#kell speaks

6, 27, 29 💜

waaaa thank you purple!!

6. Favorite title you used

Honestly has to be Free Lunch (aka There’s No Such Thing as Free Lunch). Pretty early on in the planning process I committed to naming every chapter, and ONLY using food-related idioms. So all of the chapter titles have fun names as well! Searching for an idiom or phrase to match my chapters been a very enjoyable part of the process for me ~

27. What do you listen to while writing?

I have an official Free Lunch playlist that can be found here! As well as a playlist of “potential” inspiration that is currently about 120 songs long (but that one is just for me ;) ). Early on in writing, I actually had a very hard time focusing while listening to music, so I usually wrote in silence. Once I got into the groove and started to find my voice/style, though, I found music to be helpful in keeping a consistent tone. I added songs for those early chapters anyways, but they don’t totally match. Most of the songs on my playlist actually topped on my Spotify Wrapped too XD

As for my other fics, there are a few more playlists on my Spotify account for some of those as well! And Dead-ication is usually written in vc with ShadowViking so no music for that one.

For most of my upcoming chapter, I’ve been listening to Blood by Marika Hackman, But I Want More by Prewn, and House by Charlie xcx so….. that’s going about as well as you’d expect. But I could waffle on about my music for a lot longer than anyone would want to listen XD

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

This one is tough… I’ve made a lot of improvements this year (I’m am actually doing some editing on my earlier chapters) and am not quite as happy with some of my work as I used to be. All part of the process though!

My all-time favorite is probably one that I’ve shared a few times now (sorry lol) and I will HAPPILY share again:

Me: I’m almost done with the first draft of Interstice’s sequel!

Friend: ...with what’s sequel?

Me: .......

Me: Gay Novel.

Friend: OHHHHH.

I don't know that anyone that anyone is really even keeping up with it really, or if anyone that is keeping up with it is following me. But if you're not in the BWC server that I regularly overshare in, I'm in the middle of leaving a very bad relationship, which is going about as poorly as you'd expect. I've been through shit, and yet this has arguably been one of the worst months of my entire life.

I joke a lot about how this fic was originally supposed to be a short, light-hearted fic about Astarion and Gale working alternating shifts and hating each other, and how it's grown into something much more than that. Much of what it has become has been a huge outlet for me during the past few months. While I'm not facing nearly the same situation, I do know what it feels like to be trapped with no clear path forward. Now, moving into this next phase of the story, I'm finding myself less willing to revisit that place for the sake of story.

I am also carrying the most difficult course load thus far. I'm spending 30+ hours a week on my homework, as well as working and going to class and apartment hunting on top of it all. I hardly have time to sleep at the end of the day, much less write. I'm optimistic that I'll adjust here soon, and get caught up on all of the homework I've fallen behind on, but it hasn't gone as smoothly as I would have hoped. It hasn't gone smoothly at all.

I'm staring down the barrel of a massive bout of depression, to be frank. I have very little confidence in myself, and even less in my work. Everything that I'm writing feels flat and lifeless. I'm working on finding ways to connect with myself and my emotions without completely falling into them.