Thread by @robofingering

Now seems like a nice time to reflect on what I've written this past year! ✨ (I could pretend I'm going to do a one answer per like thing but I will most likely just answer as I have free time today no matter how many likes I get!!!)

1) I'm always drawn to romance where I can mix some big feelings and introspective moments with sex...hot-n-sweet isn't just a delicious wing sauce, it's my general writing philosophy

2) this is tough because writing felt harder than normal this year due to Life Stuff but probably a wild rose carved in stone was the toughest because it was not at all the type of fic I usually write! My first time digging into Hank's grief over Cole in a substantial way.

3) the original Lilacs in Bloom fic, which now serves as the first chapter of the longer work, came very easily to me. 🥰🌻

4) jesus how do I answer this??? I'm so bad at choosing favorites. This year I think that might be My Home is Your Body; I'm still very happy with how it turned out and I think that's my most successful Connor POV so far.

5) when threading I go start to finish by necessity! when writing a fic "normally" I do hop around a little but still write in a mostly start to finish direction.

6) nope!! I guess I can't say I never would but I don't think it's something I'd do barring something unusual happening.

7) it's better to finish a bad first draft and edit from there than to try and write everything perfectly from the start

8) I have never been told this directly but any "make yourself write x amount per day every day or you're a failure as a writer" sort of advice (which I think is more a thing in publishing than in the fic community) is no good for me

9) there was that time Kaye and I did a little monster Hank collab thread a year or so ago but more official collab stuff doesn't super appeal to me, maybe I'd like it if I tried it but my instinct is that I prefer to write alone! Maybe an illustration collab would be fun though

10) Lilacs is the main one, but there's one I'm hoping to return to soon (the massage fic sequel, probably my next project after Lilacs is done), a heavily-outlined idea (no name but highly associated with Janelle Monae's Make Me Feel in my head), & the forever-languishing

fic about 60 seducing Hank to get him to cyberlife tower that I wrote the first half of in SEPTEMBER 2018 and haven't been able to figure out how to finish yet

11) I only wrote the last bit of Stay With Me, Go Places in 2020 so maybe it doesn't count, but I'm very proud of it as the longest thing I've written (although Lilacs is creeping up there) and something that grew into MUCH more than I set out to make it. I still genuinely love

this fic and the relationship I created for Hank and Connor and Connor's new job (at Woolgathering, I wish I'd said the store name in the fic because it's CUTE but I settled on it too late) and it presents what is essentially my thesis statement on why I love this relationship.

12) honestly I am bad at picking favorites and I always have the worry that someone will feel left out of this sort of exercise but if you're writing you are presenting us with a gift and I want to thank you for it. special shoutout to anyone who started writing this past year!🌟

13) I had some beautiful, very kind comments this year and I gotta say that positive feedback and comments do SO MUCH heavy lifting if I'm feeling stressed about writing or am doubting that I'm doing a good job. So just in general: thank you to anyone who replies to fic you like

THAT SAID a highlight was @MorganEAshton leaving some very long & detailed comments on a few fics, that was lovely. I also got a couple comments on My Home is Your Body about it being a helpful exploration of sexuality which is a pretty fantastic compliment.

14) I got a comment from someone (maybe SN???) that had a weird "I'm glad you wrote these things I like and didn't do [something that would have made no sense in the context of the fic]" narrative and overall felt like a big backhanded compliment. I am not into someone praising

my fic by shitting on what other authors choose to do, even if those aren't choices I'd ever make!!! It made me want to write a fic about Connor having a bunch of one night stands just to piss that person off. UGH

15) huh, I...don't think I have an answer to that? Maybe this is part of me not being super drawn to collaborative storytelling but I'm happy to let someone's fic universe be their own. Fic prequels/sequels by the original author? Sure!! But I don't want to write them myself.

16) I'm wondering if I'm weird in this, but yeah! I write about things I like and while I can always find things to nitpick about my writing I'm generally happy enough with it to reread it without wincing at anything I am not wild about. So yes, sometimes I do go back & reread.

17) eh, it's not a goal for me! I am happy to write what I want to write without the pressures of needing to make sales or work on deadline or having my finances tied to it. If somehow I did make it happen, sure it would be nice, but it isn't a goal I have for myself.

18) surprise: it's Hank! Some of that is that it's *easier* for me to write Hank, although some of what I wrote this year made me much more comfortable with Connor's POV, but Hank is definitely the easiest/most comfortable.

19) I mean y'all may notice I don't include a lot of extra characters in my fics because....I don't care about most characters from the game! So my non-favorites are just... not there. (I also don't really care about Gavin but he was kind of fun to write into SWMGP briefly)

20) hoo boy I am not great with goal-setting, so not *really* although I do try to update mostly-daily when doing a thread, or at least not take more than one day off. This summer and fall things were so hard that I didn't hold myself to that as much, though.

22) I've never touched on those old classics fake dating & only-one-bed but maybe some day...
23) soulmate AUs (honestly, most AUs beyond mild canon divergence), TPE or "ownership" type dom/sub dynamics, intense humiliation or degradation are not things I imagine I'd ever write.

24) In terms of fanfic, I started writing in June/July 2018, right when the jerries were yelling about hankcon in my little discord channel. I wrote a few original fics starting a couple years before that but didn't write consistently until mid 2018.

25) (oh right I was going to finish this list yesterday! whoops!) I don't have specific writing influences that I am conscious of, when it comes to people, but I have done a lot of beta reading for a friend for years and while her writing style is very different from mine,

the process of thinking about writing and crafting a narrative so many times, for her and a few other folks I've betaed for, has absolutely shaped my own approach to writing! Also I'm constantly influenced/inspired by the TJ peanut gallery of horny ideas shouted into the ether

26) maintaining focus and making myself push through and just write SOMETHING if I feel stuck on a particular part. I get stuck pretty easily!
actual writing craft-wise, I do much better with dialogue than I did when I was starting out, but I do find it difficult

27) Often I find sex scenes pretty easy to write and Big Feelings Introspection tends flow easily as well.

28) Best part of writing is finishing a fic (or scene, chapter, etc) and feeling like I managed to say what I wanted to say with it. Best part of the fic writing ~experience~ is having people respond to something I've written

29) I talk about my WIPs enough that this is no surprise, but: "Hank asks Connor to revisit the distracted/disinterested vibe during sex, except turn it up a notch and also be a little mean, then connor ruthlessly sexually torments him & they're happy and in love"

30) My approach to sexual communication maybe? It's something I've had people mention a few times and I care a lot about it so let's go with that. 💙