#fic-writing

[flabbergasties]

great news, my sunday in the park au playlist is...a masterpiece

[idleleaves]

Calling all AuDHD fic writers, or anyone else who finds themselves frustrated and discouraged when conventional writing-productivity advice just doesn't work for them: I have a system.

It's not foolproof, and it doesn't guarantee words, but it's much more aligned with how my brain actually functions than anything else I've tried. My focus is mercurial, at best, and I've never been able to lock in even when I really want to write; trying to apply the 'butt glue' philosophy (apply seat of pants to seat of chair and stay there) just leaves me scattered and fidgeting. So a few months ago I thought… what if I tried including the restlessness in the routine?

I downloaded a pomodoro app and set a 10-minute focus timer followed by a 3-minute break timer—ten minutes to write, then three minutes to get up and pace or otherwise move around. I set it to run four times in a row, then tried it out and… it worked. Ten minutes is long enough for a few sentences, and three minutes is short enough to avoid picking up my phone to doom-scroll or fall into another distraction.

It works best (for me, at least) with Pomocat, because it can continue on its own from one timer to the next, from focus to break to focus to break, until the end of the session without my input—I just start it up, set it aside, and listen for the pings that tell me to switch between words and wandering. It also works best when I get up and actually move—pace, or stretch, or shake out stiff muscles—during those three minutes.

I'm still a turtle-speed writer (that much will never change) but now, at least, I'm a less consistently-disappointed one—and some weeks, that's all I need.

[flabbergasties]

people in the comments of my fic rec'ing queer theory articles, i could cry

[flabbergasties]

How do you decide how long a chapter will be

this is such a good question!

for me, the chapters sort of all naturally fall to be around the same length depending on the story (so, like, for my recent roadtrip au, all the chapters were between 7-9k; for librarian au, they're between 10-12k), which i take as an indication that i've put enough plot points/scenes into each chapter to keep the story's pacing consistent! if any chapter falls drastically short of that average or way overshoots it, i usually re-evaluate my outline and either try to add things in or take things out.

(i think it's almost always been the latter, and it's not usually me scrapping entire scenes, but rather just smoothing out some of the scenes to be less elaborate. e.g., the characters don't need to go to a nondescript third location to have this convo, they can realistically have it right here, cost me 1,000 less words, and keep the reader from getting vertigo)

[flabbergasties]

if putting fiona apple’s paper bag on yet another glinda playlist makes me wrong, i don’t want to be right

[flabbergasties]

pms-ing so hard i accidentally made this next fic enemies to lovers

[flabbergasties]

when fic-writing feels more like an exorcism cuz you just need to get it out of your system

[wanderinginksplot]

Does anyone have some good editing tips?

True confession: I have never edited a story in-depth and I have no idea how to go about it. Can anyone spare an editing tip? Right now, I’m just reading my story over and over and making small changes, but I am so lost!