#(uggugggguugugugugh)

[sarasa-cat]

A random collection of writing about writing things that are relevant in the moment.

tl;dr:  writing is an up-and-down process. writing requires the right frame of mind. editing is more where i’m at today. still avoiding certain pairings in fanfic because my brain isn’t ready (despite loving the pairing). wondering how this will all translate back to my orig work. i need my vacation. how I turn fanfic writing into “educational” writing exercises. 

1.  Still emotionally wrecked from the unprofessional crap I was forced to put up with last week. Frankly, it was abusive and even though I received apologies from the person responsible plus follow ups from other people in positions of authority who wanted to make sure I was okay and also make sure that I understood that they understood that what I put up with was Way Wrong, etc. etc., I just ... .... ... fuck.

2.  just fucking fuck.  why do I still live in this place? when are we getting the hell out of here. just why? kljsdfkldfsjkjlfsda.

3.  writing -- my usual escape -- has been bumpy for the past bunch of days. Editing/rewriting early pieces of drafted bits of Even the Littlest Monsters has gone better.

4.  in an attempt to be productive during my non-work hours, i’ve been trying to examine the emotional wreckage I currently feel and think about how any specific parts of it (including the actual physical discomfort I am feeling, the way in which it was manipulatively used in a professional setting, the sorry-not-sorry realities and attitudes surrounding all of it, meaning that I know the person in question still believes what they believe and they got to assert their power-over because it makes them feel superior) and how this shit can be fictionally harnessed in, yep, that WIP: Even The Littlest Monsters. Been a mixed bag due to the rawness of it all. As much as the writer in me doesn’t want to lose the feelings/sensations/experiences of THIS, the person who is tapping on the keyboard wants to erase the entire experience from my memories and my physical being.

5.  ................................

6.  Been thinking yet again about how I keep bookmarking Vincent/Lucrecia and Lucrecia+Hojo+Gast+Vincent+etcetc fanfic yet I am STILL avoiding it (unlike the ocean of Yuffentine recs I plowed through while trying to make sense of that dynamic). Even ignoring-for-now the Vin+Lu+Hojo+Gast stuff written by a prior fandom partner in crime. Sort of feeling like I don’t want to read other takes until I’m mostly “done” writing my “don’t change or contridict canon, only add” take. Or, I’m trying to avoid ideas that aren’t canon or meta-commentary on canon.

You know, that really is the reason. My Lucrecia in Monsters started out as a different take on (or a center-stage evolution of, or sister character to) an original fiction character who, actually, isn’t a POV character and only a supporting character, and not at all tragic or involved in triangular love story or doing ethically off the rails science. So, she was not like Lu’s story but when I revisited Dirge in Feb of this year I realized, huh, I can see a few personality similarities between OC and Lu. So, that’s it. And this other character (a scientist, a woman, with issues) was in something I was working on until I felt a need to put it aside during the winter. When I decided to return to Lu (note: I never got beyond the initial chapter in Dirge when it came out 10 years ago so I didn’t know the entirety of Lu’s story until recently, only knew her OG story), I had this other OC partly in mind but my original idea for Lu in early March of this year has evolved a lot over the past three months but, for reasons of my own making, I set up a few rules/constraints for myself regarding how I will use canon (primary and secondary) while writing Monsters. The rules:

-- I cannot throw out anything that is part of the canon. Example: If I character says or does X, I need to interpret X as reasonable variant of X without subverting or contradicting X. I don’t have to take X as literal truth, but I do need to honor X in the spirit of canon. (e.g., Aerith is dead after OG Disk 1.)

-- If canon contains a contradiction (example: does event Y happen in year A or year B?), attempt to find the least contradictory resolution.

-- When I add something to canon, it cannot contradict or change canon. I need to be able to make a case, however vague and hand-wavy, that the addition could occur as a missing scene, with great and vigorous hand-waviness applied. (That said, if I add something that happens after canon, I have more wiggle room.)

-- I am allowed to interpret purposeful ambiguities in canon how ever I wish so long as Monsters honors some vaguely plausible interpretation of the ambiguity. 

The reason for these rules in Monsters is because I want to force myself to not weasel out of some of the difficult aspects of Lucrecia-as-Tragedy. The more I thought about how many ways I can weasel out of the Tragedy as a writer, the more I clamped down on the rules above. After all, this is a writing exercise to push me (at times) into my discomfort zone. Likewise, when I decided to add the Yuffie->Vincent & Yuffie/Vincent story for a wide variety of narrative reasons (because a tragedy about a professional woman will NOT work until I bring many ladies on stage for thematic contrasts -- and this is in a think piece that ended up on DW, so I won’t repeat it here), well, THAT ship brushes against my discomfort zone despite being cute, so then I realized that me -- a writer who is mostly into realism -- ABSOLUTELY HAD TO apply the rules above so I didn’t weasel even more to soften the Yuffentine into something harmless or cavity inducing.

I do this to myself to force myself to write things that I would NOT write as original fiction and to write those things as well as I can (albeit without excessive effort, because it is fanfic and I have other things to write/do).

Needless to say, the fact that I spent a couple of months hyperventilating while wondering HOW IN HELL AM I GOING TO WRITE THIS AND NOT SHAMEFACE DELETE OR HATE-CRINGE WHILE EDITING OR DFKJDSKLFJKDLSF. Well, it was worth it. 

I mean, I hope it has been worth it. TBD once I have a manuscript that is ~80% of the way there and I’m ready to go into the rewrite-edit-post-the-damn-chapter-wash-rinse-repeat fanfic publishing mode. But I’m starting to like where this is going. Thus: THE RULES.

(normally I am all for AU and for canon-bending/canon-changing/canon-rewriting “what ifs” but not for this. it’s a writing exercise. constraints = good)

7.  Have been learning how hard it is for me to do the final organizational pass on difficult multi-timeline plotting when my only writing hours are just before bedtime (exhausted). Remembering how, for prior big wips (fanfic or orig), I have always finalized the DIFFICULT structural stuff during a 2-5 day “workweek” where I just hole up at a coffee shop, turn off my wifi, and work from 11am-6pm on nothing but finalizing the structure and setting up Scrivener (and sometimes a plot-chart/scene-chart spreadsheet too) and getting all the little duckies in a row. So, I’m at a point where i need to do this for Monsters but I won’t have time until later this month. And that’s okay. But it also explains why the act of writing is feeling annoyingly disjointed this past week.

#writing about writing #fic: even the littlest monsters #.... #the abuse I put up with this week in my 9-5 was not acceptable #and I am still recovering from that #...... #and frankly #i have been lucky most of my professional life #and haven't had to put up with abusive situations #although i know a lot about sexism in professional life #(uggugggguugugugugh) #but... this week #this fucking week #i just .... #wow