Never Rest On Your Laurels · 11:21pm Aug 31st, 2023

You may have noticed I've not been as active as usual lately. Or for chunks of this year. There's a reason for that.

Quick version: working on something big.

Slow version: working on damn near everything.

Blog Number 231: Fastidious and Furious Edition

I would love to say I have something fanfictiony to show for the past eleven months. It's been nearly a year since I last posted a story, and that's an unusually long hiatus for me publication-wise. But... things are different now, meaning I'm not quite there yet.

Take a step back. See the bigger picture...

Now that I'm approaching my twelfth anniversary since joining the fandom, I'm getting increasingly ambitious. What I've done so far is much, much less than what I wish I'd done during that same time. That's increasing the pressure to stop and check what in my methodology needs updating and refining.

In recent years, the old and generic desire to "write more" has coalesced - through canon research, selection of particular ideas that stand the twin tests of time and passion, the stockpiling of inspiration and influences from other works of fiction and from collected trivia - into something more solid and systematic. A definite plan emerges.

Not quickly, but growing more and more concrete and confident over time. Which I'm hoping is a good sign, but I'm trying to be patient.

Most of this has been slow-burn: I've had the first inklings of a plan since 2016, when a particular project turned my thinking around. The last three years (roughly since my burst of activity in 2020 subsided) have been especially intense.

I won't call it "soul-searching", but let's just say I've been getting downright existential at times. Brutally so: I want to make sure I've got a strong foundation, a base from which to commence the first few forays.

If it succeeds, then fingers crossed it'll give me a good boost.

If it succeeds. No point getting anyone's hopes up: as a minimum, I want to be clear why I've been so quiet lately.

Writing revamps aren't the only thing causing problems. This year, it's gone hand-in-hand with some major lifestyle shakeups. These last couple of weeks in particular, I've been busier than usual at work. Meanwhile, I'm also striving to get my leisure time under control. Mostly to unlearn or at least mitigate bad habits (sleep in particular: I've been terrible for late nights). Cap it off with a domestic shakeup that's likely to inconvenience me for a few months, and I can't say my hopes are high.

One of the worst habits of mine is that, when I focus on one major, demanding project, despite it not actually taking up the whole schedule, I nevertheless start putting off and neglecting other things as if I didn't have room for them. Even though I do. Which means I have to train myself to counter that. Which makes more demands on my energy and time, which makes it harder to concentrate, which means I end up eating more and more time trying to tackle it, and gaaaaaah.

Synchronized lifestyle, why must you be so elusive?