hoursgoneby | Entries tagged with writing is hard

I did not abandon this, I just...lost track. But hey, it's Snowflake so there's no deadlines. :)

Challenge #4

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I already posted a little bit about this when I did my end of year wrap-up for my writing stats in 2019 but I'd like to reach my target of 528,706 words for the year and an average daily word count of 1,458. The numbers are based on what I achieved the previous year, though since I wasn't working most of last year I'll not be surprised if I don't meet those targets, but that's okay. I'll just get a more realistic target for 2021.
Start doing UI design again, maybe look at putting some stuff together to sell on Redbubble. I am not a magnificent artist but I can manipulate the hell out of pixels.
Write some original fiction. Maybe even show it to people.
Finish the Unplanned Reproduction expansion I've been working on since 2018. (They're giant robots and Accidental Pregnancy doesn't really apply to the version of TF reproduction I'm using.) One of the things slowing me down here is that I said a lot of what I wanted to say with this one in All the Good Things so I guess I'll just have to find new ideas to explore. :)

Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/94665.html

( Week One ) ( Week Two )

Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/89845.html

End of Month (EOM) Stats

Target/Day	Average/Day	Total Words/Month	Target/Month	Difference
1,667	1,270	38,089	50,000	-11,911

Fic I Finished in September
In Good Hands - Browsed the kink meme and a request tickled my fancy. It's basically just porn and that's OK.

AU Yeah AUgust 2019 chapters five and six (days thirteen and fourteen, respectively.)

Prowl x Jazz Anniversary Challenge 2019 - Twenty-four chapters, nearly posted on time. I had to double up a few posts but I did get it done on the 30th. I ended up adding a lot more to the Senses-verse than I expected, and playing more in the sandbox of In Every Voice He'd Ever Had.

The

prowlxjazz fills account for the vast majority of the words written and posted last month, roughly 24K.

WIPs

AU Yeah AUgust 2019 - Still going! Two more days, that are separate from the drabble collection, are ready to post. I will get it done. Not during August (unless it's next August :p) but they will get done.

TF Rare Pair Trick or Treat 2019 - I managed to restrain myself and not claim every prompt, limiting myself to six. :) The first one, Storytime, where Bluestreak and Hound go camping and tell each other spooky stories before cuddling up, is already done. I had fun adapting two urban legends (that I learned at camp myself) and making up one Cybertronian one.

The

prowlxjazz community is running a Halloween Bingo Challenge and I've claimed a set of prompts from that as well.

Rendezvous (working title), an expansion of the fill by the same name for Prowl x Jazz Anniversary Challenge 2019. War-weary Autobots Jazz, Prowl, Bluestreak, Inferno, and Red Alert show up on Earth in response to Prime's transmission. I don't know what all's going to happen but I do know it goes AU sometime during S2.

Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/84756.html

Forgot to post this at the start of the month! In my defense, I was finally working after a long dry spell. It was only a few weeks temping BUT STILL. It worked well enough to get me my mortgage which gets my ex out of the house, not yet but soon. I mean, we still get along but he doesn't want to be here any more and I'd kind of like my space, thank you. Now I need a new job but I've got contingencies, a second interview I'm pretty sure is just a formality coming up, and enough set by for a few weeks so I'll be ok. Poor, but ok.

Anyway, on with the stats.

End of Month (EOM) Stats

Target/Day	Average/Day	Total Words/Month	Target/Month	Difference
1,667	1,372	42,527	50,000	-7,473

Fic I Finished in August

Keeping Warm - Day 1 of AU Yeah August 2019, a little Bluestreak/Hound ficlet for pipermca

Fifty Drabbles from Fifty Prompts - Fifty true drabbles from fifty prompts written to celebrate the fiftieth title I've posted under the Transformers - All Media Types tag on AO3. Pretty much just an experiment.

Secured - Day 3 of AU Yeah August 2019.

For Love Reforms Vitality - I wanted to play more in the universe of In Every Voice He'd Ever Had so I wrote Jazz and Prowl's origins and first death/not death and reunion.

All the Good Things - It's so weird to look at the cotton candy (sweet fluff) piece this became compared to the very first draft with a severely depressed Prowl with a borderline eating disorder, neglected by his guardian and basically ignored by any and every authority figure whose supposed to be helping him. I stripped thousands of words out of this and rewrote it a few times to get to the end product. I was working out a lot of my own issues on this one and wound up not particularly wanting to put them on display. But, I did feel better once I got that darker rough draft done so - free therapy, I guess.

A Beneficial Arrangement - I decided to play more with the Mirage/Megatron arranged-marriage-to-shut-up-the-rebel AU from last year. I want to continue this one, I'm just not sure where it could go yet.

AU Yeah August - Drabbles - So far, there are four entries in this, days 2, 5, 6 and 8, and I'm not sure how many more there will be. Depends on
what I can keep short and what blossoms out of control.

Open Offers - Day 6 of AYA 2019, decided to write Perceptor/Jazz just 'cause.

A Meeting on the Sprawl - Transformers/Dead Space fusion written for the 2019 intoabar fic challenge.

The Emperor's New Plating - A Transformers version of The Emperor's New Clothes requested by the guest commenter I've nicknamed Fairy Tale Anon.

Balance - So, possible-demon!Jazz and Enforcer!Bluestreak from Trope Bingo Round 12 decided they wanted my attention again and that they should be a series. Thus, Systematic Chaos was born. (Because if I can name a series after a Dream Theater album, I will. ^_^) I don't know how they're going to solve the murders but I do know that Prowl's a warrior monk of sorts in this one.

Day 13, Horror, of AU Yeah August is finished but unpublished, a little Knock Out/Breakdown drabble.

WIPs

AU Yeah AUgust 2019 - I haven't forgotten it! But working full time after not doing so for a while, plus some personal stuff, drained me and gave me less time than usual to write so it's still ongoing. One year I may finish this challenge in August, but 2019 is not that year. Not helped that the entry I'm caught up on, Day 12, is pretty much just smut and I didn't want to write it at work.

Prowl x Jazz Anniversary Challenge 2019 - Short fics, minimum 500 words (except for #1 where I wasn't aware of the minimum) that I'm almost keeping up with!

A handful of other stuff, including Assassin AU 7, Wizard AU 8, Principatus 3, and Enclave 4, that are technically on hold but that I'll work on if I have time/inspiration during AU Yeah August.

An original horror fic that I'm mentioning here to shame myself into trying to finish it, even though it didn't work last month. Might try and sell this one, we'll see how it goes.

Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/81398.html

End of Month (EOM) Stats

Target Words/Day	Average Words/Day	Total Words/Month	Target Words/Month	EOM Difference
1,666	1,621	40,125	50,000	+125

Fic I Finished in July

In Every Voice He'd Ever Had - For the immortality/reincarnation prompt from

trope_bingo Round Thirteen.

gatekat 's note in the bookmarks of 'Immortal Jazz and Primus lets stubborn fraggers come back' is my favorite summary of this so far.

The Party - Part 7 of The Adventures of Student!Jazz and Wizard!Prowl. While its short, this was underway for a while because I couldn't quite get it to work - not until I realized I was trying to tell two separate 'A' stories at the same time.

The Scientific Method - Done for

trope_bingo and

tf_rare_pairing and just why was Prowl hanging out in Perceptor's lab during Quest for Survival anyway? Besides to poke at alien plant specimens - no, seriously, he does, just leans over Perceptor's shoulder and prods the Morphobot fragment a couple times. Now I headcanon Prowl as being tactile and that's where the cushion covers in A Greater Than Zero Percentage came from.

All the Good Things, Chapter One - This is the

wipbigbang fic I've been working on since what feels like forever and, if I'm being honest, am still editing and rewriting parts of. The original rough draft was quite a bit darker and after I left it alone for a bit and came back to it I realized I was using it to exorcise a lot of nasty stuff from my past. This was good for me, but not good for the fic, so I cut a lot of it out. I'm still worried about dangling plot threads but I think I've got almost all of the snipped so far.

WIPs
I almost forgot about AU Yeah AUgust this year, which would've been a shame because the 1st one in 2018 is the one that got me writing again. Thankfully, I got my memory jogged when I saw someone else doing it. BUT! I have learnt my lesson and will not be creating one big multichapter fic for the whole thing because I'll just end up splitting something off into a series. (Assassin AU, Wizard Prowl, Principatus, Enclave...) Drabbles can get grouped together, everything else, we'll see.

AU Yeah AUgust 2019 - One short fic, Keeping Warm (Hound/Bluestreak, bed sharing/huddling for warmth) and one drabble, Unconventional (in which Jazz tries to talk Prowl into attending a con and inadvertently lets him in on the existence of RPF), are already done.
Fifty Different Flavours: Fifty Drabbles from Fifty Different Prompts is exactly what it says on the tin. I'm approaching my fiftieth (!) item published under the 'Transformers - All Media Types' tag on the AO3 and I wanted to do a sort of anniversary thing. It'll be done and up either today or tomorrow, probably.
Untitled Transformers/Dead Space fusion for the intoabar challenge that is almost done and just needs an ending. This also covers the AU: Fusion prompt for trope_bingo . Needs to be up by August 25.
A handful of other stuff, including Assassin AU 7, Wizard AU 8, Principatus 3, and Enclave 4, that's technically on hold but that I'll work on if I have time/inspiration during AU Yeah August.
An original horror fic that I'm mentioning here to shame myself into trying to finish it. Might try and sell this one, we'll see how it goes.

Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/74284.html

End of Month (EOM) Stats

Target Words/Day

Average Words/Day

Total Words/Month

Target Words/Month

EOM Difference

1,666

1,490

44,691

50,000

5,309

So roughly 5k words off the target but that's still pretty damn respectable.

Fic I Finished in June
Quite a bit because I was working to get a blackout in

trope_bingo . A lot of this was stitching together scenes I'd been poking away at throughout the round.

( Read more... )

WIPs
Getting back to some things I put on the back burning during

trope_bingo . I did sign up for Round 13 but I'm not going for a blackout this time. Single line is fine.

Untitled wipbigbang fic. I got the rough draft done, need to go back and flesh out a few scenes/plot points. The rough draft is due on the 6 and needs to be at least 80% complete and I've got that. Did not get claimed by an artist but that's ok because I was kind of anxious about that and my anxiety does not need more feeding right now, tyvm.
Assassin AU part 7. Because even though I would steer clear of Assassin!Prowl if he were real, as a fictional character he's fun to write. Difficult, because a lot of what he does is a potential red flag and it can be a fine line to walk, but fun.
Principatus 3. Probably just going to be getting Jazz set up in their new life as a corporeal entity, however permanent or impermanent that may turn out to be.
There are a couple more that were inspired by trope_bingo prompts but weren't going to get finished on time. I don't want to focus on those just yet, I want to clear out the older items from the WiP folder first.

Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/71748.html

Urgh, I have been writing this one fic since December, I've been working on it for WiP Big Bang and I am just. Sick. Of writing. It. I don't even know if it has merit any more or if it's nothing more than self-indulgence. The only thing that keeps me going right now is that it's almost frikkin' done.

Then I have to edit it, all ninety-some pages of it. God. Thankfully it's not actually due till the end of July and once I've got the snippets in this Saturday, I can set it aside for a bit and refresh myself. Maybe when I get back to it it won't feel like such a grind.

At least for the second WiPBB fic I realized I can drop part of my outline and actually have it make more sense. Now I just need to get enough of it one between now and Saturday that I'll have three 500-1500 word snippets to submit. That file has been open since January but I've only really been working on it since April and I'm not quite as 'please let this be done' with it. Yet.

Someone send me inspiration and coffee. Please?

Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/65453.html

Snagged from

spikedluv :

Questions:

What made you start writing fanfic?

Do you think your style has changed over time? How so?
Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.
Do you think your style has changed over time? How so?
You've posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you'd written it?
Name three stories you found easy to write.
Name three stories you found difficult to write.
What's your ratio of hits to kudos?
What do your fic bookmarks say about you?
What's a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
What kind of relationships are you most interested in writing?
For E-rated fic, what are some things your characters keep doing?
Name three favorite characters to write.
You're applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?
Question of your choice!

Answers( Read more... )

Current Music: Far Cry - Rush
Crossposts: https://hours-gone-by.livejournal.com/49020.html

I tried for NaNoWriMo again this year and didn't quite make it to the 50,000-word goal. I came in 3,406 words short but that still leaves me with $46, 954 more words than I had at the start, and is much closer than last year's effort, which came in at about 10,000 words short. Also, this year's effort has more of a plot to it - I just need to figure out how the monster connects to the mystery door connects to the mine and how I'm going to sort out the socially imposed power imbalance between the leads and the demands of their respective professions to keep them together. Oh, and how the magic one character apparently has fits in - I write stream-of-consciousness and sometimes it makes for interesting results. The time I had to edit the line 'falafel would be good for lunch' out of a training doc on my editing pass particularly stands out.

Oh, man, we're past the halfway point already? :(

Day 09

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Get at least 2 more fanworks done than I did last year. I miss being creative.

Get some original fiction written. I actually did fairly well on that last year, coming in around 40k words in NaNo. The world isn't as developed as I'd like and the plot wasn't strong enough to hold an actual book together, but hey! 40k is nothing to sneeze at.

Learn to knit socks. I have a sock started, I just got distracted with dice bags. :P They're so easy! Plus, if I can knit socks I can knit stockings and I'd really like a pair or three of pretty, lacy, stockings.

Find a job. Easier said than done in a province with an unemployment rate hovering around 9%.

Meet or exceed my Goodreads 2016 challenge. Well on my way so far, but it's early days.

Get back into scale model building. We've got a workroom and an air booth set up, I really don't have any excuses!

Be better about commenting. just_ann_now linked me to this post on commenting and it made me feel much less nervous about leaving short comments. It's also got suggestions for things you can leave, which is great if you're like me and you go 'but what do I sayyyy!' before losing your nerve and clicking away, vowing to come back - really! Kudos are lovely to get too, mind, but sometimes I want to leave words.

Well, I didn't make it to the 50,00 word count. I came in 8k and change below it at 41, 619.

See what happens when you go outside and talk to people?

On the other hand, that's 41,619 words that I probably wouldn't have written otherwise, almost certainly not consecutively. It's also far above last year's attempt of 11K and giving up after the first week or so.

At least now I've got some time to catch up on other things: reading, finally playing Halo 5, finishing up the Christmas gifts I'm knitting. Two are ready for steam-blocking and final stitching, once I've got some buttons, and the third has a mistake that I'll have to unravel back to to fix. If I have time I'll try to make mittens for my brother's girls, although they're still quite young and might not appreciate something handmade. Failing that, it's educational toy/new book time again! Though honestly, the toddler probably won't care either way. I've noticed that holidays don't really start to have meaning for very small children till they're about four or so. While I'm knitting, I can finally catch up on all the subtitled stuff that's backed up on my Netflix queue! I can knit and read the screen at the same time, but even though I'm a touch-typist I always wind up reading what I type as I type it.

So there's December, and then January brings us the Fandom Snowflake Challenge again! Always look forward to that.

29. What is your current project or projects?

NaNoWriMo. I keep telling myself I'll get the word target for the day done and then maybe switch to something else but it's actually quite difficult to write 1,667 words per day which is annoying because I used to be able to write 2-3,000 per day no problem. Plus I fell behind a couple of days and it was hard to catch up.

Still. ~1,667/day while waiting for the increased antidepressant dosage to kick in is better than 0/day without them. (For me, at least. This is not true for some people, please don't say to someone 'you'll be more creative if you take your meds!' Might not be true.)

Next year I think I'll start with a structured outline instead of stream-of-consciousness and see if that changes anything. Well, and for anything I might write in between. It's not like I wait till November to write stuff.

25. Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

Sometimes, sometimes not. I don't have playlists right now (since Grooveshark shut down and I'm still building up on Spotify and Windows Media Player) but I'll often just put a whole album in and let it play. I do like to have some background noise when I'm working. Netflix is great for that: I can marathon a show (How to Get Away With Murder S1 right now) and just type stream-of-consciousness while I'm half distracted.

What I can't deal with is frequent interruptions: phones, timers, people trying to talk to me but coming and going at intervals just long enough to derail my train of thought. Especially if they're coming and going but on the same topic. For the love of god, put together your thoughts, decide what you have to say, and then come tell me.

22. Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?

To Chain Together was written for Small Fandom Fest earlier this year, and I've done a few challenges through

lotr_community and one for

snowflchallenge. I've never signed up for a Big Bang, though I did look at

yuletide this year. It just looked like too much. I tried NaNoWriMo last year and it ended up falling apart because a) I didn't have the interest to write 1,667 or more words per day and b) the plot didn't make sense to the point the characters started to argue with me.

I don't know that there's a favorite experience. Not to say that fests and Big Bangs and such are bad, but I've been having a problem writing for the past couple of years and have had to pretty much force things out. I'm hoping increasing my antidepresssant will help again, as it did when I first started them four years ago. Some people find themselves less creative on psych meds and that's completely valid, but it seems to work the opposite way for me. At least, I'm trying NaNo again this year (see the shiny icon!) and so far it seems to be going better. Far too early to tell, though, as we're only 3 days in.

17. Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?

Bane, definitely! I try to use something descriptive or a line taken from the fic and I always do titles last. Most of my stuff in progress is saved under things like 'challenge fic #X', 'so-and-so go to/in *wherever*', '*something* happens' and I have a shameful amount of things saved as 'untitled'.

I haven't done chaptered fic but if I ever do the answer will almost certainly be 'not', unless it started life as a connected series of challenges or prompt responses or such.

Day 3

In your own space, talk about your creative process - from what inspires you to what motivates you to how you manage to break through blocks. Does your process change depending on the type of creating you're doing? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Usually when I'm creating something I get the idea first - sparked off a thought, or a dream, or a suggestion by someone - and work it through as I go. Sometimes I'll sit down and plan beforehand, but usually it's more stream-of-consciousness. I'll have a sequence of events, or a visual, in my head and I try to get that down. Sometimes this works very well, others...well my NaNo this year fell apart because I got partway through and my characters started arguing the flaws in the plot! But better to find the flaws before anyone sees it than after.

It also depends on what I'm doing; informal or creative writing, graphics, and posts are almost always stream-of-consciousness. If I'm writing something for work, such as a proposal or training document, I'll sit down and structure an outline first, even if it's just a few bullet points on a notepad. Even then, I may stray from the outline depending on how the doc in question works out as I go. If I'm worldbuilding ahead of time (which is rare) I'll try and write down backstory first, and/or call a friend and go "okay, so...!" and brainstorm with or bounce ideas off them. When I'm sharing a project (fan related or professional) I will always create an outline and make sure to confer with others before making changes to it, just to make sure everyone's on the same track.

When I'm stuck, I always go the stream-of-consciousness route. It may or may not be related to what I wanted to work on and I may not keep it, but the important thing about writing is to write.

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December 2022

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Page Summary

Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2020 - Day 4
NaNoWriMo Week 1 & 2
EOM Writing Stats - September 2019
EOM Writing Stats - August 2019
EOM Writing Stats - July 2019
EOM Writing Stats - June 2019
Writing woes
Fandom Meme
NaNo 2016
Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2016: Day 9
NaNoWriMo Update #3
30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 29)
30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 25)
30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 22)
30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 17)
Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2015: Day 3

Style Credit

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Page generated Jun. 17th, 2025 02:15 am

Hours Gone By

in a world far away

Entries tagged with writing is hard

Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2020 - Day 4

NaNoWriMo Week 1 & 2

EOM Writing Stats - September 2019

EOM Writing Stats - August 2019

EOM Writing Stats - July 2019

EOM Writing Stats - June 2019

Writing woes

Fandom Meme

NaNo 2016

Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2016: Day 9

NaNoWriMo Update #3

30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 29)

30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 25)

30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 22)

30 Days of Fandom Meme (Day 17)

Fandom Snowflake Challenge 2015: Day 3

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December 2022

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