#I started writing fanfic again in november to get my 50k nano goal and I simply have not stopped | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chaos-monkeyy · 3 years

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Ask! 28 and 34!! (There was another one I wanted to ask but I forgot the number 😭--maybe later 😂🦝💙)

(I’d just like to state for the record first off that after all this time on tumblr, I finally learned my lesson and wrote this in google docs instead of straight into the reply window where I would inevitably lose it all like 3 times over 😂)

To the questions!!

Oh noo! Numbers are hard, maybe they will deign to return later 😭

28. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie: pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc)?

I’ve been pretty lucky in that I haven’t ever gotten much in the way of negative comments or outside pressure to update more/faster, so most of my writing pressure is self-inflicted.

The few times I have gotten negative troll-y comments or attention, I’ve just gone and snarkily made fun of the asshole with friends until I felt better, and that actually does work quite well for me 😂🥰 I don’t get much pressure to update because so much of what I write is one-shots already… and when I do get comments asking for more, they really do seem to come from that place of “oh no I love this and don’t want it to be over!” Which is a sentiment I know well from reading my favourite books, so I find it pretty darn flattering, and just.. choose not to see it as a demand or an expectation. If I write more, people will probably be happy to see it; but I don’t think anyone (or at least the majority of people) are actually expecting it.

For the internal pressure, I’ve slowly gotten better at accepting that I don’t have to write every idea I ever have, and that my writing is a hobby. Not a job. It’s something I do to relax and have fun; it’s not an obligation, to me or anyone else. If writing has been stressing me out, I am 100% allowed to take a break or a step back. Things that have helped me see it that way are talking with fandom friends, sharing positive posts on tumblr— and not setting myself unreasonable goals that will inevitably make me feel like a failure when I stumble.

I do like to challenge myself, but I try to do it without putting undue pressure at the same time. Sometimes just pushing through a bit of a slump works; sometimes it doesn’t— and that’s okay. I’m super proud that I hit 50K during nanowrimo, and that I wrote out a whole fic and am now publishing it weekly! But my nano goal was to try and hit 50k if I could. I was ready to be proud of myself no matter what word count I finished on. My post-november nano fic goal was to finish writing it before I started posting chapters, but I didn’t set a time limit on finishing it. I don’t sign up for fandom events because writing someone else’s idea with a deadline just doesn’t match the way I sometimes will write a fic that niggles at my mind over months, just a couple sentences at a time; and sometimes I get an idea, sit down, and hammer out a finished one-shot in a few hours because the inspiration just… struck hard.

TL;DR: I deal with writing pressure by trying to be as understanding and supportive towards myself as I am towards anyone else. I stumble on that sometimes, too, but generally it’s been working 😊

34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is?

I do sneak things from my own experiences and personality into fics, yes 😆 I don’t think it’s a llllot, though, cause I really enjoy the part of fanfic writing where I try to really get into the characters’ heads and portray their personality recognizably, as well as I can. It’s more little things, like a character liking snow or ways of phrasing the internal dialogue from POV characters, or their fixation on certain aspects of other characters like their hands or voice or whatever. Also, I really do say and think the word “fuck” a whole lot, so a lot of my characters do as well (Thrawn being a major exception, cause, well… it’s Thrawn).

I… I honestly have no idea what my readers’ image of me is 🤣 But I’m wayyyy more bashful IRL than what people might expect from reading my highly detailed smut 🙈 However, if people who have seen my interests jump wildly across fandoms & ships and back again think I’m generally well-meaning but highly distractible and kind of weird and squirrelly— they would be absolutely correct.

(ask list is here!)

#chaos babbles #wantonwhale #ask games #writing

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duhragonball · 5 years

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Camp Nanwum Strats

I was kind of stressing out over doing Camp Nano in April, but I’m getting caught up on stuff I wanted to finish in March, so I’m starting to feel more confident.

My goal is the same as the last time I did Camp Nano: 25,000 words. But this time I’m trying to get the Namek Saga liveblogged while I do it. I think I can do both, but I struggled a bit getting the Piccolo Saga’s done in February, so I was a little concerned. As it is, I’ve already gotten some Namek episodes written up, so I’m a little ahead. The point is that I’m out to prove to myself that I don’t have to take an all-or-none approach to these projects. I can write fanfic and do other things at the same time.

I’m also trying to shake up my approach. In the past, I took the deadline for these things as a challenge to finish quickly before my motivation wore off. Then in November 2018, I decided I should try to score that badge for adding to my word count 30 days in a row. I had already reached 50k by day 20, but by forcing myself to add a little more for the next ten days, I managed to clear 60,000 words. The only drawback was that it really, really sucked. I hated it. So I want to see if I can do that again, and maybe get to the point where it doesn’t feel so awful.

So I’m shooting for 25,000 words in April, and I’m going to try to write at least 500 words per day, every day. That alone would bring me up to 15,000 words. I’ll probably go a little higher than that, because honestly, 500 shouldn’t be that tough for me to handle. If I can make this work I might raise the bar in the next Camp Nano in July. Maybe do 800-words-per-day there, and then in November see if I can swing 1000-words-per-day. We’ll see.

To make up the balance, I’m planning to repeat something else I did last November, which was to try to write about 6000 words in one day. I found the NaNoWriMo website to be extremely useful on the second go-round, because I could compare my 2017 progress with my 2018 progress, and challenge myself to write more that way. I forget what my all-time record for one-day-word count is, but I broke it last year, and I bet I can do it again. So some Saturday in April, I’m gonna try to do that.

That would still only bring me up to 21000 words, so I’ll have to work out how to polish off the last 4,000, but I’ve demonstrated that I can tackle that without much trouble. I could knock it out in one day or spread it out over two or three, but that doesn’t worry me much.

I’m a little bummed out, because the last time I did Camp Nano, I was trying to finish that Bardock fic I started last year, and I never finished it. So doing Camp Nano again is a reminder that I have unfinished business. If anyone was waiting for that, I’m sorry, but it’ll have to wait a little longer. On the other hand, my liveblog has me scheduled to re-watch Father of Goku in a few weeks, and the Broly movie comes out on home video on April 13, so I’ll probably have plenty of motivation to revisit the project soon. I don’t want to make a bunch of promises I can’t keep, though.

I will say, though, that what locked me up with Bardock was pretty much the same problem that locked me up with Luffa in December. In both cases, I had all this stuff written, and I liked the way it looked, but I was struggling with how to organize the later parts, which makes writing more tough because it feels like I’m skipping ahead and compounding the problem. This past week, I’ve finally forced myself to go through Luffa #101-104, and plan out what I want to do beyond #111, so I feel like I’ve got a better handle on how to fix #105-110. So I need to re-read what I’ve done on Bardock and try to apply the same approach. I’m feeling optimistic about it, anyway.

#/#//#///#////#/////#camp nanwum #writing

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mad-madam-m · 6 years

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So I'm just curious, how do you get yourself to write? And do you use prompts and if you do where do you get them? I meant to use NaNo to get me to write but it took 4 days into November for me to realize November started so I failed lol. I've been meaning to start this original thing and it's just not...working.

First of all, anon, you could start writing RIGHT NOW (yes, with 10 days left in the month) and you would not fail NaNo. You might not hit 50k (although I know people who have hit 50k in that amount of time, or less), but you won’t fail. NaNoWriMo isn’t about hitting 50,000 words so much as it is about putting a stake in the ground and saying, “Here. Today. I will start writing the project I’ve always wanted to.” And doing it. Doesn’t matter what that project is—original novel, short stories, fic, poetry, revising something, a series of blog posts—NaNo is about just. Fucking. Doing it. And you still have time to Do It.

To answer your questions:

Do you use prompts and if you do, where do you get them?

For original stories, particularly novels, I usually don’t. For fic, particularly short fic I’m writing for events, I do. Tumblr has a wealth of writing prompts that range from “here’s a situation” to “here’s a line of dialogue GO,” and I tend to reblog them under the tags “fic prompts” or “writing prompts.” Honestly, most of them would work for either original fic or fanfic, so if you are a writer who likes to work from prompts, go forth and enjoy!

How do you get yourself to write?

That’s kind of a big question, and uh, the answer to it got long. Very long. (I said once that if you give me half a chance, I’ll talk about writing all the live-long day, and this answer is no exception.)

Different things motivate me for different projects, and as with all writing-related advice, YMMV, but here’s a few things that really help for getting myself to write:

1) Develop your story.

The current original story I’m working on, for example, I have not really had to struggle to get myself to write at all because 1) I’m stupid excited about it and 2) I have developed the hell out of it.

I’ve talked before about outlining my stuff here, so I won’t go too much into it again; suffice it to say that I have done about the same amount of development on my current original story that I had on ADA by the time I started writing. I started around the very end of September developing my characters and spent a good chunk of October working on setting, worldbuilding, plot, and finally my notecards.

Shockingly, having some idea of what’s happening and where I’m going is making this story easier to write.

Right? Like WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT.

Because of that, I’ve been excited about writing my story, so getting myself to write on it has been (comparatively) a cakewalk.

That’s not to say any of the writing is good (oh God no) or that there aren’t parts that need fixing, or that I haven’t been stuck. But it’s been stuck like “how do I describe seeing a tree-covered mountain in the middle of fall from the POV of someone who has never seen something like this” rather than “I have no fucking clue what happens next uh…”

The stories I struggle the most with writing are the ones that I’ve worked the least on developing. The stories that have been the easiest to write have been the ones I’ve spent at least a month doing prep work on before I ever start drafting.

2) Love your story.

Being in love with a story makes it a lot easier to write, at least for me. Because here’s the thing, ideas are easy.

If you’re a creative person, you’re going to end up with a file of story ideas—maybe prompts you liked, dialogue that stuck with you, one of those “humans are space orcs” tumblr posts that’s just really clicking in your brain—that will be longer than you could conceivably write if you had a hundred lifetimes. That’s okay! That’s great. But it means a lot of them are never going to get past the idea stage.

For me, the stories that get finished—the ones that not only get started but actually make it through the first draft and then three rounds of editing and revisions—are the ideas that I’ve been percolating on for months, if not longer. They’ve been cooking in the back of my brain while I’ve been doing other things, sorting themselves out, and most importantly: they will not let me go.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Finding an idea that will last and sustain a story and my interest for at least a year, if not longer? That’s harder.

Y’all know how much I’ve been talking about Tiger & Bunny over the past year? We’re talking that level of obsession with a story that I want to write, whether it’s fic or original. Sometimes it takes months or years for all the puzzle pieces to come together. Sometimes the whole thing will congeal within a few weeks, or there will be one crucial piece of story that will just make EVERYTHING come together, I will literally shout “OH MY FUCKING GOD” and that’s it, I’m off to the races. (In this particular case, it wasn’t anything I’d done in the first two weeks of poking at steampunk-y ideas; it was the realization that I could put a circus on an airship. The whole story just went WHOOSH after that.)

BUT. But. Sometimes you don’t have that. These stories are great and I love them and they remind me why I love writing so much (and if you’re writing something that’s gonna be 90k+, like I have a tendency to do, you need to be in love with it, IMO), but sometimes you’re in situations where you just have to get it done. In those cases:

3) Resort to bribery.

I’ve been poking at the third part of Alpha & Emissary, oh, basically since I posted the second part. My problem is that my fandom focus has been, shall we say, split for the past year. *coughs delicately, shoves Tiger & Bunny fics under the bed*

But here’s the thing: I hate having a published WIP on AO3 (it’s why I don’t publish long!fics until they’re completely drafted and mostly edited). I hate—HATE—having an unfinished series on AO3.

So that’s the rub: I have an unfinished series that I want to finish because I hate that it’s not finished. I also have a new fandom that is wresting my attention and inspiration away from said series. What’s a girl to do?

A girl tells herself she can’t write any more Tiger & Bunny fic until she finishes this one WIP, that’s what she does.

And it’s motivated me to sit my ass down and work on that WIP, because goddammit, I have a “but there was only one bed” TaiBani fic that I would really like to have up by New Year’s.

Your bribery will be different. Maybe you get to watch 1 episode of your favorite show per every 1k you write, or you get to try a new knitting project when you finish this short story. Maybe you binge-watch an entire season of your favorite anime if you exceed your NaNo goal. Or you write 50 words and get a cookie. The point is, find what works for you to get it done.

4) Figure out a minimum daily goal and stick with it.

For me, this was 500 words a day. 500 words. That’s it. That’s one 30-minute word sprint for me. That’s something I can do without stressing myself out.

Because of this point and point 3, I wrote more than 7000 words on a story I’d been stuck on for the better part of a year before I had to stop to work on NaNo stuff. Another 7k, and I’ll probably have it finished.

Your minimum word count will almost certainly be different. Maybe it’s 300 words a day, maybe it’s 1000. Hell, maybe it’s 100 words. Again, find what works for you, what you can write regularly without stressing yourself out.

Another important thing: If I didn’t hit 500 words, I didn’t beat myself up about it. Maybe I wrote 350. Or 220. Or just 93. The point is, did I write? Yes? Then I did good. I got myself a sentence or a paragraph closer to finishing. And it all adds up.

(And hey, you don’t have to write every day. I do, or I try to, because that’s what works for me. If it stresses you out to do so, then find another way to make it work.)

5) Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.

This one’s hard because I can rarely keep a deadline that’s not set by an external source. If you tell me on December 20 that you need a story by December 22? Then on December 22, you’ll have a story, edited and ready to post. But when it comes to something I set for myself, the chances of a deadline working are 50/50.

That being said, it is something that helps me keep on track and even if I don’t finish something by a self-imposed deadline, it does get me writing.

6) Sprint with friends!

NaNo is really great for this because all your writer friends are coming out of the woodwork going I need to hit 5k by the end of today, will you sprint with me? Sometimes it just helps to have that kind of accountability. You all get together (I’ve used Discord, Google Hangouts, IRC, and Twitter DMs for this), set a timer, and write for 15 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Then, when the time’s up, you post your word count, everybody congratulates everybody else, and then you take a break before doing the next one.

Sprints are the reason I’ve been able to make some pretty significant headway on my word counts, and few things get me writing like knowing I’m going to have to tell everybody in my group what my word count is in 30 minutes or less. >.>

Like I said earlier, YMMV on all of these. What works for me may work for you, or it might not. But if you aren’t sure, it’s worth giving it a shot.

Happy writing!

#Anonymous #M answers #long post #M talks writing #can I count this toward my NaNo count for the day or nah

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himluv · 6 years

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Bloggos,

Everyone call Green Day because September is ending! I’m back from vacation and pleased to find Oregon well on its way into fall. The leaves are falling, pumpkins beg for carving, and the weather is wonderfully dreary. A very nice change from Munich’s humidity and warmth. There’s a lot from my vacation to talk about, but I’ll get into that more tomorrow. Today, we talk about:

September Goals

Tumblr prompts

Finish chapter 7 of Sanctuary

Keep reading!

Continue short story submissions

How’d I Do?

Tumblr prompts

No… I didn’t get that research done that I needed to, so this prompt moves on into October.

Finish chapter 7 of Sanctuary

Hahaha nope! I wrote like… a paragraph?

Keep reading!

Yes. I read four titles this month, with two book reviews, and a handful of short stories.

Continue short story submissions

Yes! I received another rejection while on vacation and just sent The Cost of Rain off to the next place.

Total Word Count: 265

Well. I knew September would be incredibly unproductive, I just didn’t imagine it would be that bad. Like… zoinks Scoob, that’s really bad. But, I planned for this. I planned for a lax September and an editing/research heavy October because November is National Novel Writing Month! I won last year, and I aim on doing it again. The difference this time is that this project isn’t fanfic, the plot isn’t preordained and the world doesn’t already exist (well, it’s an Urban Fantasy, so yes, actually it does, but you get my point!). This year it’s going to take a lot more work to get to that 50k mark, and then a few more months of dedicated effort to finish it off.

But I’m excited for this story. I’m ready to do the research and spend the time outlining so that I at least have some idea of where the hell this novel is headed. That way, when I get stuck, I have some kind of map to help guide me out.

October Goals

Tumblr prompt

Edit That Which Illuminates Heaven

Research/Outline for NaNo project

Keep reading!

Continue short story submissions

Finish chapter 7 of Sanctuary

This is going to be an ambitious month. July and August were busy months with very high output for me, but September saw a decrease in all reading and writing. I want to spend October really revving back up so I can put my best writerly foot forward for NaNoWriMo and to get back into the swing of things.

I hate to admit it, but I think I’m going to shelve The Mechanical. I like it, but it’s a slow book, with a very atmospheric narrative style that is the exact opposite of what I need to read right now. So, instead, I’m going to focus on Urban Fantasy novels for the month of October, starting with Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks.

I’m always open to recommendations, so please let me know if there’s any Urban Fantasy out there that I absolutely must read! I’ve read all the Dresden Files books, all but the most recent Peter Grant book (it’s on hold at the library), and have the first books of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye novels, Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles, and Paul Cornell’s Shadow Police series on hold at the library.

Please tell me what I’m missing!

So that’s October! Probably another low word count month as I edit, research, and read my butt off in preparation for NaNoWriMo! I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about last week and share a bunch of pictures from my vacation in Germany, and then it’s back to the grindstone. Don’t expect any book reviews this week, since I’ll be starting fresh this month with a new book, but hopefully I can get a few out later this month.

Talk soon, Blogland.

The Recap – September 2018 Bloggos, Everyone call Green Day because September is ending! I'm back from vacation and pleased to find Oregon well on its way into fall.

#Editing #fanfic #goals #goodreads challenge #NaNoWriMo #Novels #Reading #Short Stories #Submissions #urban fantasy #vacation #workworkwork #Writing

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maxgrayarchived · 5 years

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November Writing Update

November has seriously felt like just a blink lmao. So much has happened and I can’t remember any of it. There’s been a lot of zombies. Let’s get into it.

Fanfiction & NaNoWriMo

I wrote 50k words! That seems worth mentioning.

I’m honestly pretty happy that I got that first 50k out in one month, because, like I’ve mentioned before, I’m getting into the really good bits! Nano has really helped me make a habit of writing every day, something I don’t want to easily give up (although I’ll definitely be less strict lol), so I’m going to start setting chapter goals. I’ve noticed I can write one of these chapters in two to three days, so I’m going to set a goal for one chapter a week (once I start drafting again), because this isn’t the only project I’ll be working on so I won’t be drafting every day.

One thing I have to update on is that, last month, I said I was a little scared, and... I had every fucking right to be lmao. I’m in WAY over my head. I feel a lot better that this is a fanfiction, and that I’ve definitely written worse fanfics before, so it’s a lot less pressure than it would be if I was writing original work. I’m grateful I’m doing this fic before diving deep into my zombie stuff.

Zombies

Boy, I thought I had a lot of ideas BEFORE. Things just keep heccing coming and at this point, I don’t know where to fit everything xD There some ideas I have that I don’t know if they’re there own thing or if they’re part of this other thing or THIS other thing and boy my brain is just a fucking mess right now lmao. I’m really excited though and I can’t wait to find out where all this stuff goes.

I feel like there is so much I could say here, and I’m just... At a total loss lmao. I’m a little overwhelmed by all my ideas.

Short Stories

Surprisingly, in all this zombie muck, I did come up with one (1) single short story idea that will not go in the zombie collection.

For now, it’ll be put in the contemporary collection, even though it’s not quite contemporary... It just fits. I got the idea from Benjamin Francis Leftwitch’s song Atlas Hands, and it’s about two little kids reminiscing about their old pirate days and musing about going back.

Maxgraybooks

I’ve also got a TON of blog post ideas!!! So I’m going to work on some of those, for sure. I think they’re all really interesting topics and I’m excited to get started!

Writing updates tag list:

@impossiblelibrary @writinginslowmotion @lucifer-in-my-head

Zombies tag list:

@nemowritesstuff @sidhewrites

#writeblr #writerblr #amwriting #writing update #maxgraybooks

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