His first segment in this story is entirely introspective, and it may be too early in the fic for that. I’ll have to see how I feel about it as I get farther in and can reread for flow. Anyway, the hardest part about writing this bit was coming up with Lex’s dialogue. Lex is offscreen throughout much of this story (and in fact during this segment), but he’s a tremendously important influence, and these lines Supes is thinking about are essentially his entrance. There was a lot of, Oops, I better go rewatch some episodes. Twist my arm. And I got the part done.

Nine Decades — This set of stories is at linear completion, and in fact pretty much finished. I’m extremely excited about it, but it’s not quite posting time yet. I’ve probably mentioned in the past that the amazing lebzpel is doing pictures for it, which I’m also extremely excited about because she’s soOoOo good. I’m waiting on the last two from her, which forces me to restrain myself and edit and edit, which of course is a good thing. (Though while I was waiting for my sister to finish the MLM cover illustration and it almost killed me, I edited and edited that book, and I still look back on it with a groan at how much editing it needs XD) The point is that I have time to ask myself some important questions and try to answer them.

I’m not sure, for example, whether or not I’ve accomplished my goal re: Duo’s optimism, so a few changes may need to be made depending on how I decide I feel about that. Each story stands alone, but they’re also specifically collected and meant to have a certain flow and progression to them; I need to examine that more. The first and the last stories especially are thematically connected, and I’m not sure yet how well that’s working out. So it’s good to be forced to do this stuff instead of rushing to post as I usually do XD

Even so, look forward to this soon!

New Castlevania fic — I had this whole great idea, and plotted it out entirely. It’s a one-shot, though with my transition to chapterless for so much of my work in the last few years, the line between short story and long has blurred quite a bit. This one has four segments, for example. Anyway, I told my brother about it, and he hated it XD But I think it’ll be fun. Messing around with those three is just the best. And it seems like a relatively active fandom, so maybe somebody will read it and possibly even comment!

Prompt fics — All right, January is over, so I’d better give a progress report on the stuff I was trying to catch up on during that month. It’s, uh, mostly nothing? But at least I have managed to figure out what my problem is with getting these things done, which I suppose is actually some progress after all. See, it’s not like I don’t want to write them, or that I’m totally disinterested or don’t enjoy them. It’s because I approach them differently from other stories.

Most stories I plot out with a detailed summary from beginning to end, and then the actual writing is pretty easy because I’m just following my own plan and fleshing it out. But prompt stories I have not done this with. And the reason for that is that the original idea was to write short short stories for these activities. I mentioned in my last PL that I’ve kinda lost hold of the 1k-2k story? Well, a 1k-2k story is something I’ve rarely plotted out, because the story itself is so short that it’s as much time and effort to summarize in detail as it is just to write the thing. So when, planning a short short story that doesn’t necessarily need a detailed summary but coming up with an idea that’s destined to be longer than that, I end up with a project that needs initial organization but doesn’t get it. So then the actual writing is far less easy, and I work on other, easier stuff instead.

The best solution for this is to get back to the shorter stories for these prompts. I kinda feel like that’s not going to happen, though, so plan B is to force myself to plot out my ideas for prompt stories no matter how much something in my brain is insisting I don’t need to. So I’m going to try that and see where it gets me.

One-shots — If you’ve looked at my fanfiction working order above, you probably noticed some new additions since last time. I realized recently that I never work on fanfiction one-shots because the following process always takes place: I think of a great idea; I summarize it; I set it aside to be worked on ‘when I have time;’ I never work on it, because when do I actually ‘have time’ when my fanfiction-writing goes in a prescribed order that includes only longer stories?? So I’ve added a spot for one-shots from my fandoms of interest to my working order.

Will I feel the need to finish a one-shot every time I get to one of those entries on the list? Undoubtedly not, because I’ll always be rarin’ to get on to the next longer fic. But if I work on each until I’ve made significant progress before moving on, I will actually get some of these finished sometimes, and not by taking a big bite out of my regular schedule because I’m just so excited about something. Anyway, we’ll see how well it goes. I’m always tweaking things in my work process.

Aku Soku Zan(za) — Look, something I’ve actually posted made it onto today’s list! This segment differs only slightly from the original, most notably in that originally, the conversation Tokio was putting off having with Sano would be their first after sleeping together. Yes, they waited that long. (In the original version, Katsu didn’t track Tokio down and ask her to tell Sano he wanted to talk to him.) I think her train of thought applies as well to their second awkward meeting as it did to the first, especially since her agitation regarding Katsu’s plans is exactly the same in each case.

I like this part because I liked to describe her not knowing what she really feels and believes and laughing at herself about it. I had to rein myself in from expanding on that frame of mind, because this story (and everything I write) is so introspective already, and I know I go overboard with it. But Tokio is my girl, and I love her brain. She’s a big fan of soap operas, and never spares a thought to the fact that she’s starring in one XD