As of posting this, the final chapter of Safety in your Arms has been posted! I have a lot of thoughts about writing this, so you can check below the cut if you're interested in my rambles.
When I first had the idea for Bodyguard Pierre, I’ll admit I was both excited and terrified. This was the first idea that I had that I felt really had the potential to be 100k+, and I was eager to hit that milestone.
For a long time, I felt like a 100k fic was the only thing I was really “missing” as an author. I passed a million words very early this year, and yet my longest fic was just a hair over 73k. I really wanted to make the 100k fic happen, and I’m still a little surprised that I did it.
There were a lot of things I did with Bodyguard that I had never done before. I’m a big fan of making thorough outlines so I know what I’m writing and how the story will unfold, but I couldn’t do that for Bodyguard. By following the actual results of the season, I knew I had to be flexible. So my outline was incredibly minimal – only a single sentence with Lando’s mindset for each chapter, and several later chapters just had “????” when I first started.
Honestly, I was a little worried that McLaren would pull a Ferrari 2022 and be incredibly competitive at the start of the season and then Max wins the WDC with four races left. Lando actually taking the driver’s championship to Abu Dhabi (and winning it!) worked insanely well for the narrative, but starting out I had no clue how the season was going to go.
The other big change I made to my usual writing habits was posting as I write. I have never done that before since I prefer to have a story finished before I start posting. I never want to make my readers wait for too long or worry about a fic staying incomplete. I also like having the ability to tweak early details as I’m writing later scenes. For me, especially with my fantasy AUs, that helps me build the world if I have the ability to change things that happen early on. I definitely couldn’t with Bodyguard.
Perhaps the strangest thing was that I wasn’t sure if I could write on that schedule. Posting a chapter with every race weekend seemed intimidating, and yet I was never behind. Even on bad writing weeks, I had still written far enough ahead that I always had at least two chapters “in the bank” minus race flavor.
Sometimes, I had such good writing weeks that I actively had to stop myself from writing because I was adding more placeholders than plot. (I was writing COTA/Mexico/Brazil before the race in Zandvoort!)
I was also (strangely) worried about not hitting the 100k goal. Starting out, I planned for 27 chapters. One for each race (24), a pre-season, summer break, and post-season. That meant I needed each chapter to be roughly 3.7k to hit that goal, which felt like a stretch, yet possible. I knew some would be long and some would be short, so as long as I kept around that average I could do it.
Then I decided to split the F1-75 event from pre-season testing. Later I realized there was a decent break between Silverstone & Spa, and I wanted a little bit of Domestic Bliss & Falling in Love before the break-up. Then I wrote a 9k+ chapter for Mexico and decided to split it into two parts with the cliffhanger. All of that added up to 30 chapters, and a good number of them far exceeded that original 3.7k goal.
Hitting 100k by Brazil was not expected, but it was a lovely surprise. That gave me the breathing room to finish the story how I wanted without worrying about word count. Some chapters were easier to write than others and I’ll be the first to say that the Zandvoort – Singapore chapters were a slog. However, they were important to the story and (I hope) the payoff with COTA/Mexico was worth it.
Another major change to my mindset was resetting my expectations. I knew that going from writing mostly Piarles (the 6th most popular pairing in F1 RPF [when did it drop to 6th???]) to a rarepair like Pierre/Lando was going to drop pretty much all of my stats. And it has, but that hasn’t stopped me.
I always write for myself first and foremost. There are stories I want to tell and I’ll keep sharing them as long as there are people who want to read them, no matter how “popular” they are. Kudos and Comments are a wonderful bonus, and as long as I’m happy with what I’m writing I will keep doing it.
There was a very real point early this year where I seriously considered stopping writing because I wasn't happy. Without Kit's endless support and belief, there was a chance I would have abandoned Bodyguard and stuck all of my published fics into a private collection. Now I'm glad I didn't, but I did come very close.
I never expected Bodyguard to cross 100 kudos, let alone 100 subscribers. It’s actually my 2nd most popular fic by subscriptions and 5th by bookmarks, which is insane. Having that kind of support helps to motivate me to see a story to the end. So, if you read or subscribed or left kudos, thank you for that showing of support. If you left me a comment at any point, you’re a superstar. I get really self-conscious about replying to comments and I appreciate you more than what I can put into words. (And I have a lot of those!)
To be honest, I don’t know if I can do something like Bodyguard again. It took a lot of mental energy to plan ahead and make sure I was on-schedule for such a large commitment.
Looking at my stats, I have about 75% of the words this year than I did last year. A large part of that I attribute to having to switch from whatever other WIP I have to Bodyguard and back, which definitely hurts the writing flow. I’m super proud of myself for doing it, but I’m probably going to go back to only posting completed works. There's plenty more Pierre/Lando coming from me once I take a well-deserved break after finishing this 120k fic.
As always, thanks for reading & stay hydrated! 💚
