It is sixth year and everything has changed, everything is changing, nothing is the same, nothing is different at all.
This is a story of love and of loss (like every story that has ever been told), and of growing pains and growing up. Lily Evans, James Potter, Sirius Black, new friendships forged and old ones not forgotten, alone and not alone with their changing minds, falling in love and falling into place when the walls are falling down around them, everything is falling out from under them.
OR
A long form, slow burn, canon compliant tale of Lily Evans and James Potter, and all the people they love, have loved, have lost.
prologue
Everyone’s talking about the heatwave. It’s the sunniest summer in the twentieth century, and the driest and the hottest, too; the warmest summer in a hundred years. Anyone who can is fleeing to the coast, taking refuge in the water, and those who can’t are turning off their sprinklers, letting the grass die and the dirt go dry. There are ladybirds blanketing the trees, there are forest fires burning in the south of England. The reservoirs aren’t running low, yet, but they will be. On the news and in the papers and in the aisles of the grocery store, everyone is wondering the same thing: How long will it last? It’s been two weeks without rain, three weeks, four, how long until it ends?
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James, as pointed out by Sirius, and now Peter, has been too busy paying attention to Lily Evans’ hair—he is still enamored with her bob, which has grown out some since the summer but not long enough that it has lost the wave to it, and the discovery that Lily Evans has wavy hair is too much to get over in a matter of mere months—to pay much attention to Flitwick.
Just wanted to pop in to let you know how much I adore your writing. I started randomly reading an chapter of OMTWF and instantly fell into a rabbit hole of your fics and can't get enough of them haha. Your dialogue just feel so genuine, and you write yearning and angst SO DAMN WELL.
If your comfortable with sharing, how did you start writing and improving it with time? I understand it comes with practice and consistency, but do you have any tips to share? I really wanted to get into it as a creative outlet after my semester, and I would really appreciate your input
hi anon!!!
first of all, thank you so much!!!! 🥹
second of all, i'm absolutely comfortable! i've answered a few similar asks before and try to tag them under #on writing so feel free to look through there and see if there is anything useful as far as tips to share. i'll put some other stuff below the cut since this will likely get rambly haha
for getting started, i've said it before and i'll proclaim it until the day i die... just WRITE. anything. everything. i never had any sort of course at uni or anything beyond the curriculum offered at my high school. (i did take a creative writing class during my grad programme outside of my major but i didn't get much out of it lmao) so all that to say... i truly do stand by the belief that anyone can write if they do it often enough. i frequently go back to my first fics on ao3 (from around 2020 i think??) and want to rage delete them because they are so awful hahaha. BUT! they are benchmarks and proof that i have grown as a writer and storyteller even in 5-6 years.
some tangible things i do to help myself be consistent is only write what i want when i want. so if a scene has been really giving me a tough time, i move on. it'll still be there later. writing is just a hobby to me and i don't want it to ever become something i resent so i try to be careful about the pressure i put on myself. (that being said, i do often give myself deadlines because i work better under pressure... but nothing crazy!) i've shared my process before somewhere in my writing tag but i neeeeever worry about something sounding nice at first. i do dialogue first like it's just a straight-up texting fic. then, when i have the energy/time, i go in and add the correct conventions, details, dialogue tags, imagery, etc. this allows me to get sooo much more written.
i look at my writing in two stages:
1. just get the words DOWN. foundation and walls only. no windows or decor unless i'm excited/inspired by them.
2. windows, doors, decorations, furniture, etc. i have to be in the right mood to do this because it takes a bit more time. but i find that if i have alll the foundation down, i am more motivated because i wanna hurry up and get it 'move in ready' (sorry to beat the dead horse on this metaphor hahahaha). if i were to do this as i went, scene by scene, i would absolutely get burnt out because that's just how i am.
so that being said... you have to write in order to figure out how you are as a writer. you'll quickly learn the parts of the process you love and the parts you hate. it's funny because @ohhevans and i are working on a collab (which we need to get back to hahahaha) and have had so many moments of realising we have vastly different processes. for example, i'm forcing her to outline and idk if she's forgiven me for it yet. and then also her paragraphs are so long and beautiful and musical and flowery and mine are... not. but we BOTH were excited to talk over the phone at length about the progression exactly WHEN james and lily should KISS. so my point is that everyone is so different and i really love that about fandom.
DO PROMPTS. these days, i have more ideas than i could possibly put to paper... but when i started writing, i used prompt lists religiously in order to have a springboard. like there is just something magical to me about taking "i want to write something jily" and shifting it to "i want to write something about jily but in a modern au where they meet in a pub and james accidentally spills his drink on lily." there are so many good prompt lists floating around tumblr. i especially love jilytober and jily week!!!! (shoutout @kay-elle-cee and @sunshinemarauder)
other things i regularly do to stay motivated: make mood boards on pinterest, doodle character designs on my ipad, spend time pondering/scribbling down ideas for what other characters in a scene may be doing/thinking even if they're not the main pov, create outfits for my characters, etc.
OH AND i can never answer a writing question without giving props to my husband, who has always been and will always be my main sounding board.... and editor. haha. he's a lawyer so he has the technical eye for writing and regularly tells me things like "james is touching his hair too much in this scene" (which he's wrong about btw because there's no such thing) or "you said lily was pacing and now she's sitting on the couch? is she teleporting???" if you've ever read anything of mine, you've definitely read something of mr giggles's as well, because his fingerprints are all over my work haha!
as giggles said we are working on a collab and i knew we were different in our writing processes but truly we are SO extraordinarily different in our writing processes it kills me. no one asked but i 1) never outline 2) generally do not edit or proofread 3) do not really skip a scene and come back to it nor do i write something before its place in the story even if it's fully fleshed out, i just hold it in my head until it's time to write it 3.5) therefore do not distinguish between dialogue, description, exposition, etc, i write everything all in one go and in the order in which it goes always 4) used to do prompts but don't really anymore unless they speak to me 5) don't do self-imposed deadlines and 6) pretty much never ask anyone's opinion before sharing
to summarize: my writing process is more or less have idea --> write idea --> finish and hit post if i feel like it or don't hit post if i don't feel like sharing
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Sirius loves the Potters’ house more than anywhere else in the world; more than Hogwarts, even, and he never thought it would be possible to love a place more than he loves the castle. Peverell Manor is warm all the time; not just warm in a temperature sense, warm in a loving sense, warm like he’s welcome there, like he belongs. Nobody flinches at the sight of him and Euphemia likes to pause and run her hands through his hair or press a kiss to his forehead. It’s always absentminded, she’s been like this toward him since he was little, welcomed him into her home like he’s been there the whole time.
I was going to suggest everyone lounging in the common room, with James or Lily laying with their head in another's lap, but then I realized you already drew something like that you ABSOLUTE ICON!!! 😍
Study Break
Well, now I felt inspired to draw a companion to the previous one!
I was going to suggest everyone lounging in the common room, with James or Lily laying with their head in another's lap, but then I realized you already drew something like that you ABSOLUTE ICON!!! 😍
Study Break
Well, now I felt inspired to draw a companion to the previous one!
it is a term i made up to be clear with respect to general trend i have seen acknowledged by many writers and that i myself have noticed, which is that many people are hesitant to read/engage with long WIPs! that is entirely a person's prerogative, of course, and i completely get it, but when you're writing a long WIP it can in all honesty feel pretty discouraging. i find that fic can very much feel like shouting into the void and usually that doesn't bother me! but lately i have not enjoyed that feeling and sharing fic has felt actively not fun, which especially sucks given i have also been at a critical point in writing an actually pretty high stakes professional piece and fic is meant to be a fun side hobby where i get to exercise different writing skills. i enjoy writing fic and want to be excited to share it and often am, but just have not particularly felt that way of late
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hey just saw you made this is the worthwhile fight a private work! ngl I was really enjoying it so I was wondering if you’re planning to republish it? No pressure of course I’m sure you had your reasons but just wanted to tell you that it had excellent character work and depiction of interpersonal relationships I really loved your take on a Lily and Sirius friendship
hi! thank you for your kind words! i am so glad you have been enjoying it, and appreciate you telling me this 🫶🏼 as every fic writer can attest, these messages go a LONG way in feeling supported and appreciated!
i am planning on making it visible again (the next scheduled update is next friday, so tentatively by then depending on how i'm feeling about it next week), tho tbh it was making me feel weird for some reasons rn and just kinda doing some negative damage to my brain. in the wake of my (successful!) dissertation defense i was hoping to feel better about it, but it turns out i just didn't. i do have the first 15 chapters entirely written and now that my defense is done/once i've officially deposited my dissertation i am planning on finishing out the last few, but honestly i found that actually sharing it was just..... idk. kinda making me feel the opposite of motivated? posting chapters was becoming something that actively put me in a bad mood, so i was hoping that maybe just removing it from view for a few days would help reset my brain
thank you again for checking in!!! seriously, it is much appreciated
hi different anon but now “this is the worthwhile fight” as a whole is unpublished! if this was intentional bc of the email thing i totally understand but if you meant to only unpublish the collection but not the ongoing story i wanted to let you know!!
hi, thank you!! yes, that collection is my privated collection where i put things i don't want publicly visible at the moment but don't want to entirely remove from ao3 (eg my in-progress folklore collection went there last august, when i was feeling weird about it). i didn't realize that ao3 will just DISPLAY your EMAIL in collections, and i am SO (!!!) grateful to the anon who alerted me (i think it's fixed now?). i did intentionally move "this is the worthwhile fight" there yesterday afternoon, thank you for reaching out to let me know though (as i have been Known To Make Mistakes Before)
Hey girl---im just a fan of your works that wanted to stop by and let you know that your privated collection for "this is the worthwhile fight" on ao3 shows ur email. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but wanted to let you know. ❤️ BTW hope all is well with u
hi, thank you SO much for telling me!! i never would have noticed that, i am truly awful with tech. i have fixed it now, and appreciate your message so much, seriously. also thanks for not revealing my email to the world or something
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A long form, slow burn, canon compliant tale of Lily Evans and James Potter, and all the people they love, have loved, have lost. WIP, rated T
chapter eight
This is another realization that has come from her newfound proximity to James Potter: He is actually very smart. Of course, she’s always known that—they’ve been something of academic rivals for years, but she always assumed that magic just came naturally to him, that he doesn’t work really hard. That’s not not true, magic does seem to come naturally to him, he has no trouble mastering a spell, but he also works extraordinarily hard, especially when it is something he cares about, like Transfiguration.
Here is the thing about James Potter: He is the most intense human being she’s ever met. Though she is still an outsider, only friendly with him, not yet friends, she knows he feels everything intensely; he hates fiercely and loves even more so, he cares for his friends more than anyone she’s ever known, and he’s as willing to extend a hand to a broken down and lost girl on an evening in November as ever. He doesn’t talk to her when she’s alone, usually; their interactions are reserved for group settings, but she finds she doesn’t feel the same stab of annoyance at his stupid jokes as she once had. Sometimes, she even laughs at them.
