I finished a thing last night and got it sent to a beta! It’s been so long since I’ve been able to finish off a WIP and moreover write something that’s not for a fest so I’m super happy that my couple of sleepless nights binge-writing paid off.
It’s an epistolary Ginny-centric gen fic and was way out of my comfort area because I never work from the first-person view and hardly ever write gen. There's probably still a lot of changes I need to make, but hey, it's definitely half-way celebratory dance time!
The weight of my WIP list feels more oppressive than ever. I want to stop being the writer who leaves everything to rot on my drive and turn into the writer who finishes their shit. :’—D I think I'll do a classic "rant about my WIPs post", if anyone's interested. (I love to read about other people's WIPs though myself!)
Here's all the WIPs that I have going that are more than a wisp of an idea:
I have 5k of a Padma-centric detective fic I started writing for hpwlwbb 2019. It's Padma/Hermione, with a lot of focus on plot and Padma and Parvati’s relationship. I freaking love this story but I’m hella stuck with plot details (as tends to be my problem with mystery fics). I feel like it needs some time to mature.
There's all dem ficlets for my Ginny/Pansy table for rarepair-shorts, which I haven’t worked on in AGES. I have a bunch of half-written ficlets sitting in my folders. It’s my goal to finish at least one or two of them for Sapphic September.
I have 5k of a Ron/Draco humor fic I started for Ron/Draco fest 2019 but didn’t finish on time. I'm planning to submit it next year for the fest if I manage to finish it this time! This one actually feels low-pressure and really fun to write (and I've returning to it every now and then), and I’ve got pretty much the entire plot planned out, so shouldn’t be an impossible task to finish.
A Percy/Oliver family fic that I’ve got 2k and wild plans for. I REALLLLLYYYY want to finish this someday, but I’m absolutely terrible at writing child characters in a way that seems realistic and suitable to their age. I think I’m just going to wait for the perfect fest to come up to get the writing momentum for this and bribe Lena to improve my terrible characterizations for the kids.
There's 5k of a Draco/Charlie war-time AU that I started back in 2017 for interhouse-fest for a really awesome prompt that I can’t seem to find anymore, but that was something like "War!AU where Draco helps a Weasley escape Britain”. I have the entire thing plotted (!!!), but I’m stuck because I can’t decide whose POV I want to write in. (Currently it’s a mixture of both.) Plotwise, it would make more sense to be from Charlie’s POV (because Draco is hiding more secrets, and it would be nice to hide them from the reader too), but Draco’s POV is more natural for me to write and has better comedy value.
There's a few k words of a wlw university AU drama fic that centers on Pansy, Lavender, Ginny and Daphne. Think HBO Girls meets HP meets LGBTQ+ community. I sort of have a love-hate relationship with this story (similarly to how I don't really know if I liked Girls the series), because it’s just massive amounts of drama and sarcasm. But then again, I'd be happy reading a girly fic full of wlw drama so why wouldn't I just write it? :D
A few k words of a Narcissa/Pansy fic that is much darker/angstier than what I typically write. Think Carol meets Harry Potter meets I don't know, something dark. :D The plot for this one is a bit vague, I just have scenes and a general atmosphere. I'm also considering switching to writing in the 1st POV. It would be cool to write something like this that is so out of my current writing comfort zone.
30k of a Drarry Horcrux hunt fic I STARTED IN 2009. Fuck you, writing rut. I ran out of plot with this one. I know where I want it to go eventually, but the details in between this point and the end are so vague that I’ve been stuck. For 10 years.
A sequel to my Drarry Auror Drizzle fic, The Worst Case in Auror History, from 2015. 0 words written, but lots of hilarious scenes in my mind. At the bottom of the priority list. I'll get to this when it feels like a fun time to write it.
A very awesome summer fic idea I’ve had since 2004 :------D Strangely, it hasn’t lost it’s appeal after all these years (much like most of my ridiculously fluffy and angsty fic ideas from back then :D). The idea has changed a lot since then: mystery elements have appeared, and the main characters have shifted from Harry and Draco to Hermione, Pansy, Hannah and Millicent (still with some side-Drarry)! My bedroom wall looks like one of those scenes out of detective series with all the post-it notes going on trying to plot this one out. I'm determined to get it finally started this NaNoWriMo so that there is some hope to finish it by next summer.
Smaller WIPs include a Hannah/Pansy wartime AU ficlet I started writing for rarepair_shorts in summer 2018. (I'm almost ready to post it but am kind of thinking of expanding it!) And a silly Padma/Daphne fic that I've written about half of that I got the idea for from one of nearlyconscious's fest sign-ups, can't remember exactly which one! And I wrote a couple of k words of a Ginny/Blaise detention fic that was supposed to be a birthday present for my sister in... 2010 or something. :D
Not to mention, there's the WIPs I foolishly went and posted the first chapters to:
My Book 6 Ginny/Pansy war-centric AU fic, World on Fire. I have tons more of this written, but I disagree with the characterization of Blaise I had at the time and since he's a very centric character, I don't know what to do about it.
Woooo. On top of these active and stale WIPs, I've also signed up for hd_owlpost (wanting to dip my fingers back into Drarry after all these years!) and would like to do Femslash Exchange. And make some Christmas gifts happen. Oh yeah, and there's also the Secret Christmas Idea lenapinewoods and I have.
Guys I’m so BUMMED that my life is like this right now. I haven't had time to finish commenting on all of the femmefest fics (sorry!) and hpwlwbigbang has also been posting AMAZING STUFF for the past few days already and I'm just so tight on time that I think I'm going to have to fulfil my hype reader pledge of commenting on 2 works and leave the rest for later. I’m in the middle of two gamedev projects that I’d really love to finish (as if I even have time for those!). I’m excited about modding comms/fests. It's pride week in Helsinki at the moment. In other words, there's tons of good stuff going on! But: I DON’T HAVE ANY DAMN TIME TO WRITE FIC. *CRIES BUCKETS*
I've been doing the weekly drabbles for hogwarts_ldws, which I'm still surprised to be a part of lol, but that's pretty much it! (Check them out, the challenge is hilarious fun and it's awesome how different all the drabbles turn out to be - with a bit of a bias towards Snape, of course. :D)
I LOVE rarepair_shorts summer wishlists, and I had grand plans yet again to create tons of fic and art, but it’s just all going down the drain with how crazy my summer is. (Go and check the wishlists, they're awesome!)
I had a badass idea for hpfemslash_mini summer prompts, but it's way out of my scope to write in a month. *sighs*
Working full-time, hosting tons of friends this summer (everyone always has something they need to visit Helsinki for and I’m here! - so there’s someone over over 50% of the time…), moving houses yet again and trying to catch the odd bit of sleep is already turning out to be a challenge. I’m just so damn exhausted. How do people even adult. Like, when work & commuting takes up around 10-11 hours of your day, how do people find time for anything? xD
I'm going to do a rec post for femmefest as soon as I finish commenting the last fics!
And get back to people's comments...sometime.
Meanwhile, I DID MANAGE TO CREATE A BIT OF ART and I sort of love how it turned out. Check out the final product on rarepair shorts or on AO3! Here's a progress gif below. :3 (Not shown: the countless times I adjusted the colors and the shading to get them right. :D)
PS. Mental & physical health-wise, things are pretty grand atm and I have nothing to complain about. Hope everyone is doing alright! Tell me about your summer <333 (Or winter on the southern hemisphere.)
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