My Holiday Academia

Urgh I volunteered to do something early in the week knowing it was pushing myself a bit and that I'd have to plan for a couple of recovery days after... Instead I collapsed mid-way through the event and my brain has been like play-dough I've been trying to reshape into something cephalic since then. I know I owe a couple of mildly time-sensitive replies, I will get back to you very soon!

General status:

Meanwhile I still managed to squirrel a few moments to work on the snowflake outline for [Redacted]. The snowflake lends itself well to taking a lot of breaks between or during steps while you consider things, so that's worked out nicely. I skipped Step 6 again, but I'm starting to think I expand way too much in the earlier steps anyway, so it's more like the steps gets merged XD

I wrote huh 12k words of outline through this (it's not that impressive, a lot of snowflake is more like stream-of-consciousness freewriting and thinking on paper), but I don't count those words in my yearly tally. I think I have a novel-shaped idea now? For the first time, I tracked the time spent planning too, even though it doesn't really matter because the process needs a lot of breaks and breathing space (with many insights happening during walks, tbh, which I do NOT track). I blame TrackBear ;) Which I am still using. My streak! I don't want to count the words there either, but I'm tracking the time.

In the story, I have to be careful that the politics don't overwhelm the personal too much, because it's neither my strength nor interest. I remember back in the day when reading the Royal Assassin trilogy with a friend... I just tore through the books while she carefully took notes of all factions and named characters to keep track of everyone's loyalties. It felt so proper and clever and right, yet rarely have I so heartily felt "WOW COULDN'T BE ME" despite how much I wanted to be as cool as she is XD

I'm also experimenting with a different kind of magic system, curious how this will work out! I have the foundations established, I'll develop as the story goes.

I learnt that I can never spell betrothed right the first time.

I just started on Step 8/the spreadsheet scenes breakdown yesterday, but it's been harder going than usual. I conceptualise scenes very differently after the last round of structural edits, much more fine-grained, but planning at that level risks smothering the story for me. (Interestingly, while looking for other posts in my snowflake method tag, it seems like with every long project I use the snowflake method slightly differently, and every time I seem to brush against the limits of how much I can plan before the story dies an early death.) I'm experimenting with doing broad strokes and thinking more in arcs for this step, but not sure yet how that will pan out.

Projects:

• [Redacted] Snowflake -- for lack of a working title I'm satisfied with XD The bland one is descriptive but not fun. The plot-based one I used for the Scrivener project is super fun but also unfortunately inspires a completely different story in a different genre when I look at it. The Big Bad's descriptor could be a fun working title BUT when I tried it out, it started evoking yet another different story, like, "but what about a story where the MC has this ability instead???" and so too distracting, too. I'll settle on something before I start drafting!!

General status:

I spent the early part of the week proofreading fic and posting a couple after a six month break :D Feels good!! Also poked at grammar checkers and was glad to hear about Harper which is now On The List.

Reflecting: In the maid fic, I had one reverent PoV (Fujimaru) and one clown PoV (Oboro), and it was so much easier to write and edit the clown PoV. Do I even have clown characters in my original work? Something to ponder.

I may have started working on a new snowflake for what could become my next Big Project...! It's been nearly two years since I wrote a long first draft of anything (ah, to see "this will take at least 18 months to edit" on that post, sweet past-me! You didn't know 2025 would flatten you and it would take 18 months before you even opened that file again 🥹). I'm a bit nervous. I tried to use the method for a couple of novelette or novella-sized OW duing that period, but miserably failed. Do I even remember how to write a first draft?! It feels like all I've been doing is editing and rewriting this last couple of years (outside of feverishly writing K-9 fic anyway XD). BUT ALSO I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS NEW CONCEPT. I was scared I didn't know how to write anymore (I mean I'm just planning! Maybe I can't!) but at the moment, I'm getting a lot of positive energy out of it, and I got further than the other couple times I tried to snowflake last year, so, fingers crossed 🤞

It's interesting to see where my newly acquired awareness of stakes is playing out. I've killed stories with overplanning before so I'm being careful, but so far it seems to tickle the same "inspiration bone" that the snowflake does in general. This is also making me think I'd like to finish at least one manuscript where I'm happy with the pacing/stakes/conflict (whether this one or the soul thief) before going back to the cursed witch, so I can be more confident I take that properly into account next time I shuffle that sausage again.

Projects:

• Editing and posting the K-9 maid smut fic, just in time for bbtp_challenge \o/
• Proofreading and posting the LeopardTree K-9 fic. Now the AO3 tags for these guys exist :D
• [Redacted] project outlining??!