Remember back in February when I took part in Febuwhump, and I didn’t finish until May? It was 28 fics, and I think I completely about 23 before the end of February, and the got some burned out I dragged myself to finish three months later. All were focused around The Old Guard, and I’m still proud of how much I wrote.
Well, I was thinking back to that time not too long ago, and I figured out why I burned out so much, and so quickly. It’s very simple, actually. I was trying to write every prompt on the day it needed to be posted.
By that, I mean that every morning, I’d get up, so my morning routine, and plant myself in front of the computer to write a fic. There was no real planning ahead, no writing ahead, just daily writing.
And I remember how burned out I got. I just didn’t want to do it anymore, but people in the TOG community were cheering us on, and I wanted to complete it for them.
Well.
After that, and all the stress I put myself under, I told myself never again. No big challenges, no bingos, no big bangs. Just writing when I felt like it. And for the rest of spring and all of summer, I stuck to that.
Until.
I was over on the 118 Discord (the 9-1-1 Discord I’m on) when one of the more prolific and well known writers in the community started talking her plans for October. She mentioned that she was debating between Flufftoper, Whumptober, and Kinktober, and she was jumping between the three. This started a major conversation, that started with an explanation of what each event was.
Flufftoper is basically 31 “fluffy” fics in October. By fluff, it means light and soft, no pain or injury or main character death. Just… happy thoughts.
Whumptober is somewhat obvious, I’d you were around my blog in February when I announced I was doing Febuwhump. Basically, it’s the bad stuff. Nothing’s really off limits. The prompts can be taken in lots of directions.
Speaking of taken, Kinktober is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a month of writing NSFW fics. Yeah. That’s it.
Anyway, we all really got talking, and I ended up getting convinced to take part in one of the two options I’d actually entertain (the third was Kinktober. I’m just no good writing NSFW stuff.
So, I did. I committed. I kept checking Tumblr and Discord to see if the prompts, mostly because I wanted to write them down and make everything pretty. It’s not like I could pre-write or anything. No, not at all.
As of today, it’s September 15th. I’ve already have seven of the prompts completed, with one mostly done and one in bullet point form (which is how I plan stories out). My goal is to be at least halfway done by the time October begins, which is a definite possibility. I also challenged myself (again) to try and do one fandom the entire way through. Thus far, it’s worked!
I came up with a fun way to pick my prompts, by the way. I wrote the numbers 1-31 on tiny squares of paper, folded them up, and stuck them in a jar. Every time I finish a fic, I pull a new one. If I don’t have a plot already planned for that number (of which there are a few that I haven’t come up with yet), I put it to the side and pick again until I find one that I can do. Then any “duds” go back in. I know which ones I’m still coming up with prompts for, and I’m actively thinking about them, even when I’m working on a prompt.
So, yeah. In addition to Blogtober, which is when I write a post every day, I’m also going to be doing Whumptober. The stress is real.
Until next time! (Wish me luck!)