monday, tuesday | dec 25, 26
Dec. 26th, 2017 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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noyabeansit has been so long since I posted that I actually forgot the format of my journal entries lol
finally started on hqss properly on my second attempt... I initially wanted to write something canonverse but I kept getting the awful sense of imposter syndrome because I felt like I was imitating a work I'd read before from Lark, so I dropped the original draft. I might post it as is, though - it's a pretty solid 500 words by itself, and I can't add any more or any less to it, because anything I do just feels like a ripoff. I fear that I may never be able to write this ship in canon ever again because of that, even though Lark's piece wasn't even set in canonverse... but we shall see.
anyway, I'm posting this as a friend-locked entry for now because I don't know if my giftee stalks my writing journal. I'll unlock it once I've published the fic.
I also don't want ritz to know entirely what I'm writing LMAO but I've been dropping hints here and there~!
December 25: I ended off at 1.3k words and let Mel have a first read at it. Oikawa has been absolutely ridiculous in this fic so far, and Futakuchi is always fun to write, but I'm really worried that I'm making Oikawa a caricature of himself. Writing this fic is so difficult because I've never had any faith in the way I write Oikawa, and with the way that this is shaping up, it's going to be a hugeass piece that I definitely didn't sign up for when I started to write it.
December 26: 2.4k words. I'm truly like Gunny in that my productivity increases when I'm stressed lol. I realised that it's okay if my characters in this fic seem to be caricatures of themselves, because... well.
I seem to be losing hold of the plot in this story... it doesn't even seem to have much plot, in fact. I originally planned for it to have a really structured plot and everything, but after how Nightfall turned out I think it's still better to let the story go where it wants to.
I was planning to have things tie up nicely, which would have taken at least another 2k words to properly write, but Futakuchi was lazy and rebellious and demanded that I do something else. It saves on words for me, but still gives it a decent ending, so I probably am just going to follow his orders. It's not as nice as I would have liked, but if it were the perfect ending I think it would have been really forced in the end.
Speaking of Futakuchi, I love being in his head space. He makes it so much easier to write because of his personality.
I tend to try to wrap stories up neatly, or at least that's what I tend to believe long fics should look like. But in reality, I think I need to learn that stories don't necessarily have perfect, happy endings where everything is resolved. This hqss piece is a major experiment in that sense, where I doubt I'll be tying it all up neatly with a bow on top.
Of course, not having a resolution isn't the same as having the story fall apart on its own. I'm good at having open endings for short fics, but for longer ones like these... I'm still working on it.
Something else I've been struggling with for this fic is that because it's longer than most of my usual fics, I have trouble with sentences and story flow. I keep feeling I'm over emphasising on how things are taking place, and that my sentences are either too long and draggy or too short and meh.
Mel brought up the idea of the invisible short sentence earlier, and that not every sentence needs to pack a punch in a long fic. I think that's true, but I can't help feeling that my storytelling weakens a lot when I write long fic. I've been writing so much short fic for the past half a year (thanks to SASO especially) that writing long is a challenge in itself orz at the very least, I know what I need to work on next year after I'm done with uni!
HQSS is also probably my last writing project in the foreseeable future, minus 1/3 fic. (me: yes, yes, you haven't written fic in forever, and you've hit a writing block, and you have hqss due in 5 days (now 4) but how about writing this for a 1/3 fic? :D!)
The break's for two reasons:
1. I need to focus on my final semester and all the work that comes with it. Naturally, real life gets the front seat. If I do get struck by a muse I'll still write, but I doubt I'll be able to work on the next few Timeless stories anytime soon. Not until May, at the very least. Also Timeless stories come with the added problem of them being long fics, and like I've said above, there's a lot of work for me to do on that front. Work that will need time I cannot afford.
2. I need a break from stressing over writing. I spent the whole of November and December stressing over my writing deadlines, instead of writing, and I think it has killed something in me. It's definitely a temporary phase, but right now I just need to not think about writing. It'll disrupt my momentum, that I'm fully aware of, and will probably affect my style when I come back to writing (because my damn style mutates every couple months, writing or not), but if it means I come back to a hobby I can enjoy and find joy in, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
finally started on hqss properly on my second attempt... I initially wanted to write something canonverse but I kept getting the awful sense of imposter syndrome because I felt like I was imitating a work I'd read before from Lark, so I dropped the original draft. I might post it as is, though - it's a pretty solid 500 words by itself, and I can't add any more or any less to it, because anything I do just feels like a ripoff. I fear that I may never be able to write this ship in canon ever again because of that, even though Lark's piece wasn't even set in canonverse... but we shall see.
anyway, I'm posting this as a friend-locked entry for now because I don't know if my giftee stalks my writing journal. I'll unlock it once I've published the fic.
I also don't want ritz to know entirely what I'm writing LMAO but I've been dropping hints here and there~!
December 25: I ended off at 1.3k words and let Mel have a first read at it. Oikawa has been absolutely ridiculous in this fic so far, and Futakuchi is always fun to write, but I'm really worried that I'm making Oikawa a caricature of himself. Writing this fic is so difficult because I've never had any faith in the way I write Oikawa, and with the way that this is shaping up, it's going to be a hugeass piece that I definitely didn't sign up for when I started to write it.
December 26: 2.4k words. I'm truly like Gunny in that my productivity increases when I'm stressed lol. I realised that it's okay if my characters in this fic seem to be caricatures of themselves, because... well.
I seem to be losing hold of the plot in this story... it doesn't even seem to have much plot, in fact. I originally planned for it to have a really structured plot and everything, but after how Nightfall turned out I think it's still better to let the story go where it wants to.
I was planning to have things tie up nicely, which would have taken at least another 2k words to properly write, but Futakuchi was lazy and rebellious and demanded that I do something else. It saves on words for me, but still gives it a decent ending, so I probably am just going to follow his orders. It's not as nice as I would have liked, but if it were the perfect ending I think it would have been really forced in the end.
Speaking of Futakuchi, I love being in his head space. He makes it so much easier to write because of his personality.
I tend to try to wrap stories up neatly, or at least that's what I tend to believe long fics should look like. But in reality, I think I need to learn that stories don't necessarily have perfect, happy endings where everything is resolved. This hqss piece is a major experiment in that sense, where I doubt I'll be tying it all up neatly with a bow on top.
Of course, not having a resolution isn't the same as having the story fall apart on its own. I'm good at having open endings for short fics, but for longer ones like these... I'm still working on it.
Something else I've been struggling with for this fic is that because it's longer than most of my usual fics, I have trouble with sentences and story flow. I keep feeling I'm over emphasising on how things are taking place, and that my sentences are either too long and draggy or too short and meh.
Mel brought up the idea of the invisible short sentence earlier, and that not every sentence needs to pack a punch in a long fic. I think that's true, but I can't help feeling that my storytelling weakens a lot when I write long fic. I've been writing so much short fic for the past half a year (thanks to SASO especially) that writing long is a challenge in itself orz at the very least, I know what I need to work on next year after I'm done with uni!
HQSS is also probably my last writing project in the foreseeable future, minus 1/3 fic. (me: yes, yes, you haven't written fic in forever, and you've hit a writing block, and you have hqss due in 5 days (now 4) but how about writing this for a 1/3 fic? :D!)
The break's for two reasons:
1. I need to focus on my final semester and all the work that comes with it. Naturally, real life gets the front seat. If I do get struck by a muse I'll still write, but I doubt I'll be able to work on the next few Timeless stories anytime soon. Not until May, at the very least. Also Timeless stories come with the added problem of them being long fics, and like I've said above, there's a lot of work for me to do on that front. Work that will need time I cannot afford.
2. I need a break from stressing over writing. I spent the whole of November and December stressing over my writing deadlines, instead of writing, and I think it has killed something in me. It's definitely a temporary phase, but right now I just need to not think about writing. It'll disrupt my momentum, that I'm fully aware of, and will probably affect my style when I come back to writing (because my damn style mutates every couple months, writing or not), but if it means I come back to a hobby I can enjoy and find joy in, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
