[13/03/24] (part one) good question! it’s honestly just vibes but there’s probably some subconscious pattern in the way that i write, so let’s try to unpack that today.

a lot of the things i write start with an image and i try to build a scene around it, and then we need to get to that scene right? so i have to write the events leading up to it, and then i have to resolve the events. that’s mostly how it goes.

i’m not big on planning, because i suffer from this issue where i excitedly scribble down my ideas and the moment they exist, my brain decides i’m done with them even if they only exist in bullet points at the moment. i have fully outlined multichapter fics where i am in love with the concept but can’t bring myself to write because my brain just decided that it exists in enough detail for me to enjoy. or when i get around to writing a scene outlined in detail, honestly i sometimes just clean up whatever i said in the outline and called it a day. it probably has to do with writing based on momentum, which means that once an idea stews on the page rather than bouncing around inside my mind, i start to lose steam. so, i don’t really plan. i usually know where i want to go with my idea, the plot exists in my head and the scenes just flow as i write, but detailed planning is like self-sabotage (so please pray for that 99z fic).

and i’m definitely someone who writes based off momentum. it doesn’t matter how long you give me to work on something, i can guarantee you that most of it will be written in a handful of several hour long hallucinations. i can’t do those write 200 words a day for your main wip type of things, i’m more of a write 2000 words today and not touch the document until a week later type of person.

i am, as a teacher has kindly told me before, ‘set up differently’ which apparently means that my unfiltered thought process is indecipherable for most people. i make connections between things that don’t have connections and jump around in a way that makes me seem fragmented and incoherent. it probably shows a little in the way i tweet and maybe in my retrospring answers as well. i’m probably only ever (somewhat) coherent in the things i post on ao3 because those get read through from start to finish at least once before i click post (if i remember to). you can probably see me bouncing around ideas even now.

for example: research as part of the writing process. research and procrastination are sometimes the same thing to me, because most of my research doesn’t make it into the final work. or even the drafted work with deleted scenes. i do research when it occurs to me that it might be necessary, such as when i’m working with a pairing/group i’m unfamiliar with or writing an au for media i haven’t watched (you sort of have to do research in that case, now i know some stuff about pacific rim) but overall i feel like i don’t do that much research. part of it might be because i kind of only write what i know. if i don’t know something, it just won’t occur in my brain. basically, i don’t know what i don’t know. or, if i want to write about something, i probably think i know enough about it to just write it as is. does that make me sound like someone who opens gdocs and expects to be a god? yes. am i working on it? maybe. i was doing research last night on trans omegaverse stuff, but honestly maybe i’m just looking in the wrong places but everything i found was very unhelpful. so we’re just going to have to trust what i’m cooking in my brain.