Those who know the rest, feel free to fill in on your own.
In certain writing communities, there are categories for the type of process we use. In the ones I frequent, these are “pantser” (as in fly by the seat of your) and “planner” (which…should be obvious). There is also a combination category known as “plantser.” I really dislike that portmanteau, however, and prefer not to think of this category. Yes, I have a whole thing with words. Shocking, right?
As for me, I am 100% a pantser. The times in my life when I’ve had the most difficulty writing have been those in which I lost faith in my way of doing things, deciding that in order to be a Real Writer (TM), I needed to outline and have a solid grasp on the plot and characters before I put the first word on paper. As that is not the way my creative brain works, I found all of that daunting and exhausting and thus not worth the effort, so I never came close to the actual writing part. For the longest time in college and through my twenties, I assumed there was something wrong with me and I was just bad at writing. And, you know, maybe I am? But if so, it’s not because of my outlines or lack thereof.
Becoming aware of my tendency to automatically believe other people have it right and I have it wrong – and working to armor myself against that – went a long way towards freeing me to write once more. (I have to admit, however, that discovering the “pantser” badge on NaNoWriMo helped quite a bit as well.) I decided to say fuck it to all the writing “experts” that insisted on there being One True Way to write and just do what came naturally. Lo and behold, the word things once again happened! I also gave myself permission to write the things I wanted to write rather than continue to spend energy judging myself for my desire to create gay space smut.
All of this to say that the problem with writing the way I do is that sometimes things don’t go according to, well, plan. After the release of Out in the Black, I intended to get to work on draft 1.5* of my trashy queer superhero romance. Instead, I woke up one morning and something entirely different had whacked me in the brain. And so, rather than Vengeance, I have spent the last couple of months knocking out 100k+ words in the first draft of a to-be-named coming of age story. Such is the writing life of a pantser.
So that’s what has been up on the fiction front. I have also been doing some work on the website to get the FunkyPuppy Studios section up and running. Though that is my partner’s venture, I act as a sounding board and a source for word stuff (obviously) as well as UI design. And, of course, testing during my Twitch streams.
On the less-brainy front (just about the opposite of brainy, tbh), I managed to pour boiling water on my foot while making dinner a few weeks back. This resulted in two severely burned toes that are just now beginning to really heal. Limping around and doing my damnedest to keep them from getting infected because we have ~*~ no health insurance ~*~ has been less than fun: Not being able to get my foot into a shoe when I drive the kid to and/or from school four days a week makes for a challenge. And, yano, the whole pain thing.
There endeth the status report. I realized recently that it had been a while since I’d posted anything, so I figured I’d let y’all know what I’ve been up to. And now you know (insert 0.5 battle, etc., etc.).
* – I really don’t know what draft this is. I wrote the story out a couple years back and took it through a round of edits, but when I went to revisit it, I realized it needed significant rewrites before I even considered putting it out there. So this is the first draft of said rewrite, though some of the content from the original is salvageable. Hence the “1.5” designation.
Categories: the process
Outstanding Underground 