Good grief!

     It's like I'm made of solid procrastination these days.

    I need to take a break after I finish this piece I'm working on.  I am determined to finish it today--the scene I'm currently procrastinating on is the epilogue!--but it's currently over 132k words long, and I started it on January 5th...so, yeah, a lot of words in not all that long a time.  (Though I did once clock over 211k during NaNoWriMo.  But that only happened the once.  And I suspect that if I went back and reread I would find that they were very badly assembled words. 😅  However, due to life stuff, that work is now permanently off-limits.)

    Anyway.

    I'm writing up another post because I'm not sure how to handle the epilogue.  Or rather that I can't actually think of much to put in it?  In this scene of it, that is.  Technically, there's already been like two or three scenes that could qualify as epilogue in some sense of the word.  (The "sex" scene I was having so much trouble with yesterday was the first of them, in fact.)  In this particular scene, the final one, I need the hero and his family to attend the one month celebration for his sister's second child.  Major problem with that is that I have zero clue what a one month celebration would consist of and really don't want to have to go researching it for half a scene's worth of text.  (Even if I did, the information would only exist for modern China, not the unspecified period in which the original novel takes place, which the author actually admitted is based on the customs of several different time periods anyway...)  Especially since the main point of the scene is just to show that life is settling down again, and to describe what the hero made as a gift for the baby.  (Basically the same thing he made for her first child in the original novel, only in a different shape.  Of course, he never got to give the first child that gift in the novel, because horrible things happened and soon both the child's parents were dead, but that's why this is an alternate universe fan fiction in which most of the horrible stuff never happened and a lot of characters who died tragically get to live. 😁 )  So I'm sort of not sure what else to put in the scene and I am thus procrastinating from writing it by doing something else.  Which is obviously not productive (I mean, that's the point of procrastinating, being unproductive is) but maybe it will clear my brain a little.

    Doing something physically creative like working on the fine details for my boxed rooms will do a better job of that, of course, but I want to wait and do that after I've completely finished the scene.  (Also after the new flooring and the unfinished new furniture arrives that I ordered from a miniatures shop on Etsy yesterday...)

    Anyway!

    I did want to share a bit I wrote earlier today because I really liked it, and it will be a very long time before it gets posted on AO3 for anyone to see it in context.

    Who these characters are doesn't really matter much to this little snippet of the scene, except that they're a married couple (both men) with their adopted son.

            “Don’t carry me around!  I’m not a little kid anymore!” claimed the five-year-old child.

            “I’ll carry you around until you’re too big for me to lift!” Wei Wuxian insisted.

            “No fair!  Father, make him put me down!”

            Lan Zhan reached out and stroked A-Yuan’s hair.  “A-Yuan is still very portable,” he said, making the boy complain even as he smiled happily.

    Maybe it's just me.  But I loved the idea of describing him as "still very portable." 😊  (The one is "Father" because the other is "Daddy," btw.  In case anyone was thinking "Father" sounded a bit formal coming from a kid who's only five.)

    Aaaaaand I should stop procrastinating and just write that last scene.

   

    (Also, what I reported yesterday remains the case:  Goodsmile wants all my money.  Today they dropped the pre-order for a Nendoroid of the lead from Bocchi the Rock...)

    EDIT:  just finished that fanfic I've been working on.  133,158 words long. 😅  Not the longest fan fiction I've ever written, but the longest in quite some time.

Why do I do this to myself?

     I have a bad habit of trying to write things that I am literally incapable of writing.

    I like to come up with stories that result in climactic final battles, even though I absolutely cannot write combat.  (This is largely a genre issue, I think, as I tend towards adventurous stories, especially when I am working in a genre that's even tangentially fantastical.)

    I also often end up wanting to write about love stories and sexual encounters, despite that as an aromantic person I don't really understand love and as an asexual I have never experienced sex.  But for some benighted reason I still want to write about them.  (Sometimes.  Other times I gleefully ditch them and relish in making characters as ace as I am.)

    So last night I was writing out some notes about the scene that I am currently procrastinating in the middle of.

    The notes were as follows:

           Ooooookay.   Soooooooo.  Is it even possible for me to write a sex scene?

            In a fandom where I would not feel comfortable using most slang for sex organs?

            Uh.

            No.

            No, it is not.

            So...what do I do with this scene, then?  I don't want them reuniting with their son in scene 69.  That would just creep me out.

            So I suppose I do one of my usual half-assed "kinda a sex scene if you turn your head and squint" things?

            But…like….what?

            I mean, it's...like...not even an appropriate time, considering they were just in a battle where like ¾ of their army got wiped out!  Also...well, no, actually, that's the big one.  But it's big!

             Although I did already set up that LWJ is literally ready for sex every time he even looks at WWX (and I think canon will largely back me up on that) so I guess it's not too weird?

    I felt like sharing them because I thought they were kind of funny.

    Also because procrastinating.

    (Because I'm kinda sorta trying to write that almost-a-sex-scene and I maybe got to the point where I had to describe their position and I'm panicking because how can I possibly describe it that won't embarrass me to death?!  Why does sex have to exist?  Why can't we all be like Barbie and Ken dolls, with nothing under our clothes but smooth plastic?  (Okay, technically, these days Barbie and Ken have molded on underwear, but back when I was a kid, they were just smooth plastic under the clothes.))

    (How am I supposed to describe two men getting in position for mutual oral sex when I don't want to use any convenient term for sex organs but all the less convenient terms are super awkward and sound stupidly stilted?)

    Why do I do this to myself?!

    Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhh!!!!!!

    (The fact that this is for fan fiction only makes it stupider, of course...)

    (Speaking of complaining (not that I was speaking of it), Goodsmile Company wants all my money.  They just yesterday dropped the pre-orders for special Year of the Rabbit Nendoroid versions of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, and of course I had to preorder them because they are so flippin' cute it's unfair.  Their eye highlights are little bunnies and they come with bunnies that neatly stack on top of each other, and they're just so darn cute! 😅  A fan and her money are all too soon parted...)

IWSG: Where did January go?

 

    Seriously, was January shorter this month than usual?  It feels like it shouldn't be over yet, not at all.

    Uh, okay, not relevant.

    So...I kinda feel like I do at the end of November, actually, sort of worn out by writing.  This is, of course, because I've written over 100k since January 5th.  😅  I wasn't really trying to, mind you; I just wanted to start on the work in question (fan fiction, sadly, but hey, it's more likely to be read than my regular fiction, so...🤷) and I wanted to get it done before the game jam I've committed to entering in March.

    And March sounds a long way off, but...enh.

    February's a short month, after all, and this thing turned out to be a lot longer than I was expecting it to be, so I'm glad I've put so much time into it in January!  Fortunately, I'm closing in on the end now (the remaining scenes are:  hero continues reconnecting with his brother, hero gets a tip from an old friend, we get a scene filling us in on what the bad guys have been up to lately, the good guys have a mass meeting to discuss the bad guys, the final confrontation with the bad guys, and then the epilogue) so I hope I can finish it within another week or so.  Preferably within the week, though.

    Because I had hoped to do another draft of Book 3 of my semi-YA series and maybe even get it released before I have to start on the game jam VN.  (Thankfully, the current draft is close enough to ready that it doesn't need a full-on new draft, just some piecemeal work.)

    On the other hand, I do feel like this new fandom I'm working in has pushed me in a few directions that might actually help my overall writing quality (esp. in terms of characterization), so that's a win?

    Ugh.

    This has been a terrible post.

    Sorry.

    Brain is fried, y'know?