#space has thoughts

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been thinking a bit about why i like writing in present tense so much, and along with the immediacy of it, i also like the fact that it can make things seem more like Absolute Truths.

saying 'something is happening' has an aspect of declaration about it. 'this is happening - and there is nothing you can do about it'. 'he is like this - and there is no room for anything else.'

it worked really well for me in The Starless Sea because it made the mostly omniscient narration seem much more authoritative - 'this is what's happening, listen to what I'm telling you'. and it really works for me in horror because it not only puts you right in the middle of whatever Awful Thing is happening, it also makes me feel like there is nothing that can be done about it.

this is happening. not this has happened - this is happening. right now. and all you can do is watch.

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something that's really been working for me editing-wise lately (by which i mean the past year or so) is separating my 'figure out what's wrong' passes from my 'solve the problems' passes

because 'identify the issue' is a different...brain space? energy? from 'fixing the issue' and i find i can move much faster through editing when i'm not trying to do both at once

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i have got to get out of this habit of carrying on reading books that are not bad but also solidly mediocre and not particularly inspiring because every time i do it i have a horrible time and stall out on reading, and then i do what i just did, which is pick up a book i both want to read and is quite good, and finish it inside of two days

i have gotten better at DNFing things but completionist reading is a hard habit to break, apparently

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hey! what does your writing process look like? how do you take something from an idea to a draft to Done?

hello!

my process varies a bit depending on the project, but it goes a little something like this:

have Idea

scribble notes about Idea until it starts getting unwieldy

do some form of planning or outlining - for oneshots that's usually just a bullet point rough outline of events in the writing document; for novels it's anything from a document outline to multiple documents of planning and world/character building

write a rough draft as fast as humanly possible. square brackets everywhere. literally putting every thought possible on the page

then I usually like to let it sit for a bit - for small projects that's usually like a few days to a few weeks; for bigger ones i like to let it sit for a lot longer

the second draft is always a full rewrite: literally writing the Entire Thing, Word By Word, Again. I like doing this because it helps me not just get complacent about what I wrote 'ehhh it's good enough' and also helps me figure out re-ordering of things like scenes and story beats without feeling stressed about messing up what I've already written

(usually before I do a second draft I'll write some notes on what I want to change - again, for oneshots this is a small bullet list; for novels it's a fuckoff mchuge bullet list.)

then I enter the endless phase of 'read the thing, comment mark it with things I want to fix -> fix the comments -> repeat until I can't find any more mistakes'

then I'll leave it a bit (or not, if i'm impatient), and go in and do a pass for all the crutch words I lean on - and usually i have a list of ones that i've used too much in the particular project as well - and cut the ones that aren't doing anything useful

and then the final stage is spelling, grammar, and I used to read it aloud myself but now i found a TTS program that does it for me which has been EVEN BETTER than reading aloud, because I can read the thing with my eyes closed and thus 'see' all my words in a completely new light. seriously, this is maybe the thing that helps fix awkward phrasing the MOST

then, because my final stage is normally posting on AO3, i'll throw the story up, read it through in draft form on my phone one last time to catch any last minute fuck ups before i hit post

somewhere in there i'll do research if i need to for specific things, and if my beta is free i get them to look it over (usually they're busy so i just throw things at the internet anyway)

i do a lot of passes! it's kind of a lot of work, but I know my process well enough by now to know where things are in the pipeline, and if they need an extra redraft, or more structural work, or more prose polishing or whatever

with my novels I have a big list of things to look out for gleaned from various craft books as well, along with troubleshooting methods for when i get stuck, so if the story needs those I do those

(and then there's AQoT, which i had to leave marinating for almost a year while i chewed the Big Problem over in my brain four hundred times until i had enough distance from the frustration of the third draft to actually come back and fix it)

anyway that was. a lot. i hope it's vaguely interesting!

(and feel free to jump in with your process - as can anyone else reading this, i love seeing how people Work Differently. usually bc i'm looking for Methods To Steal)

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a bad book with a pretty cover feels like a cruel deception, but a fantastic book with a terrible cover is like uncovering a secret treasure you get to savour

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i keep finding myself comparing my current drafts to my finished draft of The Perils of Wanting in the same stupid way i've managed to (mostly) stop myself comparing my current drafts to published work

like i know how long it took to finish TPoW! it's my book! i was there for every step of it, all two-ish years from outline to posted chapter! and yet my brain is still trying to compare incomplete work to it!

it's like in the space of time between finishing that book and starting new things, my brain has decided to forget all the work it took to get it to the point of being Finished which is just. so stupid. why is it like this?

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i was musing last night/this morning on 'what if claws was a movie', as one does about their books; partly because the nice ego petting and partly to see if anything came up that would help me when i edit, for like pacing and stuff

but interestingly my thoughts were more that the movie would open very differently because of the medium.

book!claws opens with Vivien breaking into Rainier's office, establishes he's trans and shows the inside of his head. it builds and layers the two characters with pieces of each of their lives, because reading it that way is more satisfying; it pushes you into their headspace

movie!claws would open with Vivien doing the monologue version of a Rainier 'infodump' over a montage of Rainier going about his life, then at the end, where he says the line 'he's the only man I've ever loved', it would cut to him in Rainier's class, to then have Rainier deliver to the audience the basics of demonology needed to understand the lore

and book!claws could never open like that, because you can't really have a monologue overtop of a montage; opening with waxing lyrical about a bunch of details of Rainier wouldn't be nearly as interesting, because there's no way to care about him yet. it'd just read like a My Immortal-esque laundry list of character descriptions

idk it was just interesting to me the way the two things shaped themselves in my head! and it kinda does help with structure thoughts a bit; because claws is and always will be a book, so thinking about the specific things books can do, and how they can do them, is pretty relevant

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no im still thinking about Claustrophilia. it's going to haunt me forever, is the thing.

the thing is there are parts of it that are so fucking Viz-coded in places, but it's also completely unlike Obsession and i'm rotating my brain figuring out the ways and reasons why.

i think it's because i write my horror/gore as foundationally erotic, particularly in that series. and Claustrophilia certainly has erotic elements but it's not the same...flavour? it's hannibal-flavoured, and Viz is...poetry flavoured?