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All the writing!
Mar. 3rd, 2025 08:01 amAfter a long creative fallow period, my writing mojo has suddenly come back all in a rush. I've published 32k of fic in the last few weeks, which is more than I've managed in the last three years combined. It feels amazing! And maddening, because I have so many fucking ideas right now and not actually all that much time to work on them. But it's the good kind of maddening. I'm having a blast!
Candy Hearts exchange
My Candy Hearts assignment is what set everything off. 'It'll be fine,' I told myself, signing up. 'My last few exchange experiences have been highly stressful scrambles to get anything written by deadline, but this time I'll take it super chill and write a modest little ficlet for a ship I'm already super confident with. What could go wrong?'
And then instead of doing that I got way too inspired by my recip's excellent prompts and wrote, uh. Nearly 15k of Kylo Ren getting beaten up by a giant slug and having frottage with Finn about it (here, if you're game). The words all just came rushing out, I was writing a few thousand per sitting and having so much fun. My starting concept was 'Finnlo h/c and huddling for warmth on Hoth', but it felt like nerfing Kylo a bit too much to have him rendered helpless and dependent on his stormtrooper escort's mercy by just a wampa, so I was browsing Wookieepedia for inspiration as I puzzled it out and that's how I learnt that these bad boys canonically exist on Hoth (never change, Star Wars). After that everything just fell into place.
After that I thought I was done with CH, but then reveals got delayed and a treat idea came blazing fully formed into my brain. So I wrote another 5k of teenaged Poe, Jacen and Ben getting into trouble at Luke's Jedi temple, all in one frantic sitting the day before work reveals. I was putting in typo fixes down to the minute on that one, lol. Live fast die young. :D
Bad Sex Bingo
I've also gone absolutely mental for my Bad Sex Bingo card. I've been tracking my progress at the linked post, but to summarise: eight fics so far, bingo in two directions, ideas in reserve for every remaining square. Kylo Ren has been having SO much bad sex, you guys. :DDD I'm trying to rein myself in now to save some energy for May the Fourth, but I'm really enjoying having something of my own to just noodle away at.
It's actually made me realise how long it's been since I wrote for myself instead of putting all my effort into exchange fic. No regrets - exchanges have been really good for me for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they seem to have cured me of a long-running insecurity about feedback stats. I'm generally pretty confident about my writing itself (I know my strengths, I'm working on my weaknesses, and I'm good enough that I can always make the words say at least a close approximation of what I want them to, which to me is the most important part) but I used to feel so self-conscious and vulnerable about the social side of things. I felt like I needed "permission" to share my writing publicly, and permission could mean a small close-knit fannish friend group or a bunch of kudos from strangers but it always had to come from other people, if that makes sense. Writing for exchange requests was about the most explicit permission possible, and it seems to have acted as an interim step in weaning me off a need for public approval? Because I've gotten used to writing all sorts of niche stuff that I haven't felt embarrassed to publish so long as one person wants it, and from there it's a much easier jump to "well, I myself am one person, I can publish things just because I want them" and I just...don't feel worried about it anymore? So now I'm posting all this niche Bad Sex Bingo fic written solely to amuse myself, and some of it is attracting lots of readers and some of it isn't, and I'm feeling able to just enjoy whatever feedback I get for what it is without needing it to reassure me that I haven't made a fool of myself by being That Loser Who Posts Fic No One Wants And Who We All Just Wish Would Shut Up.
...anyway. That's me done navelgazing for now. Although, derailing a smutfic project into a big introspection session on my own issues feels very on brand for a Kylo Ren's Sex Life Is an Angst-Fueled Disaster project. The point is I am having a LOT OF FUN and feeling really comfortable in my own fannish skin right now, and it's nice.
Candy Hearts exchange
My Candy Hearts assignment is what set everything off. 'It'll be fine,' I told myself, signing up. 'My last few exchange experiences have been highly stressful scrambles to get anything written by deadline, but this time I'll take it super chill and write a modest little ficlet for a ship I'm already super confident with. What could go wrong?'
And then instead of doing that I got way too inspired by my recip's excellent prompts and wrote, uh. Nearly 15k of Kylo Ren getting beaten up by a giant slug and having frottage with Finn about it (here, if you're game). The words all just came rushing out, I was writing a few thousand per sitting and having so much fun. My starting concept was 'Finnlo h/c and huddling for warmth on Hoth', but it felt like nerfing Kylo a bit too much to have him rendered helpless and dependent on his stormtrooper escort's mercy by just a wampa, so I was browsing Wookieepedia for inspiration as I puzzled it out and that's how I learnt that these bad boys canonically exist on Hoth (never change, Star Wars). After that everything just fell into place.
After that I thought I was done with CH, but then reveals got delayed and a treat idea came blazing fully formed into my brain. So I wrote another 5k of teenaged Poe, Jacen and Ben getting into trouble at Luke's Jedi temple, all in one frantic sitting the day before work reveals. I was putting in typo fixes down to the minute on that one, lol. Live fast die young. :D
Bad Sex Bingo
I've also gone absolutely mental for my Bad Sex Bingo card. I've been tracking my progress at the linked post, but to summarise: eight fics so far, bingo in two directions, ideas in reserve for every remaining square. Kylo Ren has been having SO much bad sex, you guys. :DDD I'm trying to rein myself in now to save some energy for May the Fourth, but I'm really enjoying having something of my own to just noodle away at.
It's actually made me realise how long it's been since I wrote for myself instead of putting all my effort into exchange fic. No regrets - exchanges have been really good for me for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they seem to have cured me of a long-running insecurity about feedback stats. I'm generally pretty confident about my writing itself (I know my strengths, I'm working on my weaknesses, and I'm good enough that I can always make the words say at least a close approximation of what I want them to, which to me is the most important part) but I used to feel so self-conscious and vulnerable about the social side of things. I felt like I needed "permission" to share my writing publicly, and permission could mean a small close-knit fannish friend group or a bunch of kudos from strangers but it always had to come from other people, if that makes sense. Writing for exchange requests was about the most explicit permission possible, and it seems to have acted as an interim step in weaning me off a need for public approval? Because I've gotten used to writing all sorts of niche stuff that I haven't felt embarrassed to publish so long as one person wants it, and from there it's a much easier jump to "well, I myself am one person, I can publish things just because I want them" and I just...don't feel worried about it anymore? So now I'm posting all this niche Bad Sex Bingo fic written solely to amuse myself, and some of it is attracting lots of readers and some of it isn't, and I'm feeling able to just enjoy whatever feedback I get for what it is without needing it to reassure me that I haven't made a fool of myself by being That Loser Who Posts Fic No One Wants And Who We All Just Wish Would Shut Up.
...anyway. That's me done navelgazing for now. Although, derailing a smutfic project into a big introspection session on my own issues feels very on brand for a Kylo Ren's Sex Life Is an Angst-Fueled Disaster project. The point is I am having a LOT OF FUN and feeling really comfortable in my own fannish skin right now, and it's nice.
