#goldcranes

I had wanted to write something set in the Catskill mountains since I was 15 and stayed in a cabin in the mountains for a weekend. I drafted countless beginnings throughout high school and college, fics and original fiction alike, trying to get a sense of what type of world and circumstances I wanted to create. I could never quite merge my ideas together in a way that worked.

there was a brief time— literally no more than a few days— where I thought about trying to write it as a bellarke AU in the summer of 2019, but that idea never took off, and the idea remained dormant.

then I watched season 1 of the witcher a few months later.

I became absolutely obsessed with the potential of a ciri/geralt dynamic. after a bit of deliberation, I came to the realization that 1) I didn't know enough about the universe to feel comfortable writing a canon ciralt fic 2) I didn't feel like getting flayed alive by antis (that feeling has since passed) and 3) why should I attempt to translate that dense world into a modern AU when I can just write my own story?

historically, I had 0 success writing original work before. I could never finish anything, could barely start anything without losing steam super quick. but for some reason I just couldn't shake this idea. who were these new characters? they weren't ciri and geralt, but they were reminiscent in their dynamic and their bond to each other.

how did that bond come to be? what experiences forced them together? why do they stay together? what are the complications in their lives? how much sex do they have and when does it start?

those were some of the things i was thinking while the idea was taking shape in my mind. and then I came to the big question: how do you create a societally-appropriate age gap romance? how do you create a relationship between two people with wildly different life experiences where they're both on an even playing field?

answer: you take away the society. you create a new playing field.

once I came to that realization, it was like something in my brain chemistry changed. I was so excited to tell this story, so much so that constantly revising and updating my outline was not draining but invigorating. I could see it becoming better and more real with each pass.

I also came to understand the value of a shitty first draft. of stream of consciousness writing, putting every thought down and going back to make sense of it later.

this was mostly theoretical until march 2020, when the restaurant I was working at closed without warning and all of a sudden I had no job and lots of free time to dedicate to this. it was a huge outlet for me, something positive to focus on during such an awful time. in fact, the original plotline that I had devised for the bellarke AU had them hiding out in the mountains after a plague, but that was hitting too close to home so I changed it to zombies for this draft.

I was never an outliner. I barely used to revise anything. I had some teachers and professors that used to require us to submit a first draft, and for that I would usually make a copy of the essay I had already written and just add mistakes. I thought I was being efficient, and I guess I was, but at the cost of quality.

now, my process from outline to finished draft requires at least 6 revisions. I thought that revising and outlining would slow me down, but it's made me faster. I think I've written more in the last 18 months or so than I had in the years before because now I know how a story works. it's amazing!