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I had a nice freak-out mid-week that I wasn't getting anything done, and I would never write again, and I should just default on everything. This is what happens when I have several assignments open and less than a month before the deadline. 🙄 Admittedly, it did not help that two exchanges I signed up for (![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
the_mane_event & kinkluckydip) did not have my usual month+ buffer between when assignments were sent out and when they were due. Admittedly, this is totally a me problem. That's entirely reasonable for those exchanges, which have a 500- and 300-word minimum, respectively. And, if I were capable of holding my fics to low numbers like those, I would be good. But 300-500 is actually a very tricky number of words to manage: you either have to gloss over actual events (which I hate to do) or only have one image/theme/line and write only the bare minimum into that. It's less than a full scene, for sure. However, this still doesn't merit my weird freak-out, because even if I took 5K words for those (which I wasn't that bad with, fortunately, lol), I still had plenty of time. But I panic whenever I am not way ahead of schedule. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I do not know how people who write up to the deadline survive.
Anyway, I actually did pretty well with my overall goal! Here we go:
I am keeping my goals modest for the next two weeks. I have a huge competition coming up the first week of April, so that's my entire brain gone. Plus, the week after that, I have some big presentations to deliver at work, so I have to reserve some coherency for that. So I'm giving myself a bit of a break this week, since I don't need to push right now, and then the week after that will be a complete write-off, and then maybe once my work presentations are over the week after that, I'll start to have some spare time again and will pick things back up to a more normal pace.
Goals for next week: 1) Complete 1 exchange assignment, 2) Think through my plot for 1 exchange assignment, 3) Complete 1 fic for Femslash Salad Bar, 4) Watch more of The Untamed!
the_mane_event & kinkluckydip) did not have my usual month+ buffer between when assignments were sent out and when they were due. Admittedly, this is totally a me problem. That's entirely reasonable for those exchanges, which have a 500- and 300-word minimum, respectively. And, if I were capable of holding my fics to low numbers like those, I would be good. But 300-500 is actually a very tricky number of words to manage: you either have to gloss over actual events (which I hate to do) or only have one image/theme/line and write only the bare minimum into that. It's less than a full scene, for sure. However, this still doesn't merit my weird freak-out, because even if I took 5K words for those (which I wasn't that bad with, fortunately, lol), I still had plenty of time. But I panic whenever I am not way ahead of schedule. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I do not know how people who write up to the deadline survive.Anyway, I actually did pretty well with my overall goal! Here we go:
- the_mane_event, kinkluckydip, smut4smut, wickedloveex, worldbuilding_exchange, unsent_letters_exchange, hurtcomfortex + unnamed things I am pinch-hitting or treating for: Ye Olde Liste of things that I currently have outstanding assignments for, in the order in which those assignments are due. As of last week, I had completed 5/11 (although this week added 1 more assignment for hurtcomfortex, which made it 5/12), and I wanted to get 3-4 done last week. I also succeeded in my goal of not claiming any additional pinch hits while I still had too many outstanding assignments. So, as of today, I have completed 8/12, which is A+, and I also did a good job of prioritizing the ones with earlier deadlines. There's only 1 outstanding with a deadline less than a month away (and one of the things I've completed is a valid treat for that recipient, so I can always swap the main gift and the treat if I don't finish the main in time - but I will). So that removes a lot of my panic. My goal for this week is to finish at least 1 of those (to total 9/12) and get a solid idea for the one of those where I don't really know quite what I'm writing yet: I know the fandom, obviously, but the details are vaguely nebulous.
- goreswap: OMG, my gift for this one is amazing! 🤩 It is the Alana/Margot (from Hannibal) fic of my dreams that I knew I wanted to exist but I had nothing but mental blanks on my end so I couldn't write it. But this is just beautiful: Ethanol! I have to say I've been really lucking out on gifts lately. Very curious to find out who the author is because I want to check out what else they've written.
- Things I'm pretty sure I'm skipping: fluffityfluffexchange (already did not sign-up), fangfrenzyficexchange, pickmeupexchange, bitesizedfandomsex. None of them are themes that work particularly well with my pairings, but I will keep an eye out for interesting pinch hits - especially with Bite-Sized, since I don't have enough to generate requests on this one, but there's nice potential for picking up new fandoms if something catches my eye.
- Things I'm excited to sign up for, in the not-so-distant future:
- idproquo: I have a number of nominations in, and might add some Original Work ones too before nominations close. I am basically using this one as my brain dump for "horny ideas that I love, but I am no longer the best person to write these ideas, so please someone else write them!" I'll probably game my offers for this one, because with smut I really need to have the full scene in my head before I nab a request. I'll be very excited to see what prompts come up!
- everythingisfemslashex: I'm excited for this one because it gives me a chance not only to request my current femslash faves, but also to request genderbending of my m/m couples, and I would love to read other people's takes on that too!
- caseficexchange: This is a brand new exchange and also the exchange of my dreams! 🤩 It will be so hard and so scary, but I really want to improve my skills with case fic, and I have a gazillion half-formed ideas for mysteries/solutions which I will never write on my own because my lazy slacker brain needs to have a fire lit under it. So, so many ideas for prompts, and also so many ideas for offers! (And when I have stupid panics that I'm not good enough to write case fic, I am making myself come back and read this post, lol.)
- Femslash Salad Bar: I didn't get to this last week, although I did have mental breakthroughs on how to get past the place where 2 of my fics are stuck. I would still like to finish one of these this week. My goal was to get 1 done per month, and I haven't managed that yet for March, for shame! 😞 Although, after my Gore Swap gift, I'm super hyped-up about Alana/Margot again, and that's one of the fics that I mentally fixed, so here's hoping that's my inspirational motivation!
- Checking out new fandoms: I started doing this last week and had one hit and one complete miss:
- The hit is The Untamed! Unsurprisingly I - like every other human being on the planet - LOVE this show! I'm only 9 episodes in, but it's so pretty, and they're so gay, and the plot is so engrossing. I'm not sure if I'll write fic for it (the sheer amount of background knowledge needed is intimidating, lol), but it definitely gives me more to read for, and I'm having tons of fun watching it. Would recommend!
- Bounced hard off The Foxhole Court (first in the All for the Game series) by Nora Sakavic. Like, two chapters, and I was gone. I had thought it looked promising because I love sports/tournament anime. And I was wary about the gangster/yakuza elements, since I generally dislike those, but I love Hannibal despite generally disliking serial killers and I enjoyed Slam Dunk despite it having a fair amount of yakuza stuff. But, no, this was trying way too hard to be edgy. After I stopped reading the first night to go to bed, I had the thought "You know what? I'll bet next they steal some alcohol and also someone punches someone else in the face. And they mention cigarettes a gazillion more times, because they are edgy emo kids who SMOKE, okay? Smoking is totally a personality!" And then I started reading again the next morning, and within the next chapter: 1) they were stealing alcohol, 2) they punched each other in the face, and 3) cigarettes got mentioned 3 times. So, uh...yeah. Not a good fit. (I heard after the fact that the author possibly was originally a Weiss Kreuz fic author? And, while I enjoy a lot of published authors who started with fanfic, Weiss Kreuz is another of those things that I bounced very hard off of, so I think this was just not meant for me.)
- I've cued up a few other things in my library hold list. Hopefully, some of those will fit my tastes better.
I am keeping my goals modest for the next two weeks. I have a huge competition coming up the first week of April, so that's my entire brain gone. Plus, the week after that, I have some big presentations to deliver at work, so I have to reserve some coherency for that. So I'm giving myself a bit of a break this week, since I don't need to push right now, and then the week after that will be a complete write-off, and then maybe once my work presentations are over the week after that, I'll start to have some spare time again and will pick things back up to a more normal pace.
Goals for next week: 1) Complete 1 exchange assignment, 2) Think through my plot for 1 exchange assignment, 3) Complete 1 fic for Femslash Salad Bar, 4) Watch more of The Untamed!