♥ Beautiful Silence :: Sena's Writing Blog ♥

Hoooooooly SHIT I just finished Storm Season! 8D And while the word count in Storm Season is higher than that of Horror High (76,416 vs 70,659) they actually both ended up being the EXACT SAME PAGE LENGTH, coming in at 167 each. XD But that's how much denser the text was in SS, I guess, so whatever! I'm still super hyped! <33

Now I just need to EDIT the entire freaking thing, which I'm hoping to get done before the end of the month so I don't have it hanging over my head while I'm trying to work on the NaNo. But it's only the 16th today, so I should be good.

It occurred to me yesterday that in the last sliiiightly less than three months, I have written almost 500 pages (about 484-ish) in this series, not to mention all the other bits-and-bobs of other stuff I've written as well; Snowflakes And Dragons, Coffee Break, etc., and like... 500 pages is TWO novels. I have written AT LEAST two novels worth of content in the last three months, since I went on the ADHD meds, and is this what it's actually like?? To have a FUNCTIONAL BRAIN?? Because WOW. .__.

So maybe, MAYBE I actually have it in me to just... WRITE BOOKS. BE AN ACTUAL AUTHOR. Because I know that my ideas are good, so if I can get them written out like I have with the Horror High (et al) series, I'm pretty much GOLDEN. It's a surreal thought. Something I've strived for and struggled with my entire life. Literally my dream, to share my stories with the world. It's why I got into fanfiction, too.

So I'm going to do TKA for the NaNo this year and attempt 50,000 words in a month, and though I'm sure I can manage THAT, TKA is going to be longer than 50,000 words so I'll have to keep working on it after the NaNo is over to complete it. Or just write 80,000 words in a month. I could just do that. :|

And once I have TKA WRITTEN, then I can edit the shit out of it half a dozen times before finally trying to find an agent that will take me on and hock my wares for me, you know? I'm not 100% sure where to start with that but... I'll muddle through somehow. Because I definitely want an agent if I can possibly get one, rather than trying to sell my book around to publishing companies myself. I'll get way better contracts if I have an agent.

Anyway. Just. I shouldn't put the cart before the horse. Finish TKA first, that's the big one.

BUT ALSO YAY STORM SEASON!!!

I've been off of working on Storm Season the last three days or so, which isn't good. I'm trying to get it AND all the post-SS one-shots finished by the end of the month. But I'm having a HELL of a time concentrating on it right now, I kind of just want to write the one-shots instead, which is a problem because they, obviously, take place AFTER Storm Season, so I don't want to write them and then have to edit the shit out of them when they don't line up with SS "canon", you know? But it's what my brain wants to write right now, and it IS part of what I want to get done by the end of the month, so...???

Right now I have When Lightning Strikes, Ghost In The Machine and Pinfeathers open to work on along with Storm Season, since they're the first three of the post-SS one-shots so it makes logical sense that I would work on them first, right? But I also REALLY want to work on Halcyon Days and Stalagmites, which are the LAST two, so like idek brain what are you doing to me, here?

I'm also tinkering with Where Monsters Come From, which I STRUGGLED with for the longest time and now, FINALLY, am having some luck at writing some scenes?? NOW?? WHEN IT IS THE LITERAL WORST TIME?? I have no idea, really, I just think my brain is trying to kill me or drive itself more insane or something.

On a side note, I really do think I need an increase in my ADHD meds, they're not working nearly as well as they did in the beginning, and that's the thing with me and medications; my body adjusts to them really easily, so I start off fine but then my body adjusts and my dosage has to be upped and my body adjusts and my dosage has to be upped and so on, until I'm on HUGE dosages of (most of) my meds. Looks like the Vyvanse might be the same way, not that I'm all that surprised.

ANYWAY. Then last night I started a short story that I've had kicking around the back of my head since I was like 14. It's called "A Dog Named God" and it's kind of my own personal thoughts on the concept of God, but put in a supernatural/fantasy setting because I can't just write an ESSAY now, can I?

Then I also want to work some more on Chemistry (and Chemistry side-fics, I have one about Violet Parr and Katie Mitchell that's really cute) and get working on Marked again, but first I have to like... READ Marked again because it's been so long that I completely forget where I was going with it aside from the gratuitous smut. :D;;

On top of that I want to finish up some of my old Valdemar stuff (Brothers At Arms, Marionette, Aftershocks, Fallout, Evolution, Of The Deepest Dye, Whipstitch, Outlander, A Dangerous Pastime) and I have a few new ones that I want to get started on AT SOME POINT as well (Heart, Sterling, A MILLION-ONE SHOTS) and the entire Cole and Hadley series that I still want to write, even though I never heard back from Mercedes Lackey about Inside Out (I still have to write the rest of Breaking Point, then Against The Grain, Firebug, Burning Bridges and Birds Of A Feather.)

I also want to write another Black Companion fic, one unrelated to Of The Deepest Dye, but I don't know what for or what the plot would be. Maybe the Star-Eyed coming through with her threat to create black versions of Companions, after all? Black hides and starfield-eyes, instead of white hides with blue eyes? ...oh. Maybe I'll dust off Yasmine and Syril and Jasha and Malicha, that story had potential. Hmm.

Oh, and a couple of Teen Wolf Sterek one-shots (Stupid Love and Carousel Coffee And More) that I need to finish eventually, too. Stupid Love I originally started over a year ago as a gift for Poe, but my brain was such a bag of cats that I just... I was struggling SO HARD to write ANYTHING, and Poe started to get frustrated with me, but I didn't even know how to explain it. The static in my brain, or the bouncy balls. And now they understand THAT part, but not only are we not in contact anymore, but even if we WERE I couldn't send Stupid Love to them because of the TW trauma.

When I posted What Foxes Like for them back in January of this year, I probably did them damage, if they even read it. They probably didn't. But What Foxes Like went over pretty well on AO3 regardless, so I'm looking forward to seeing if Stupid Love and/or Carousel Coffee And More do well, too, or if What Foxes Like was just a one-off fluke.

Okay, so, we'll start off with the obvious. I finished posting Horror High 10 Days ago, and as of today it has 1,704 Hits, 23 Bookmarks, 100 Kudos and 48 Comments, and the numbers are still climbing just a little day by day, mostly because I posted Cheap Motel 3 Days ago and that funnelled more traffic back through to HH. Anyway, so far Cheap Motel has 254 Hits, 1 Bookmark, 26 Kudos and 2 Comments. Which is... fine. Again, not expecting much from this entire AU at this point but I'll take what I can get. :|

Ummm... I'm 84 pages into Storm Season now and it's coming along nicely, but idk if it'll be done in time for the beginning of November. I was hoping to have it finished so I could post chapters during November while I was working on the NaNo, but I might have to postpone it until the beginning of December instead. I have four more HH one-shots leading up to SS to post the next four weeks (Counting Scars, Cerulean Blue, Everything I Do and Falling Stars, each of which is around 30 pages long) but then there might have to be a hiatus before Storm Season. We'll see, though, if I can get SS written and edited by the end of October then we're golden.

(The NaNo is really messing me up this year. The NaNo always messes me up tbh. XD)

Anyway, as for post-Storm Season one-shots, there are SEVEN of the freaking things: When Lightning Strikes, Ghost In The Machine, Teeth, Pinfeathers, Temper Tantrums, Halcyon Days and Stalagmites. I've already started all of them except Temper Tantrums, and written varying degrees of them, from like two paragraphs to half the fic. I've especially been working in When Lightning Strikes, Pinfeathers and Stalagmites. But like I SHOULDN'T be working on them AT ALL because I haven't even finished STORM SEASON yet so I'm going to just have to go back and edit them for details later ANYWAY. *facepalm* Just putting the cart before the horse, I guess.

I shut down all my 15+ Word tabs a couple days ago except for my Journal, TKA and Storm Season in an attempt to get myself to FOCUS properly, aaaaaand now I have Pinfeathers, Stalagmites and Carousel Coffee And More open again, idek what happened there. :| I'm just kind of like WELP. OKAY THEN. I've tried closing down most of my tabs before and they all always just seem to pop back up again, I'm not so sure it's a viable option for me, except for a few blessed days before I start opening tabs again.

I'm still tinkering with my ABO Destiel fic, Tying Knots, and I'm thinking about writing a sequel to it, Quick Hitch, where it turns out that Cas's assessment that he couldn't sire pups in his currently body was INCORRECT and Dean finds out the hard way and they're like JFC just. Nephilim baby INCOMING.

Also there's Where Monsters Come From, my SPN/Valdemar crossover, which I keep starting and then scrapping and starting again, and scrapping again... idk I just can't figure out how to get the whole ball of wax rolling for that one. =/

.....

So, Carousel Coffee And More is my next Teen Wolf Sterek fic and it's kind of... bittersweet, because it was going to be dedicated to a friend of mine who is... no longer a friend. But even more than that, they don't like TW anymore anyway, so I guess I wouldn't have been able to dedicate it to them even if we WERE still friends. It's hard because I dedicated What Foxes Like to them back in January and it probably caused them trauma because of certain events a while back. I didn't mean to, obviously, but.... well. There's nothing I can do about it now. Anyway, I'm just writing Carousel Coffee And More and all my other Sterek stuff for myself from now on because I enjoy it and if I enjoy it I'm going to write it. That's the long and short of it.

I've put a hold on Witcher SPN AU for now (until I finish Storm Season et al) but when I get back to it the first two I'm going to write (finish) are Rewarding Heroism and Wayward Sons. I also know how I'm going to eventually FINISH the series, with a fic titled The Road So Far, which basically has the Wolves/etc. packing up and leaving the bunker in Sam and Dean's capable hands, moving on to a new base of operations in the badlands of South Dakota.

I've also got Alien: Kaer Morhen to work on, which might be my next big project once the entire Horror High/Storm Season/etc, series is finished.

And I desperately want to work on something Valdemar related (other than Where Monsters Come From, which is VEXING ME), but I just don't have the time. Just a one-shot would do me. Not Horses, maybe, or Wander,or Knowing, or Senses. I, uh, like one-word titles apparently. :D

Anyway, Not Horses is about Charley, a boy who is Chosen by the stallion Arsalides, and who has a CRIPPLING PHOBIA OF HORSES. Wander is about Bastian, a Companion stallion who's always had wandering hooves, and one day wanders his way right into his Chosen (Aislen.) Knowing is about Jedda, an odd boy with powerful foresight who basically Sees his own Choosing and decides to head it off at the pass, and heads up to Companion's Field asking to speak to the Companion Shaffia. And Senses is about a blind girl (Astrid) being Chosen by a deaf Companion (Volker) and both of them completing each other in more than the usual sense.

And then, of course, there's the entiiiiiiiiire Cole/Hadley series (Inside out, Breaking Point, Against The Grain, Firebug, Burning Bridges, Birds Of A Feather) that I should be working on, but I'm kind of like... I dunno. I wrote Inside Out and it was GOOD and I sent it away to Mercedes Lackey for consideration YEARS ago and never heard back positive OR negative and that whole experience has really... kind of soured me on this series, even though I have it all figured out. Like at least write back and tell me it's not suitable so I can post it somewhere and maybe get some comments and kudos. I dunno.

tldr; I HAVE LOTS OF VALDEMAR IDEAS, I JUST DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO WRITE THEM.

So yeah that's basically it, I think, for now. For fanworks anyway. I have tons of original stuff that I'm working on here-and-there. Sins Of Angels, Threes, Scarlet Letters, etc., but I'm not going to talk about them here. Sorry!

Alright, so basically I originally wrote Horror High and about halfway through I decided I wanted to write a sequel to it, which I now have about 50% figured out and which went through MANY title changes, but is now called Storm Season for various reasons. I wasn't originally going to write ANY one-shots.

But then I was like "I should write a little in-between fic about Cas and Dean's clandestine meet-ups over the years between Horror High and Storm Season", and so Cheap Motel was born, and right off the hop I knew it was 100% going to be about the smut and not much else, though I did want to add a specific ending to it to lead up to the beginning of Storm Season.

And then Counting Scars came along. And for the longest time (keep in mind I am saying this like it has been six months when it's only been TWO) I figured THAT ONE was better for that specific ending that I wanted to use as Storm Season lead in. But then I started writing it and it turned into another fic ENTIRELY, Falling Stars, though Falling Stars DID retain that ending and is the last of the one-shots, chronologically.

So what to do about Counting Scars? Well obviously I still wanted to write it, so I did, just with a different ending since it was now the middle fic in the set. It turned out a little shorter than Cheap Motel and Falling Stars, which is FINE because THOSE TWO clocked in at like 36 pages each which is LONG for a one-shot. Counting Scars is more like 28, which is still long, but more reasonable.

Right, so then I'm like. I'm done. I have these three (trashy porn) fics written, I just have to wait to post them after I'm done posting Horror High in a month or so.

BUT THEN.

Yeah, an idea for ANOTHER one-shot poked me in the brainspace, they are COMING OUT OF THE WOODWORK, and the next thing I knew today I was starting to write Cerulean Blue (formerly I Heart NY), which is going to be just as smutty as the others, but actually has a plot to it, a lot like Falling Stars. A PLOT. IMAGINE THAT. Here's hoping Cerulean Blue is the last of the HH/SS mid-way fics??

But looking at how things are going, assuming I DO write Storm Season, and that's a BIG "IF" right now, after it's finished it'll probably be followed up by at least two or three one-shot fics as well, taking place after the events of Storm Season.

So like. Yeah. This entire series has really gotten away from me, which would be GREAT! ...if people were actually READING IT. But right now it's complete self-gratification, I'm writing all these things, PAGES AND PAGES, knowing that basically I'm the only one who's enjoying them. It really feels pointless at times, but for some reason I just keep writing.

I really wish people would leave kudos, at least, or concrit in comments. I want to know what I've done wrong (aside from make Chuck intentionally OOC) and what's turning people off of Horror High. Because I have all this other content to share and I'm kind of like... blegh. I don't know. AO3 and Tumblr nowadays aren't very motivating. =/

So yesterday and today I've been really worried about Poe and to keep my mind occupied I've been writing. Which is no big surprise because that's basically all I do nowadays anyway. But yesterday instead of writing Witcher SPN AU like I have been the last week or so, I got out Cheap Motel and just... wrote it. Basically the whole thing.

I'd already written about 5 pages of it, but yesterday and today I finished it and it ended up at 34 pages. Which is, um. More. Than I had intended it to be. But at least it didn't do what Horror High did and become a 167-page monster of a fic. I think at 34 pages I can still post it as a one-shot, it'll just be a LONG one-shot.

Also an exceedingly porny one, like. Seriously. There are I think 5 sex scenes in Cheap Motel, not counting the MENTIONED ones that aren't actually WRITTEN OUT. But that was basically what I was writing Cheap Motel FOR, just gratuitous smut, so I guess mission accomplished? Basically the boys just locked themselves up in the motel for three days and had at it, with the occasional break for food or to shower.

And then the obvious drama over having to part ways at the end of the weekend.

I still have to edit it (I'm in the middle of that now) and then it gets stashed away to be posted at some point after I finish posting Horror High, since it's a Horror High sequel. In the meantime I can start working on Counting Scars, which is also going to be mostly porn but also fluff and setup for Storm Season, which I keep wavering on whether I'm going to even write or not.

Right NOW, just coming off writing Cheap Motel, I'm thinking yes? But every time I post a chapter of Horror High and get literally no feedback my motivation to write Storm Season wanes again. So I dunno, I guess we'll see. Maybe I'll take a break and write Alien: Kaer Morhen and then give Storm Season a go. Hmm.

The last couple of days, since I finished and edited Horror High, I've been working on jot notes for a few of my original projects. I used to hate writing jot notes, I think my brain didn't have the patience for them? But now I am DOWN with jot notes.

So I wrote eight pages of notes for The Order Of Delphi (I might add to it, there's some gaps in the storyline that I need to fill in) and I think... thirteen pages? For TKA, that spans the entire story of the first book, which is actually called The Kelpie Agenda. Then I started on Riptide, but I'm only about three pages in and I've still got a lot to go on that. Still, it's coming along.

After Riptide that I want to do notes on the rest of my original projects, too: The Spirit Fighters, Anatomy Of A Wendigo Attack, Diary Of A Black-Eyed Child, Throwback, MOA, Tasmanian Tigers, My Zombie, Soulkeeper, etc. and maybe a couple of my longer fanfictions as well, like Marionette, just so I don't forget where I was headed with all these things since there are so many of them. I should probably also do notes for Storm Season, come to think of it...

So I'm not doing much actual WRITING the last couple days, but I am getting a lot DONE, so at least I'm being productive?

Also, I have a serious urge right now to drop everything and work on one of Sterek fics, Carousel Coffee And More, so that may or may not happen later today after I get back from my Dentist's appointment, depending on how I'm feeling. I've only ever written one other Sterek fic (What Foxes Like), and like half of it's prequel (Stupid Love), but What Foxes Like got a decent reception in the TW fandom considering it was a first fic from a brand-new author. So.

Carousel Coffee And More is (shockingly) a Coffee Shop AU and features writer!Derek because I am fond of writer!Derek. I like to picture him in glasses hunched over a laptop like I usually am haha. And coffee-shop-worker Stiles. With cameos from other TW characters, of course. But sticking to JUST TW characters this time, as opposed to What Foxes Like, which absolutely had Steve Rogers and Jaskier Pankratz cameos because of who I was writing it for. I never did find out if they read it and/or liked it or not. I get the feeling they don't want to talk about it, which. Like. Doesn't bode well.

Anyway, I guess we'll see what the later-on-today brings!

Only two more days 'til I post Chapter Three of HH and get absolutely no feedback again! :D;;

EDIT: Instead of working on Carousel Coffee And More, I immediately started working on jot notes for The Spirit Fighters. So. *shrug*

I don't write like most people do.

Most people write in a linear manner, beginning at the start of their project and ending, naturally, at the end. I USED to write that way all the time, up until I was around 23 years old or so. I REMEMBER writing that way, and I DO, occasionally, still write that way, depending on the project I'm working on. But when I was about 23 things in my brain just... changed. Looking back, I think that's when the ADHD started kicking in hard, but that's not necessarily the cause either. I don't really know.

All I know is that NOW most of what I write I write in random scenes, here-and-there, throughout the span of the project. I jump around a lot, moving back and forth between scenes, writing random paragraphs and lines that don't really fit with anything until later on. Then when I have most of the story written THAT WAY I go in and write the bits that connect all the scenes together into a coherent fic/story/book/whatever.

That's how I'm writing Horror High, just misc. scenes here-and-there and it's coming together really well. I'm ALMOST (I THINK) to the point of connecting everything into a legit, sensible fic. (It's 49 pages now and I think, I THINK, it's going to end up between 60 and 70 pages in the end, but then I've tried to guess the length of this thing before and been TOTALLY WRONG.)

Anyway, Mom told me once that Margaret Lawrence wrote the same way, which, like, I fucking HATE her work (and the fact that they made us read it TWICE in high school), but she's a Canadian Literature Treasure or whatever, and it's nice to know I'm not the only one. Real authors write like me sometimes, too.

I tend to look down on myself and my way of writing because I've been criticized for it before, but I guess if it works for me there's nothing wrong with it, right? It's just a little unusual, the same as myself.