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First though...
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So... yeah... the past two weeks....
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| Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books by Bryan Lee O'Malley |
In all honesty, I thought I was going to be able to do a smaller "week recap" post last week because I had slowly been adding to the post all week long. I completed a chunk of my story? Recap it quick on my blog draft. Read a fanfic I wanted to promote? Link it on the draft. Did something that prevented me from writing that day? Take a couple minutes to explain that in the draft.
All I had to do was edit and fill in the transitions. Simple. And I probably would have been able to get it done on time last week, but then I got to the fanfics I wanted to promote, and... that's where a lot of the time was eaten up.
To help me get inspired for Fluff Week, and to see how others interpreted the prompts, I read close to a dozen stories, at least three of which were on-going works I started following. By the end of the week though, I was starting to forget which plot went with which story, so I had to skim through them to remind myself which was which... and that's where a lot of the time went last Tuesday.
That and working on my own stories. Dear lord, did I do a lot of writing so far this month. Perhaps more than I have for most NaNoWriMos. If I haven't been at work, I've been writing... or rather... pulling my hair out trying to figure out WHAT to write.
The Kyoru Week prompts were only one or two word prompts, and while I did struggle a tad, in the end I was able to come up with SOMETHING everyday, and got them written, edited, and published within a fairly decent hour.
Lovesquare Fluff Week, though?
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Here were the prompts for the week:
- Concert
- Trust
- Flowers
- Your Voice
- Comfort
- AU Day
- Reveal
- February 6th
- February 7th
- February 8th
- February 9th
- February 10th
- February 11th
- February 12th
- February 13th
I honestly have no clue why this week in particular was so rough for me. Again, I didn't have this issue with Kyoru Week.
Also, there were tons of other authors who managed to churn out the Fluff Week prompts daily - and at really good quality too - so I am doubly concerned for my own inability. Have I burnt myself out already? Not even 2 months into the year, and without really writing anything in January? Am I rusty from the lack of practice last month? Even though I had the Lukanette story mostly done before starting Fluff Week, was my torn attention to blame? Why am I not one of those prolific writers who has about 40 plot ideas bouncing around in their head at all times and going "OOO! Ooo! I can finally use that one!"?
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Getting back to my writing, I had hunkered down to try to finish the Lukanette story for the Lovebugs and Snakecharmers Secret Admirer event. It was still a bit patchy for most of the week. Friday, Feb 7th, I had off, and we had a bit of a snow storm again, so I spent literally the whole day in my pajamas, only switching out in the evening when I showered and put on new pajamas. Got to love those days, right?
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Well, when I posted my astonishment about my story's size to Tumblr, I was amused at the encouragement (re: enabling) I received.
CaptainMalcolmReynolds said "Mine was supposed to be short and is 5K words. *sigh*" and Taurus Pixie told me "I won’t be complaining! Just means more awesomeness to read!" I even had one of the mods for the event - justknitstuff - chime in first with "Mine just reached 5K, and I still have a full scene and a half to go. I hear you…"
Seeing that last one KILLED me, because... who was I writing my Lukanette story for but justknitstuff! No one was supposed to know who their secret admirer was, so even though Knit was the main mod for the event, presumably she didn't know I was her Secret Admirer. And yet she encouraged! Was the FIRST to do so, no less!
Later, when I stopped again for another break, I commented that my story was now up to 8800 words! I joked that I was taking bets on whether or not I'd surpass 10,000 with this story. To which Cpt Reynolds replied with "I’m pretty sure nobody is going to object to MORE!" and "Whoo hoo!"
Then, when I finished my first draft, I replied once more with the final word count: 9,990. But I also still needed to do some editing, so I wasn't sure which direction that word count would travel. I mostly got pushes to keep going. Cpt Reynolds again jumped in with "11 more words! 🤣🤣🤣" and Knit also encouraged (enabled) with "Add on words! I’ll leave mine for a day then go back to fix up a portion and end up adding a whole new section!" When I laughed them off with a "LOL, you two know not what you’re encouraging. XD" Knit responded with "*encourages away* XD"
I was in stitches knowing she was unknowingly encouraging me to expand upon the story I was writing for her!
So, anyway, I'm 100% blaming Reynolds and Knit for me finishing with a story 10,943 words long.
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| Ya-Ya Facebook sticker by Birdman, Inc |
Besides, I needed a distraction from Fluff Week. As I mentioned above, I did NOT do well with Fluff Week. Was I overthinking? I still don't quite know. I DO know, however, that there were just SO. MANY. OPTIONS.
There's the standard Love Square of Adrien and Marinette (Adrienette), Adrien and Ladybug (Ladrien), Ladybug and Chat Noir (LadyNoir), and Marinette and Chat Noir (MariChat). But there's LOADS of other combo options birthed from season 3. In case you haven't watched it yet, I'll drop them in a spoiler box.
For those that didn't click, depending on how goofy you get, and where you draw the line with them being a "new pairing" within the Love Square "rules", there was anywhere between 17 and 38 new configurations!
SO. MANY. OPTIONS.
In truth, I mostly focused Core Love Square to keep the complexity down to a minimum, but there was always the OPTION to use one of the dozens of other combos. Add in the vagueness of the one-word prompts, and... I think it was too much for my mind to narrow down? With Kyoru week it was simply Kyo and Tohru. That's it. Two people. The only real option I had to choose from was what time frame I wanted to put them in: pre-relationship, late-manga, officially together, or married. Also, most of the prompts were somehow key bits of the core Kyoru relationship: the paper flower Kyo gave Tohru, both of them being afraid of getting abandoned again, both of them fearing they are being selfish in their need for the other person, and 'Firsts', 'Desire', 'Forever', and 'Birthday Wishes' are fairly generic Romance prompts.
In contrast, except for 'Trust' and 'Reveal', the prompt options for Fluff Week aren't anything truly specific to Adrien and Marinette. It's just.... it's tough.
To try to clear my head, and help transition me from my Lukanette story to a Love Square piece, I helped beta-read for Cyhyr during that snow storm on the 7th. And somehow managed to accidentally delete bits of the document while critiquing it!
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After THAT mini-disaster, I finally cracked my knuckles, so to speak, and got down to business: my first story for the Fluff Week event. While the 7th was technically the second day of the event, as I noted above, it was also the 7th day from the end date. So I could either start with prompt day 1 and be considered "late" or "the proper day"... whichever. Even if I was late compared to everyone else already posting their 'Concert' prompt stories, I'm sure no one would mind too much. Right?
My next blog will go into more detail about how I came up with my story. What I'll say here, however, is that it kept me until around 9pm to FINALLY lock in an idea, and then, between writing, editing, and formatting it for the different websites, I didn't have it published until about 2am.
"Music to Heal"
Since I was so focused on my own stories - both the Lukanette one, and what I was going to do for the Love Square prompt 'concert' - I didn't read any other Fluff Week stories until the 8th. Before then, I didn't have the time, and I didn't want what everyone else was doing somehow influence what I wrote.
Well, guess what the biggest trend was for the prompt 'concert'? I'll give you a hint, it WASN'T the direction I thought everyone was going to go in.
You got it. Looked like about 60% of the stories were actually Adrien performing a private piano recital for Marinette/Ladybug. I flipped through them so quickly - and some, admittedly, I didn't finish reading - that I don't have them really noted, but in nearly all of them Adrien was practicing his piano by himself; playing a sad/melancholy song. Marinette - either as herself or as Ladybug - hears him play, "interrupts" his performance, and then Adrien continues to play for Marinette/Ladybug alone. The two end up snuggling on the piano bench as Marinette gets lost in the sweet and professionally performed music.
Guess what I did for my 'Concept' prompt story?
Somehow I still managed to get a review saying, "This was really nice! That was original to think of a private Adrien 'Concert'."
So... uh... cool?
Anyway, out of the other stories involving Adrien playing for Ladybug/Marinette, one in particular stuck out. I'll go more in detail about my review for the over-all Fluff Week collection in my next blog post, but I did still want to give a quick shout out to LoveSquare Week 2020 by LittleLottieWrites.
Getting back to my writing, though, Saturday was a bit chaotic at work, and then we had a late start to Anime Night. I was going to use the delay to work on my writing some more, but I was just drawing such blanks. I did some cleaning instead, hoping the mindless tasks would help me come up with SOMETHING. Still nope.
I struggled some more on Sunday, now trying to play catch-up by writing both the Day 2 and Day 3 prompts of 'Trust' and 'Flowers'. On top of that, I had initially thought of doing the Day 4 prompt of 'Your Voice' so I was "caught up" with everyone else doing the event.
Instead I bounced between "what can I do for trust that hasn't already been done either on the show or in thousands of fanfics; their entire relationship is nothing but trust...." and "Okay, what can I do with 'flowers'????" Eventually I thought back to Kyoru Week. One of the prompts was 'Paper Flower' and I decided I'd just steal that. I'd loop back to 'Trust' at some point, but I'd at least focus on the prompt for that day. I would recreate Kyo gifting Tohru the paper flower scene. How though?
I'll get into the nitty-gritty of it in my next post, but the long and short is that I decided on Marinette helping make paper flowers as part of the backdrop for a Kitty Section music video, but then ran out of time to actually finish, a la her frantic To Do List schedule in the season 3 episode "Gamer 2.0" or her equally tight time table in "Bakerix."
I was excited to have thought of SOMETHING finally, even if I was still a day behind because I couldn't take my mostly-day-off to come up with two stories. Buuuuuuut, just like with the first prompt, by the time I was done writing, and formatting it for the different sites, it was about 2am again. So I wasn't even on time with the 'Flowers' prompt anymore. I didn't even take the time to edit it before publishing. I then went back and tweaked a touch about mid-Monday, and was surprised that it actually didn't need too much editing. Go me! Anyway, you can find the polished version at my normal four sites.
"Let Me Help You"
I've gotten back into Zumba finally, after a long 3 months of not having the time. So Monday I went to work, I went to Zumba, I had a nice heart-to-heart with my sister-in-law, who does Zumba with me, I found out my almost-7-year-old niece has FINALLY gotten into Miraculous Ladybug and is kinda obsessed with it (girl after my own heart), and then I went home to shower, have dinner, and spend some time with the hubby. I toiled over going back and working on a story for the day 2 prompt of 'Trust' as well as working on the day 4 prompt 'Your Voice'. In the end, I passed out at about 10pm without writing anything, but deciding I was going to shift the prompts around so 'Your Voice' is the penultimate one.
Last Tuesday, as I stated above, I attempted to write up my "what I've done this week", but you can see how long this already is. In the end, I caved and agreed to Chibi's suggestion. I had every intention of coming back and finishing the post before going to bed that night, or at least while at work on Wednesday. Clearly neither happened.
My Tuesday was fairly packed between errands, spending time with Hubby, and then writing group. I was actually a little excited because it would be one of the rare times I could read a full WIP before I actually published it. One of the few instances where I could actually work in the critiques for that story, as opposed to using the critiques to know what to improve upon for next time. Also, since I was aiming to read my Lukanette story, it would be mostly original - due to it being an AU story - so it would be easier for the others to critique, and easier for me to follow the critiques. For most of my stories, the things the other members critique are largely canonical elements I have no control over anyway if I'm going to stay true to the show.
So, yeah, a story they could actually critique, and I could actually include said critiques in the finished project. I wasn't sure about taking the time to read over 10,000 words worth of story, but I've done it in the past when there's barely anyone else there, and no one else had something new to read.
This was not one of those weeks.
Two other members took up the full time, which was a little bit of a bummer, but at the same time, they are working on wholly original works that they wish to professionally publish some day. The one in particular is working on a murder mystery story, so we got into quite a lengthy discussion about the structure of murder mystery stories, whether or not she's leaving the proper breadcrumbs, did the red herring work well, etc. It was a fun discussion, and it felt like her story got the rest of the group more involved than critiquing my story would have. So no hard feelings, just a touch bummed.
Flying solo, I focused hard on my Lukanette story last Wednesday. The story didn't need to be published until the 13th, but I wanted it done. That way it would be super simple to just format, upload, and be on time with the deadline.
Right... me uploading the Lukanette story on time...
Before I get to THAT.
After polishing up the Lukanette story, I was determined to get another Fluff Week story done before the event ended. The Lukanette one wasn't supposed to be published until the 13th anyway, so I "had time" - not really because of my crazy Wednesday schedule, but we'll ignore that. It kept me a bit, but I did eventually think of something for the 'Trust' prompt, so I went back to that. It turned out actually mostly angst with just a bit of comfort/fluff at the end.... whoops. Oh well. It was done, so up it went.
"I Have Something to Confess"
You guessed it, I was up until the wee-hours of the morn posting that, then I still had to get up to go to work. This time, though, I didn't go to bed at 10pm. All because I'm an idiot.
There I was on Thursday, all set to start publishing the story at about 3pm or so. Plenty of time to get it done before work ended and I went straight into D&D night. Buuuuuut then I thought about the fact that most of my other multi-chapter stories had cover art to go with them:
- Peeping Tomcat
- Prescription for Love
- Woven Heartstrings
- What Is Truly Meant to Be: A Hey Arnold Musical
- X-Future: The Second Generation Begins
- The Divine Legends
- The People of Gyateara
Even some of my anthology works, such as:
Heck, even I Don't Care has cover art, and it only has the 2 chapters... so far. Really, the only exceptions to this "a story with multiple chapters has cover art" rule of mine are:- The "Hey, Arnold!" fandom event Daily Challenge Anthology
- "Please, Let Me Explain": An X-Future Tale
- The 2-chapter HA! story I Caught You A Star
- The Kyoru Week anthology Hearts Together
- And most recently, my Fluff Week anthology Love Square Fluff Week 2020
Well, my Lukanette story had 7 chapters, so I guess I needed cover art for it. What I SHOULD have done was publish the story, THEN made cover art, went back, and updated with the art. That way the story itself was up at least. Instead, I prioritized the cover art, and didn't finish by the time work was out.
I also didn't have time to finish the artwork, let alone publish the story, before our D&D session started up. So I had to wait until 11:30 or so at night to start working on everything. I won't get into the details here as to why, but I always publish my stories in this order: DeviantArt, FanFiction, AO3, then Tumblr. Then I promote on Facebook, and over on Twitter. Well, DA was fighting me as I was trying to upload all seven chapters of my story. The website kept glitching and lagging... it was a mess. It was about 2am again by the time the story was fully published on DA. Buuuut, it was a Tumblr event, so I HAD to have it published on Tumblr before I went to bed! So I was up until about 4am trying to format and post to Tumblr. I noticed that the formatting of my image was off - it didn't save the way it looked in the editing program - but I was too tired to care. I'd fix it later when I published to FFN and AO3.
I crashed. I woke up about 7:30 later that morning. Then I saw the email from the event mods that they didn't have my Lukanette story in the AO3 collection, and they want all stories in before making it live. The email also reminded me to not publish to any other site or even sample some of it on social media, that way all recipients get their stories at the same time, and can be one of the first to read it.
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Which means, if I was paying proper attention, I would have just published the story to AO3, like I was supposed to, and then I could have spent Friday working on cover art in order to publish to the other 3 sites once the collection on AO3 was live.
I did this ENTIRELY out of order, and royally screwed up. I didn't even properly publish by the deadline!
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Friday I tried to rush through publishing to AO3 as fast as I could, but I was at work, and - surprise, surprise - they actually needed me to DO my job. I'll go into more detail with the next post, but the long-and-short is that I didn't manage to get my story properly published to the AO3 collection until 1pm-ish. Thankfully, as I was told, I wasn't the only one they were waiting for, so the collection itself didn't go live until closer to 6. I feel a touch less guilty, but I still had it up on DA and Tumblr - and I remembered to tag that Discovering Miraculous Writers blog this time, so it was already reblogged to that - when I wasn't supposed to have the story anywhere else until it was live on AO3.
This is why you need to fully read the instructions, kiddos.
Anyway, now that it's live, you can check out my story in the normal four places.
"Marinette's Song"
After that chaos, I needed a bit of a breather. Plus, it was friggen Valentine's Day. So Hubby and I had a stay-at-home date night. No computers. No social media. No mobile games. Just us, a nice dinner, and movies as we snuggled.
I ended the day reading the Lukanette Secret Admirer story written for me. And, as luck would have it, my (not so) Secret Admirer was none other than MalcomReynolds! There were 14 people, so the odds weren't THAT slim that she'd luck into having me as her recipient, but still...
I'll gush more about it in the next blog post, but for now, here's the link: Or I Could Just Kiss You... by MalcomReynolds.
I randomed into another weekend off, so I figured I could use the Saturday and Sunday off to play catch-up on Fluff Week. Technically, the event ended on Thursday, but I wanted to participate, and By George, I was going to finish!
Saturday, though, Hubby wanted to head to a game store to pick up another army starter pack for the "A Song of Ice and Fire" miniatures tabletop game he started after our date-day last month. Since it's a decent drive - about 40 minutes or so - and the store had open tables specifically set up for tabletop army games, and Hubby had the spare cash on him, he bought yet another army starter pack, and we just stayed to play. He completely demolished me this go because I did NOT play my army of Free Folk at all the way they should have been played. Because, ya know, I have the strategic mind of a five-year-old. Still. I had fun.
The trade-off, though, was that we ended up spending the better half of the day out there - between driving, purchasing the starter sets, setting up the starter sets, reading what they did, picking out our army units, the game itself, packing everything up, dinner, then the drive home - and when we got home we went straight into Anime Night with Omnibladestrike. So no writing that day.
No big deal. I still had a relaxing day with the Hubby, and got socializing in. Plus, I probably needed a break from writing. Marinette's Song was already up, and the Fluff Week event was already over. No major rush. I would have liked to have finally put up last week's blog post on Saturday, but whatever.
Sunday I'd make up for it. I had Sunday off, and Hubby was at work for six hours. I could write, clean the apartment, and/or respond to ChibiSunnie's messages to me on Facebook that I had been neglecting. I had plenty of time.
Before I knew it, I ended up spending that alone time catching up on the three Fluff Week fanfics I started following after day 2, back when I was reading what everyone else did for the prompt 'Concert'. I read more of the story I linked to towards the start of this blog - LoveSquare Week 2020 by LittleLottieWrites - as well as Chasing Feelings by CoffeeComicsGalore, and the breathtakingly amazing Two Hundred Seventeen Days co-written by the equally talented mostlovedgirl and zenmisery. So, collectively, I read probably close to 50,000 words, if not more. Add in the time it took for me to review each chapter? Well, there's your 6hrs right there.
Technically, 5hrs, because I did spend about an hour trying to reply to Chibi before taking a break to write my own stories... only to still have no clue what to do with the rest of the prompts and reading instead.
The rest of Sunday - after picking up Hubby - was spent with more bonding time, some cleaning, dinner, and me FINALLY becoming inspired for my 'Comfort' prompt from Fluff Week. I had been deciding between about five different options, but, thanks to talking it over with Hubby, along with thinking back to my original fandom of "Hey, Arnold!", I was able to lock in what I wanted to do.
Of course, along with the other nights, I didn't start writing until close to 8 or 9pm. By the time I was done with the story, let it sit for a little bit, went back to edit, and then publish to my four normal spots, it was 2am again. I'm sensing an unfortunate theme here....
This one is at least actual fluff this time, and I'll get more into it with my next blog post. In the meantime, enjoy the fluffiness of Domestic Adrienette.
"Playing House"
As I mentioned at the top of this post, I was fairly wiped yesterday, so I crashed at about 10pm. I did ponder a bit on the next prompt I want to do: AU Day. Just before bed, I rewatched the Ouran High School Host Club episode "Haruhi in Wonderland." Which is basically an AU episode where the show does an Alice in Wonderland crossover. It's not a great parallel, and the characters joke that's mostly because Haruhi is too logical and too confrontational to be a proper Alice. The episode ends with Haruhi waking up to discover the Host Club dressed up for their Wonderland event, and she quips about how with the Club it's hard to truly know when she's awake.
I still haven't locked in what I want to do with my AU chapter, but I know I want it to be either a dream sequence, or some sort of role play - LARP, MMORPG, D&D or a D&D parody I create for the ML universe, performing a play, etc - and I want the story to zero in on Marinette crushing on Chat Noir, possibly even starting to piece together who Chat Noir could be, or that Adrien seems a lot like Chat Noir... something like that.
Then the prompt 'Your Voice' will be Adrien's turn to start piecing Ladybug's identity together. Finishing with the prompt 'Reveal'.
I need to figure out 'AU Day' first though.
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Wish me luck on that.
Also, be sure to stay up-to-date with me by following my Tumblr, my Twitter, or sign up for the email... the emails SHOULD work, as long as you don't happen to be Charlotte.
Anyway, gotta run!
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