#erraticprocrastinator

The urge to write is strong, but never stronger than the urge to spend hours designing a cover for my story instead, despite the fact that there’s copious amounts of picture evidence on this blog proving that I am most definitely not artistically inclined.

Nothing feels more amazing as a fanfic writer than finding the fandom, the pairing, the trope, that reawakens not only your love of writing, but also the joy that comes with just being hopelessly and unapologetically invested in something.

Look, I love a good chapter plan as much as the next writer, but, man, there’s just something special about the scenes that happen organically as you write. It’s like, hey, this wasn’t meant to be here, but it was meant to be here. Those scenes just hit different.

“Hey Siri, how do you spell ‘tomorrow’?” asked the creative writing major, shamefully.

Ah, here we are again. Yet another night where I wanted so badly to work on the story that’s been living rent free in my head for weeks and fully intended to do so, only to blink and find myself staring at the ceiling three hours later with the intro riff of Sweet Child O’ Mine playing on repeat in my head. Gosh darn it.

Just a random piece of fanfic advice that popped into my head as I finally made some headway on the story I’ve been procrastinating: even if you’re writing something non-canonical, establishing your own canon is still extremely helpful and important. What I mean is, even if you’re writing an AU, or working with details that aren’t confirmed in the canon of whatever fandom you’re writing for, making a set list of what’s ‘fact’ in the universe of your story is great for building yourself a baseline and reference point that you might not otherwise have. For example, in the Hazbin Hotel fandom, we no longer have a canonical answer for exactly how old Charlie Morningstar is or when she was born. As far as we know, she could be 25 years old, or 200 years old, or anything in between. It’s really up to each writer to make their best guess or choose what works best for their story. Even if her age is never directly relevant, I still choose a birth year for her and write it down somewhere in the story plan, purely so I can use it as a reference point if I ever want to allude to events in her life, especially seeing as the rest of the cast are all from various different times. Charlie’s born in 1820? She could definitely mention how she was obsessed with human fashion in the Victorian era. Charlie’s born in the year 2000? Of course she doesn’t really know who these overlords are or what their business is– they were old news by the time she was born! Regardless of what I choose, having a date and treating it as canon for the purpose of that one story does wonders for consistency. It stops me accidentally flip-flopping around, and has the added bonus of giving me something to fall back on if a reader has a question (because, trust me, the questions are never about what you expect them to be). I recommend doing this for any relevant detail you’re creating or interpreting for your story. Vagueness in canon is great for creative opportunity, but it’s way too easy to get muddled up if you make it the entire basis of your fic without giving yourself at least a little scaffolding. Even if your readers never know about it directly, the groundwork will help the quality of your story.

Guys, the last 24 hours have been a goddamn whirlwind. I may or may not have had a minor medical episode last night (I’m fine, I think, don’t worry about me), and even after things settled down I had trouble sleeping because I was anxious that something might start up again. Thankfully everything was fine, but I woke up for work this morning with a vague understanding that I’d come up with the most spectacular fanfic idea ever sometime during the night but with absolutely no recollection of what that idea actually was, so, naturally, I’ve been mildly annoyed all day on top of being shaken. I just opened the Notes app on my phone to jot down what happened for my doctor and discovered that I WROTE THE IDEA DOWN!!! 1:19 AM, a whole note with the basic outline of the story and even a few pieces of dialogue that must have popped into my head as I was falling asleep. I have absolutely no idea what possessed me to actually note something down this time, because this is not my first rodeo with midnight inspiration and I’ve never had such initiative before, but I’m so glad I did, because it’s juicy (and probably requires a higher word count than I can handle, but let’s not talk about that). Silver linings, right? Who needs stable health when you have fics to write?