that’s not to say i don’t value research though. if i’m working with something i know i’m unfamiliar with, i promise i’ll put in the effort to research it well. it’s an ego thing as well, so if i’m tasked to write about something i don’t know, i will put in as much effort as it takes to have it written to some semblance of quality. why is there so much fromis_9 on my youtube for you right now. in one of my previous fandoms, i had a tendency to write about really minor things that a character did/said/experienced that most people forget about just because i would challenge myself to write them, do the research and then find that undeveloped detail fascinating. you know what, talking so much about the amount of research i am willing to do (and enthusiastically!) is clearly also an ego thing for me. i have issues.

this is less true for my casual writing but editing is sometimes the bulk of my writing process. writing multiple versions of the intro, moving scenes around and changing them in their entirety. it’s very obvious when something is polished and when it was written in one sitting. unfortunately, basically all of the fic i write currently fall into the latter category. more on that here. but in terms of putting out actual publication-quality work, editing has to be most of the writing process. if you can, ask fellow writers for feedback, tell them to be as brutal as possible about it. get your feelings hurt, cry, and then start reworking your piece because it sucks to be told that you suck but that’s how you get better. unfortunately i have enough shame to not ask my irls to workshop fanfic, but trust me i do recognize when i write something entirely incoherent. i just close one eye about it. people on the internet are generally too nice to tell you that your attempts to cook may result in food poisoning, unless you ask them for that sort of critique.

okay, that was utterly incoherent. tl;dr:

1. have an image/concept in mind
2. build around it -- how do we get there? how do we resolve what happens after? 2.1. open wikipedia or youtube and go down a rabbit hole for a little while
3. open gdocs and go crazy for a few hours
4. edit? 4.1 and then go insane on gdocs. and edit again. repeat until satisfactory
5. post 5.1. fix the 32437859 typos that suddenly appear

hope this didn’t make me sound either insane or incompetent. everyone has a different writing process, i don’t know how other people do the things they do but this has worked for me thus far. sometimes i loop songs really hard and they drive me insane enough to write (sometimes the image/concept in mind comes from a song lyric - for example, dance by fly by midnight), my last.fm looks horrible. anyway, hope you enjoyed this! maybe!