THE PROCESS

Wow yes so here's the normal creative routine I've definitely been falling into since I started SSME, typed out for my own amusement and also if anyone reading finds this to be relatable content, you're quite welcome

• Day -1: Finish most recent chapter. Feel pride, relief, submit it to Fimfiction and cross fingers for those sweet likes and favourites to roll in, try not to be disappointed all you get is one downvote. Fuss about minor typos and update your submission accordingly a few hours later
• Day 0-2: Ignore writing and do other stuff. There's no shame in taking a few days off after finishing up your most recent portion, right?
• Day 3: Make an attempt to get started on the new chapter, but not a good or focussed one: get distracted by a shiny object or a personal thing and get nothing done besides maybe a chapter title that you'll change later anyway
• Day 4: Mentally map your next chapter and hack out its first 300-500 words. Feel relief, but no pride this time
• Day 5: Agonise over what happens next for most of the day before deciding you're coming up empty-handed, you've made a false start and need to start over. Pathetic
• Day 6-8: Fail to write anything whatsoever. Begin to worry that this is it, you will never write another word, and furthermore, who the hell did you think you were even attempting to write anything in the first place? Disgusting.
• Day 9: Knuckle down and write a couple thousand words. They're not perfect, but you actually did it and that's better than the alternative, right??!? Right?????? That crisis of confidence in the previous bullet point can shove it, there's ponies to write!
• Day 10-13: Turns out getting the ball rolling is the tough part. Now you've finally made a real start you can keep building on it. Writing the mushy stuff is the easy part for me because first and foremost, that is what I came here to do -- but a narrative cannot be built on making them kiss alone so other things besides must be writ. Try to engage the audience rather than just indulge yourself constantly, but no promises. I mean this is shipping fanfiction after all, some of the latter is inevitable, ultimately it is the nature of the beast
• Day 14-15: Whoops now it's nudging 8k+ words. When did that happen?!?
• Day 16-18: Overthink, I mean edit, what you've written. There's always more details to add to amuse yourself and make it ponier, and others to remove because they're not as relevant as they seemed in the heat of composition
• Day 19: Decide your current chapter is basically finished, but hold off uploading it to Fimfiction because you're neurotic. This isn't a bad thing because you'll inevitably find a few more nits to pick
• Day 20: Submit it and feel satisfaction. Then revisit it in Google Docs and realise you didn't edit out all your errors, but fortunately the website interface makes polishing submitted work trivial! It's good that it's set up this way because honestly, I'd never submit anything until it was completely perfect otherwise (ie. nobody besides myself would ever see anything I did)

The day counts are approximations but they feel accurate, to me anyway. I guess what I'm getting at here is that mentally flagellating myself over my anxiety-induced procrastination is a major part of working on a project that I'm quick to forget after I actually make it to the end. I'm just about at day 9 right now after a real PITA of a writing block which isn't my first, go me

Here's some music. Been gettin' goth lately 🤘😭🤘