper song to actually gather inspiration for for a title, for days.)
I'll make a full post on my actual writing blog about titles later - but yeah, in terms of process, this is where titling goes and how long it takes. Though sometimes I try to think of titles while I edit, if I'm short on time.
EDITING
Ah yes, the fun part.
To be honest, I don't like editing my writing? Well, that's a lie - I just mean right afterward, when I'm done and tired and I don't want to think about the story anymore, haha. I can't deal with the immediacy, because it's poking holes in something I just made.
I used to - and sometimes still do, when time doesn't allow or I'm too eager to post - not edit my stuff before I posted it. That was because I didn't feel like the public deserved my best, though to be fair this was all original fiction and my whole mindset was "well if someone were to plagiarize this they would plagiarize this draft with flaws," haha. But mostly if I feel something isn't too bad and I want to post it right away, I'll just skive off on the editing and figure it's good enough.
But, for the most part, I edit my own stuff. This isn't particularly reliable I suppose, because I'm used to my own writing so sometimes I don't catch the errors that a fresh pair of eyes might. If the story in question is relatively short, I'm not hugely worried as it's generally less likely for big issues to crop up in shorter stories, statistically speaking. So for most stories under 5k, I'm my own beta.
If I don't like the fic as soon as I finish it, or even longer afterward (though my immediate reaction is usually similar to my later reactions; I usually read my own fic for fun the next day to reflect on my productivity unless I'm in a period of massive self-loathing), I look for a beta. This is like One Quarter Cup of Sugar, which I honestly edited about five times beforehand for a week and hated it and didn't know why; I askednecessarian to beta it about two months afterward. Having her enjoy it convinced me that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was, so it might've just been a weird mood at the time. These are pretty much the only instances I ask someone to beta something short for me - when my mood is bad.
If it's for a longer thing, and especially if it's for an event, I try to secure one or two betas beforehand. But oftentimes I'm too caught up in the fic that I don't want to think about it when it's done, so I look/ask around for editing help afterward. I have a handful of friends who I tend to go to, first (necessarian, static_abyss, nute, intricacies, I think uglyanimeboys will become a part of this group too) - but if the fandom doesn't apply I'll ask in public. I also have my Official Beta! Though he's for original stuff, and I haven't written stuff for him to read in a while.
Also for events: if there's a signup for beta work, I'll probably ask around on that post, too! I like having new eyes, especially people who've never read my writing before, editing my stuff.
On editing my own work:
I'm pretty standard - for short stuff, I just read in the medium I wrote in, or AO3 if I'm eager to post already and want to see how it looks and reads. I usually like to give myself a few days after finishing to edit and then post, depending on the fic, but, uh, I trust myself a lot so sometimes I post like, ten minutes after a reread or something.
Editing my own work is usually the first step in my editing process, and also my last. Even if I get other people to look over a fic for me, when they're done and I've made the necessary changes, I'll read it once more to make sure it looks good. If it's a particularly long fic that I don't have additional betas for (e.g. Placebo Effect), I'll definitely read it at least three times, in different mental states, to catch and fix as many flaws as I can. I like to think that I'm pretty good from separating and compartmentalizing myself as a writer vs. as a reader - again, I put a lot of faith in myself.
If convenience allows, I prefer editing longhand - printing my fic out (double spaced) and reading and editing on paper. Even if I'd originally written a story by hand, I'd still type it up and print it out before editing it. It's easier for me, somehow: I get better tunnel vision and am able to read both as a reader and an editor and make more effective changes. This especially goes for longfic, since I like seeing the physical edits. It's just easier for me to read stuff objectively when I can hold it and it looks consistent.
On other people editing my work:
I don't really evaluate skill level; I mostly just make sure that the friend I send my writing to a) enjoys my writing, but b) isn't afraid to be brutal and honest to make my writing even better. With a stranger, well, I'll pick and choose based on personal values - but the people I listed above are people I trust to beta this way ^^;;
Under this category I'll also slot in wordcounter.net and writewords' frequency phrase counter, too - wordcounter can track most often used words, while writerwords' frequency phrase counter, uh, checks phrase frequency. These are newer developments that I'm going to start using, but they've already begun to be pretty convenient with how I've used them so far P:
Frequently after sending my stories to my betas and then getting them back - especially with my Official Beta, because he is incredibly effective and always has a lot to say - I have to wait for a bit until I'm in a stable mental state and my ego is sizable but not fragile, before I look over beta notes, so I don't feel like I fucked everything up. If this is with a fic I'm not hugely fond of, though, I tend to be less sensitive; if it's longer and took more time/effort, that's usually when I'm more sensitive, especially since edit suggestions usually have to do with altering a bit of the story itself. I do get to everything eventually, though - sooner if I'm on a deadline! I just don't have very thick skin so it can be pretty easy to get under it.
But as it goes, I like showing stuff to people and expecting - and receiving - harsher criticism. I like knowing where I can improve on my writing so I can fix it, both in the current story and in the future. I like knowing how I can be better; at the end of the day, if my writing doesn't get a lot of constructive criticism (when I ask for it), I don't feel as accomplished! So usually I'm most confident and comfortable in the finished product if I send it to multiple betas than to one (which is what happens most of the time.) It's also why I really like IRL writing workshops, because I get input from multiple people at a time, and I can see who gets what I'm trying to write, who's confused, who likes my stuff, who doesn't - I just get a variety of feedback, which contributes the most to my growth.
I don't use a lot of funky tools and quite honestly I don't spend enough time editing as I probably should, but that tends to be because I write shorter stuff that I might put less effort into (or that I like the first time around) so I don't really see the point of editing it to hell and back. I tend to take editing more seriously when it comes to longer fics, because I want the time and effort to show - and it does.
SAVING AND POSTING
I have a copy of nearly every fic I've ever written onaroceu, with few categorical exceptions. I even have WIP amnesties there!
Generally I like keeping all of my fic in one place, but also one place only - cross-saving and posting is too much work, especially when I like having accurate timestamps. Evernote is especially convenient with this, in that I can save everything and organize everything by folder, but also change the dates. I've been using Evernote basically for the past year or so - I moved literally everything I ever wrote there - to save my fic, but it's my fic account, so it's not like I'm mixing it with irrelevant IRL stuff.
I do keep my copies of old MS Word docs on my computer, and I never delete anything from google drive (although I've had so many gmail accounts I just keep switching owners.) I do delete stuff on my phone for space, though, but that's pretty much it! I don't like deleting first drafts of stuff when I finish them otherwise (save for like, MWC word sprints and wordpress and stuff like that.)
Anyway, after saving my own not-so-private copy - hi Evernote team, I hope you enjoy all the M/E porn on my Evernote account - I post to AO3! I've stopped posting to LJ and any other site because I'm lazy, though I do crosspost links to Tumblr. And I've kind of gotten over original fiction (but I haven't even written much anyway), so I'm not really posting to FictionPress anymore.
So... after that... I'm finished? That's what it looks like, anyway; but every so often I feel like reading my own fic, or just feel like looking something over and correcting it, so I read the fic as it's posted, as I feel more comfortable with reading for editing/enjoyment if I can't fix it right away. I occasionally make tweaks here and there even when I'm done, but I try not to make it too significant so people won't notice that much if they reread ^^;
And that's it! That's my writing process. This was a very long post. But I like talking about stuff from beginning to end, because I like finishing, and I like perfecting, and I like figuring out what works for me and what doesn't. If I ever discover something new, I'll probably edit this post and add it c:
snowflake_challenge last year) but I like talking about it! Mostly because I like sharing it and also because I like reading how other people write and create, so hopefully this motivates someone? to also write about how they write stuff :DI'm a really spontaneous person and almost every time I do something different to change my creative process, because I like seeing if stuff works or doesn't for me. And even if it doesn't the first time around, I might end up trying it again in the future in case I've changed, or if that was just a fluke or whatever... but the point is, I like to try different things, and I like to see if old habits have changed or certain strategies just really don't work for me.
PLANNING
So! Sometimes I plan, sometimes I don't. GRRM says writers are either gardeners or architects, where you either plan shit or you're spontaneous. Stephen King calls them plotters and pantsers. Both of them are pansters/gardeners - they just start somewhere, anywhere, and go off without really having an outline. But JKR and several other authors I admire are architects/plotters - they outline!
For me, it depends on the length. And even then, it just depends on the story. Earlier this year I wrote a 15k thing without plotting a single scene; I had vague ideas for what I wanted to happen in it, but I didn't even bother writing it down. I just started writing and went to see what happened with it.
I have four different planning strategies: no plan, plan as I go, full brief plan, and full detailed plan. I find that plan as I go/full brief plan tend to be the easiest and also most effective for me, in terms of enjoying writing and being effective.
No plan is essentially what it sounds like - I don't write with a plan, but I have a really solid premise. I have a direction that I want the story to go in. If I'm planning on writing a practice kissing fic, I don't start with writing the kissing - I start writing the scene(s) beforehand and eventually try to pander the scenes to lead up to that event. And while I'm writing those scenes, I don't plan or outline what's going to happen next. I just keep going - I focus toward that end goal, keep driving towards it, while keeping the pacing and trying to build enough tension so that end goal feels like a victory.
Sometimes this can be really short, if the distance between the starting point and the end goal are short. It can also be really long - for Placebo Effect, my end goal was Sugapieissofly's art scene, because that was what inspired me. My beginning point was Cartman's missing presence in the art. Where was he? He was dead. How did he become dead? How old was he? That was where I started writing that fic - I didn't plan any of it beforehand, I started from Cartman's death and built up to that scene.
Of course, not every story I write spontaneously is going to have that beginning-to-end goal relationship. A lot of times, actually, the "end goal" - the idea, the prompt - that is the beginning, or it's not even a scene but just a general idea, mood, tone, or plot I want to have for the story without having many concrete ideas. This is when this can get more unreliable, as I try to work with the first thing that comes to mind, or I have to trust my creative brain and my words to come up with the scenes and plot points that follow without planning. It can happen - a number of my successes have turned out this way - but it can also flop, badly, which is also why I have so many stories I don't ever plan on finishing because the process I used didn't work and I can't come up with any better ideas for them.
Plan as I go kind of builds off no plan - that always starts with me writing the first scene, or the first few scenes, then taking a break and determining where I want the fic to go from there. This usually has to do with pacing and major scenes/conflicts (like confessions, breakups, etc.) and/or shit that I want to happen later. I also might just have scenes in mind to put in the fic but I don't actually know when they'll happen, so I'll splash them down and keep glancing at the note until I finally get to it.
For my long NaNo fic this year, actually, I think it falls under this category. I honestly had no idea how long time-wise the fic would be (that it would span over a year or so) but I had a starting point and scattered few scenes I wanted to do in the future. I'd plan maybe a month's worth of events of the fic, write that, then plan the next month/significant chunk of time. I divided the fic into arcs, though I didn't know how many arcs it would be - I just knew when the current arc would end; after that, I'd stop and plan the next arc.
To be honest, I like this best, because it lets me build off of new ideas I might get while writing, while not pushing for me to look too much into the future, with what I have. But on the other end it can be really unreliable, especially when I'm done a scene and I don't have any ideas or inspiration with what might happen later, but I know the story's not over. So it can be fickle, and lead to roadblocks - I have a lot of WIPs on my computer because of this, haha.
Full brief plan is nice, but can also fuck with my pacing and make me excited to work on more fun scenes, haha. Basically I outline the whole thing before I write, but it's really not much: I'll have things like:
- beginning sceneetc. till the end. Those are basically the extent of my notes for my outlines, though I do note exactly how many scenes I want. Sometimes while I write I might scratch stuff or add stuff, but beforehand I determine how many scenes I'm aiming for and the deliberate pacing of the thing, before I write/modify anything.
- [brief description of a scene or two that follows]
- 1 scene in coffee shop
- 3 times @ Character's work
- first kiss!
- 2 scenes of awkwardness
e.g. with Lose Lose, I wrote things like "4k of sex" and "6k of angst" to balance out the time the reader spends enduring the sex and angst and the polarizing time or mood switch. That's what's successful a lot about my outlines like this: I can control the emotive pacing really well when I know how long the reader is going to spend in one atmosphere before I begin to alter it to another. Similarly, for NMW I had all the childhood friends scene ideas splashed down, then I organized them in a timely fashion and tried to make it so the balance spent from when they were 10 to when they're 15 were all pretty equal, or at least felt so in a way where a single day in elementary school can feel like a lifetime, but when you're in middle school everything that happens feels like a major life event.
A full brief plan can also look like this (written down, because handwriting outlines is easier for me since I can hold onto it and I tend to be more concise):
To be fair this was for a fic that ended up 15k (and then 23k when I rewrote it, because the first draft was terrible) but this is pretty much how brief I get. And if it's hard to read, I pretty much briefly wrote what happens in 20 scenes on this single page. The side bracket says "kisses her in every scene."
Full detailed plan can be a good thing. It can also be a bad thing. A lot of times it burns me out; I've fully outlined a lot of stories but never wrote them, and eventually I gave up. I only full-detail plan stories that probably break 35k, and they sometimes have dialogue. I've only actually fully written a full detail planned story twice iirc (maybe three or four times), because outlining takes so much out of me.
For outlines like this, I tend to add more than just the general premise of each scene - in my brief outlines, I plan the scenes to drive the motion and pacing of the fic, not the actual plot. If I'm detailing every scene, it usually means that I'm trying to figure out how each of them contributes to the story. I add what characters talk about, the emotion of the scene, the length of the scene, and in-scene transitions if they stay in that section.
On the topic of writing conversations, for any sort of outline (brief and as I go included) I oftentimes splash down conversation ideas (e.g. "characters talk about their first times," "characters brag about x," "character reveals that they x") because dialogue can be difficult for me sometimes, just in filling up space. A lot of times I go "what do people even talk about;" so just having topics of discussion listed or having places to go off is useful.
A full detailed outline of mine can look like this (written, this one ended up being 28k so I didn't divide it by time like I usually do):
or this (unwritten... lol. most of my outlines end up being this length or longer):
If you try to read, you'll see that I refer to characters by their first initial in my outlines - which is a pretty consistent habit of mine P:
Honestly most of my outlines end up looking a lot clunkier like a giant paragraph so I'm not sure how I found two that look relatively less like that ahaha... Usually (not like the ones above) they're just giant blocks of info dumps! But apparently these times I was feeling less bulky or something.
ETA: This post has better examples of what my outlines look like most of the time.
Like I said before, I tend to separate my detailed outlines by sections/chapters, that are usually defined by time. I like knowing how long each chapter takes place so I know how much immediacy or prose focus to use and what kind of transition strategies to use, though that sort of thing comes up subconsciously. I'm really obsessive about pacing and how much time a reader might spend in a chapter; and the emotional, physical, and psychological transition between scenes/events/chapters. This is pretty much my priority when I'm doing detailed outlines.
But yeah, most of my planning happens on actual pencil and paper. I don't really plan on my computer unless it's straight on the doc for the story itself, which I usually only do for planning as I go, or having the full brief outline. If I fully plan on the computer, I've found that it just feels too much like writing the actual story that I'll get tired; being able to physically carry my plans around and pore over them when I've closed my computer or when I'm just waking up or about to go to sleep - it helps me think more intricately of my story, and get immersed in the world.
Anyway, when I do actually do outline on the computer - meaning, straight in the doc, not in a separate one - it typically looks something like:
He couldn't quite see past the railing. There had to be someone there - he'd definitely heard a splash - but the sea was shrouded in darkness, blah blah blah fic text fic text fic text
[80 line breaks
or smth like that
but it's just a
bunch of white space]
eat together
2 scenes at home??
sex
CONFESSION TIME
enddd and stuff
I put a lot of line breaks so seeing the outline doesn't distract me from actually writing the fic! But my outlines on my computer are generally in this format, otherwise it'll just be harder for me to access and/or it's unnecessary. I guess technically speaking I work better as a plotter, though I don't necessarily rely on it.
WRITING
The Inspiration
Usually I don't need to cull my inspiration, especially since I tend to write shorter fics, and a lot of them aren't inspired anything external. If I'm driven, I write; even if I'm not driven, I trudge through every sentence until I get something coherent at the end.
For longer fics, sometimes I need to refresh my inspiration. This often (though not always) happens with music; sometimes it can be done from reading other people's fics (like during my H/D phase); other times it's just any piece of media, or even non-media, that fits the tone of my story and helps me feel like I'm a part of the story.
I'm a really empathetic writer - I like to feel like I'm the character, or in their head, or can at least dig into their psyche and temporarily apply it to my own.
necessarian asked me a while back what the most important thing for me in my fic is, and I guess generally it would be perspective - knowing the mindset I have to have before writing a fic - but closer and more specifically it would be the id. It would be how I can feel like I'm in the story, so I can get more comfortable with other things, like dialogue and action and reaction and other sorts of things. This is mostly a mental process, though; but knowing who I am in relation to the story is a strong inspiration and strategy of mine.And then there's the more common (and more obvious) source of inspiration - music. For me, the application of music to my writing really depends on how long I plan on writing the fic! If it spans for more than two days and it's long, I like to create playlists, or at least a single song. I don't like writing while listening to music so it's more for me to get into the mood to write than to write along with it. Like, for my NaNo longfic, I had a playlist that I would listen to almost every day while I wasn't writing, just to get me emotional and to think about my fic because all together the songs put me into the mood. It especially worked since I tried to emotionally transition the fic, deliberately, so the songs I pieced together also transitioned in a similar fashion, in terms of style.
If the fic is particularly inspired or prompted by a certain song (e.g. High High, or Falling Slowly) I'd just listen to it while I'm doing random other things to bring it out of focus but keep my mind on it, since I'm a forgetful person. Once I feel like I've hit an emotional enough point to work on it, I'd pause and go to my fic :D This works with my playlist fics, too! Generally I live this on/off life with my music inspiration, but quite a lot of times it just helps me to the atmosphere and tone of the story down, before I actually write the words.
Sometimes my writing can be influenced by other people's writing - if the pace in someone else's story is fast or captures my attention, I'll want to take breaks every so often and reread theirs, to put me into that mindset of that person's prose. I don't actually deliberately try to emulate it, but it's a good driving force. I guess this is kind of vague; like in 2011 when I was descending into H/D a lot (lol) I read and reread Faith Wood's stuff all the time because her prose has a really good rhythm and it just made me want to write. Same with a lot of writers who I consider better than me - I usually can tell if a writer is better than me if I don't want to compare my prose to theirs, and if reading theirs motivates me to write. This isn't symptomatic, but after several years, it's a pretty good indicator for me.
If I'm prompted by something, like a poem or an image, I'll probably come back to it a lot to try to capture the atmosphere of it. Atmosphere is really important to me because it helps me arrange my syntax to thread the mood in. Same goes for music, though sound interpretation vs. visual interpretation might be different, I guess.
More or less, a lot of times inspiration doesn't matter to me, because I often work with more concrete ideas for shorter stuff, than an abstract idea and/or longer stories (which I definitely need constant inspiration for, unless it's really self-indulgent.) But when I do need it, I construct it on its own but separate from my actual prose; they're different entities for me.
The Research
Research! I actually research while I'm writing; unless I can't start a fic until I do research - and this usually has to do with when research is needed for a large basis of the fic, like if it's going to start in a library that exists in real life but I don't know what the library looks like. Or if I'm writing Pokemon fic - for which I pretty much forget everything, especially a character's backstory - and I have to reread like forty pages on Bulbapedia.
But otherwise, often I don't know what I have to research until I write the fic, or I'm just like "well I'm going to forget it if I research now but don't need it right away, so I'll just wait until I get to that point." Again this is really subjective stuff, but it's how it happens a lot - I'll be like "frick what do blue macaws eat" and go on Google Chrome and look up some stuff, go back to writing, then go "wait what's a restaurant near the Facebook offices," go back to Google Chrome and look up stuff before going back to writing.
On the occasion where I'm writing something where I don't trust my research abilities and/or I don't have internet at the moment, I'll put unknown information in a bracket, e.g. "Joaquin and Manolo ate [common homemade Mexican food]" so it's easy for me to find when I go back and edit. But usually if it's something I know I can find easily I'll look it up mid-writing; sometimes I do this on my phone instead if I'm writing on my computer and don't trust myself to not get distracted. Other times if I feel like personal experiences/anecdotes would be more helpful and I have a friend who can tell me (e.g. Japanese weddings), I'd ask them instead - I think personal experience from someone I know is a more reliable source than random internet searching.
On the whole, I don't like writing about stuff I don't know much about, or can't discover a lot about. This is why I like learning and experiencing new things! So I can find more stuff to write about :D
The Medium
In terms of writing, I always vary mediums. It's why I like asking people what they use to write, plus details.
I used to write longhand a lot - I'd always have to type up stuff. This was in high school, though, when I couldn't carry my laptop everywhere, so I always carried an actual physical notebook with me! My mood would vary if I would rather write in college-ruled notebooks or wide-ruled notebooks so sometimes I had two; I also prefer writing in pen because pencil is slow (and smudges) and my brain goes fast - though I guess when it's going slower I like pencil. Ink pens are also slow, but they're fun to use; I can write about five hundred words or so in them until I get tired. I generally prefer the pacing of ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils, since they're similar in pace for me and steady enough for me to use.
I also had small notebooks from like Asia and shit, or just other small notebooks! They were okay to write in, sometimes preferable if I was feeling more experimental or less obsessive. I've tried a whole bunch of things - on plain sheets of paper, on the back of church bulletins, things like that. I have folders and so many notebooks of stuff I handwrote. Sometimes if I was feeling weird or bad in the middle of using one writing instrument, I'd switch; or if I preferred a different color; so a lot of times mid-fic and mid-page it would just randomly change mid-sentence (and sometimes mid-word! or mid-paragraph, etc.) from a bright pink pen to a pencil or something.
On my computer, I'm no less different! These days I like to wordsprint, though I commonly associate writing wordsprint stories with longer fics - I wrote all of Early Ripe on it, as well as the NaNo longfic. It begins to lag at 4k though, so every 4k (which is about two hours for me) I cut and paste it all in Evernote or some other doc before moving on.
I also use Google docs/drive! This also depends on the fic, but usually if I don't anticipate the length, I'd be pretty comfortable with Google drive. I prefer not knowing the word count/page length of a story tbh (so why I keep using the MWC wordsprint is a mystery to me, not gonna lie) and Google docs tempts me a lot less. Plus, if I don't know what I'm actually doing with the fic, or I have a steady momentum, it's pretty good at blocking things out for me!
I've also written in Evernote, though I use it better when I'm writing something really private - that sounds diary-like, but I mostly just mean stuff I don't plan on posting, or something I'm writing more for myself. I wrote the kagetsuki thing in it, but that's because the kagetsuki thing was part of my October advent calendar - I wrote almost all of my advcal fics on Evernote because that was my goal rather than for something else. I don't like widening the evernote screen to block stuff out, though (and it begins lagging at a certain point, so I have to make it in a separate screen on my desktop and then narrow it) because then I start noticing lengths of paragraphs and I don't like noticing stuff like that, haha.
A lot of times I write in WordPress - directly on my website (arose.nu)! I have a page draft, actually, reserved for story writing. It's really nice for me because it doesn't separate by page, and it's formatted differently from most word processors. And sometimes wordcounts aren't as distracting as they are otherwise! I wrote all of Lose Lose (30k) on WP, as well as the first chapter of Solstice (15k) haha. The Georgia/monotype fonts are soothing to me, and WordPress is generally more convenient to format on, so I use it frequently for other things, too P:
On occasion I use MS Word, but not a lot. That's also for personal stuff (especially stuff I know I'm never gonna post/finish) because the momentum and association I have with it is that it's a separate app that's on my personal computer and not connected to the web. So that's how I feel usually when I'm writing in it.
I've also used my computer's raw text editor (this is TextEdit for Mac, though I do prefer PC's Notepad) because that's also more simplistic and lets me isolate myself and not really pay attention to length while I'm writing in it. I've used Onword once for a fic in the middle of writer's block; I've also written directly on AO3, LJ, and DW before! Though those were in the middle of writer's block, too. There was a chunk of time in 2012 where I wrote directly on Tumblr and then saved the stuff as drafts so they wouldn't post; when I write in more informal mediums like this, I pay less attention to length and more to content, which is my goal.
In 2010-2011 I also wrote a lot on 750words; and if I'm ever feeling like it sometimes I still do! Not so frequently, though - lately I've been writing in Evernote and MWC's wordsprints. But I don't run by any consistency - I might find a different medium in the future.
If I'm writing longfic, I like to divide the docs up (drive, Evernote, MWC, etc) while I write, because it usually tends to lag, or I like to split by momentum so when I start a new doc, I feel like I'm refreshing myself. I also like writing on my phone's notes if I'm feeling slower, or if it's more convenient. And when the situation provides, I like writing on desktops and other people's computers, to get the feel of their keyboard and see how their computer's dimensions compare to what I'm used to.
The Setting
I think I'm a pretty versatile writer; I can get a lot done in mornings, but since I procrastinate on sleep a lot, I also usually get a lot done at night. More often than not I'm writing at night because I'm such an awful procrastinator (though I really want to change that.) Writing during the day feels kind of weird for me, like standing under fluorescent lights or staying in Walmart for too long. I can do it and have done it and probably will still do it, of course; just in terms of mood it feels weird.
I like finishing things as soon as I start them, even if I don't always do. This is why I tend to stay up late if I'm in the middle of writing fic - I don't like waiting for a stopping point, really, especially if I'm particularly inspired. If I hit a stopping point, great. If I don't, it's time to keep going. I get really pissy if I'm interrupted or have to do something or go to class, if I'm in the zone; this is probably why it was a good thing I handwrote a lot in high school, as my brain was forced to work slower and I handled interruptions well.
I can write in public, but I prefer writing in private. It doesn't matter where I am as long as I feel closed off, wherever I am; if I was in my dorm room and my roommate knew I was writing and didn't try to interact with me that much; if I'm in my kitchen while everyone's asleep; if I'm in a restaurant by myself and have my laptop with me. Though usually these days I've been writing in the guest room in my house's study room (which is one of the most isolated rooms in my house) or my room. I like switching between lying horizontal (either leaned back or on my stomach - I like both positions), and sitting up with my legs perpendicular and my feet on the ground. If I'm writing in the guest study room I move between the desk and the couch - I can't stay in one position for too long, but I also don't want to get up and take a break, so I just change up the position I'm in to continue writing.
It's harder for me to write around friends unless we're all writing, or they're not trying to interact with me and I feel isolated. Basically, I need to trick myself into feeling alone so I can be productive; I also need to feel mostly physically competent, so if I feel achey or particularly tired, I'm a lot more reluctant to work (as is anyone) and sometimes just don't try to accomplish anything.
Sometimes I close Chrome and put DND on my phone while I'm working. And a couple of months ago, I used SelfControl on my computer to make me write and not check anything while writing; I know my own weaknesses, haha. It's a very mental thing but I know how to trigger it, and the convenient thing about owning a Mac is that there's no taskbar, so that can make me lose track of everything else while I'm writing, too.
The Process
I always write linearly. Always. I don't necessarily mean in time chronological order, because if I'm writing something nonlinear, I'll still start with the scene that the fic starts in, and end with the scene that the fic ends in. I write the fic like how it's meant to be read.
I do have a WIP, actually, that I've been attempting to write nonlinearly - it's really weird, to jump between scenes and change moods. I prefer linear writing because I'm a very "in the moment" person and I like experiencing scene transitions the way the reader might experience them, because it's important for me to capture that experience. This is what linear writing does, for me - I know people like to jump ahead and write scenes that they look forward to writing (and I did this, once - and I never wrote any other scene for it) - but the anticipation of writing all the scenes building up to the ones I want to write is important for me. Once I get there, I feel like I can perfectly capture the tone that I want to have.
I do my best to write without getting distracted (although sometimes I do.) Sometimes I even turn off grammar and spelling fixers - I actually prefer shit without grammar fixers, as I break rules all the time (fragments, prepositions at ends of sentences) and these things can be visual distractions to me. Spelling I can deal with, both in fixing as I go or just having typos and not noticing, since this happens to me if I'm using uncommon/non-English character names. But yeah, the grammar one is especially noticeable and interruptive for me.
I don't like editing as I go because of all of this - I like having momentum and pushing through stuff; I like running with my muse. Editing is always last for me, and I prefer to put the words down first! I usually trust myself to come back and edit later... even if I end up forgetting and not doing so.
The Schedule
For longer fics, sometimes I do schedule when and how much I write for certain days; but this only happens when I'm going off a full outline, either detailed or brief. I don't have word count goals as much as I have scene goals, especially since I tend to vastly underestimate my word counts for longer fics.
I don't really keep track - I'm really bad at keeping track, I gave up on MWC after a month (though I'll probably fix it.) If I really hit a roadblock or a major emotional turning point and I'm not on a deadline, I'll probably take a break for a bit before resuming, so it feels like I'm writing a new fic again. If I am on a deadline, I just keep pushing through as best as I can, writing during every bit of my free time, rather than planning myself out. This way I can finish sooner and polish stuff up later.
I'm really bad at keeping to a schedule too; sometimes I'll conjure one up to at least try to make myself productive. But in the end, I know that I probably won't stick to it. I write based on feeling, but that feeling includes my constant desire to finish, which can dominate laziness or lack of muse. This is generally what drives me to be such a fast writer and also to write so much - I never plan this shit, I'm always like, well, this is a thing that I want to write, and I should finish it as soon as I can with all the time and energy I can use. Who needs sleep.
TITILING
Titling usually comes last. Sometimes I can come up with a title while writing - and infrequently but not impossibly beforehand - but 90% of the time I do titles last. More often than not I title stuff after writing but before editing, just so I have a pretty name to save the story as. Sometimes I don't and title shit after I edit. Sometimes I title even after I've posted - I come up with something placeholder, and edit it later (e.g. Mintonette -> Far Between Victory; Colored Fields in Greyscale Hearts -> Crown of Thorns; Heart of Gold -> golden hearted.)
Depending on the fic, it can take me ages to come up with a title I'm happy with. Especially if it's something long and that I put a lot of heart in - I want the title to feel perfect for the fic. It took me about twenty-four hours to come up with the title for No Matter What; it took me almost a week to title two in a crowded room while others fade away (for the latter, I'd been trying to find a proper song to actually gather inspiration for for a title, for days.)
I'll make a full post on my actual writing blog about titles later - but yeah, in terms of process, this is where titling goes and how long it takes. Though sometimes I try to think of titles while I edit, if I'm short on time.
EDITING
Ah yes, the fun part.
To be honest, I don't like editing my writing? Well, that's a lie - I just mean right afterward, when I'm done and tired and I don't want to think about the story anymore, haha. I can't deal with the immediacy, because it's poking holes in something I just made.
I used to - and sometimes still do, when time doesn't allow or I'm too eager to post - not edit my stuff before I posted it. That was because I didn't feel like the public deserved my best, though to be fair this was all original fiction and my whole mindset was "well if someone were to plagiarize this they would plagiarize this draft with flaws," haha. But mostly if I feel something isn't too bad and I want to post it right away, I'll just skive off on the editing and figure it's good enough.
But, for the most part, I edit my own stuff. This isn't particularly reliable I suppose, because I'm used to my own writing so sometimes I don't catch the errors that a fresh pair of eyes might. If the story in question is relatively short, I'm not hugely worried as it's generally less likely for big issues to crop up in shorter stories, statistically speaking. So for most stories under 5k, I'm my own beta.
If I don't like the fic as soon as I finish it, or even longer afterward (though my immediate reaction is usually similar to my later reactions; I usually read my own fic for fun the next day to reflect on my productivity unless I'm in a period of massive self-loathing), I look for a beta. This is like One Quarter Cup of Sugar, which I honestly edited about five times beforehand for a week and hated it and didn't know why; I asked
necessarian to beta it about two months afterward. Having her enjoy it convinced me that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was, so it might've just been a weird mood at the time. These are pretty much the only instances I ask someone to beta something short for me - when my mood is bad.If it's for a longer thing, and especially if it's for an event, I try to secure one or two betas beforehand. But oftentimes I'm too caught up in the fic that I don't want to think about it when it's done, so I look/ask around for editing help afterward. I have a handful of friends who I tend to go to, first (
necessarian, static_abyss, nute, intricacies, I think uglyanimeboys will become a part of this group too) - but if the fandom doesn't apply I'll ask in public. I also have my Official Beta! Though he's for original stuff, and I haven't written stuff for him to read in a while.Also for events: if there's a signup for beta work, I'll probably ask around on that post, too! I like having new eyes, especially people who've never read my writing before, editing my stuff.
On editing my own work:
I'm pretty standard - for short stuff, I just read in the medium I wrote in, or AO3 if I'm eager to post already and want to see how it looks and reads. I usually like to give myself a few days after finishing to edit and then post, depending on the fic, but, uh, I trust myself a lot so sometimes I post like, ten minutes after a reread or something.
Editing my own work is usually the first step in my editing process, and also my last. Even if I get other people to look over a fic for me, when they're done and I've made the necessary changes, I'll read it once more to make sure it looks good. If it's a particularly long fic that I don't have additional betas for (e.g. Placebo Effect), I'll definitely read it at least three times, in different mental states, to catch and fix as many flaws as I can. I like to think that I'm pretty good from separating and compartmentalizing myself as a writer vs. as a reader - again, I put a lot of faith in myself.
If convenience allows, I prefer editing longhand - printing my fic out (double spaced) and reading and editing on paper. Even if I'd originally written a story by hand, I'd still type it up and print it out before editing it. It's easier for me, somehow: I get better tunnel vision and am able to read both as a reader and an editor and make more effective changes. This especially goes for longfic, since I like seeing the physical edits. It's just easier for me to read stuff objectively when I can hold it and it looks consistent.
On other people editing my work:
I don't really evaluate skill level; I mostly just make sure that the friend I send my writing to a) enjoys my writing, but b) isn't afraid to be brutal and honest to make my writing even better. With a stranger, well, I'll pick and choose based on personal values - but the people I listed above are people I trust to beta this way ^^;;
Under this category I'll also slot in wordcounter.net and writewords' frequency phrase counter, too - wordcounter can track most often used words, while writerwords' frequency phrase counter, uh, checks phrase frequency. These are newer developments that I'm going to start using, but they've already begun to be pretty convenient with how I've used them so far P:
Frequently after sending my stories to my betas and then getting them back - especially with my Official Beta, because he is incredibly effective and always has a lot to say - I have to wait for a bit until I'm in a stable mental state and my ego is sizable but not fragile, before I look over beta notes, so I don't feel like I fucked everything up. If this is with a fic I'm not hugely fond of, though, I tend to be less sensitive; if it's longer and took more time/effort, that's usually when I'm more sensitive, especially since edit suggestions usually have to do with altering a bit of the story itself. I do get to everything eventually, though - sooner if I'm on a deadline! I just don't have very thick skin so it can be pretty easy to get under it.
But as it goes, I like showing stuff to people and expecting - and receiving - harsher criticism. I like knowing where I can improve on my writing so I can fix it, both in the current story and in the future. I like knowing how I can be better; at the end of the day, if my writing doesn't get a lot of constructive criticism (when I ask for it), I don't feel as accomplished! So usually I'm most confident and comfortable in the finished product if I send it to multiple betas than to one (which is what happens most of the time.) It's also why I really like IRL writing workshops, because I get input from multiple people at a time, and I can see who gets what I'm trying to write, who's confused, who likes my stuff, who doesn't - I just get a variety of feedback, which contributes the most to my growth.
I don't use a lot of funky tools and quite honestly I don't spend enough time editing as I probably should, but that tends to be because I write shorter stuff that I might put less effort into (or that I like the first time around) so I don't really see the point of editing it to hell and back. I tend to take editing more seriously when it comes to longer fics, because I want the time and effort to show - and it does.
SAVING AND POSTING
I have a copy of nearly every fic I've ever written on
aroceu, with few categorical exceptions. I even have WIP amnesties there! Generally I like keeping all of my fic in one place, but also one place only - cross-saving and posting is too much work, especially when I like having accurate timestamps. Evernote is especially convenient with this, in that I can save everything and organize everything by folder, but also change the dates. I've been using Evernote basically for the past year or so - I moved literally everything I ever wrote there - to save my fic, but it's my fic account, so it's not like I'm mixing it with irrelevant IRL stuff.
I do keep my copies of old MS Word docs on my computer, and I never delete anything from google drive (although I've had so many gmail accounts I just keep switching owners.) I do delete stuff on my phone for space, though, but that's pretty much it! I don't like deleting first drafts of stuff when I finish them otherwise (save for like, MWC word sprints and wordpress and stuff like that.)
Anyway, after saving my own not-so-private copy - hi Evernote team, I hope you enjoy all the M/E porn on my Evernote account - I post to AO3! I've stopped posting to LJ and any other site because I'm lazy, though I do crosspost links to Tumblr. And I've kind of gotten over original fiction (but I haven't even written much anyway), so I'm not really posting to FictionPress anymore.
So... after that... I'm finished? That's what it looks like, anyway; but every so often I feel like reading my own fic, or just feel like looking something over and correcting it, so I read the fic as it's posted, as I feel more comfortable with reading for editing/enjoyment if I can't fix it right away. I occasionally make tweaks here and there even when I'm done, but I try not to make it too significant so people won't notice that much if they reread ^^;
And that's it! That's my writing process. This was a very long post. But I like talking about stuff from beginning to end, because I like finishing, and I like perfecting, and I like figuring out what works for me and what doesn't. If I ever discover something new, I'll probably edit this post and add it c:
