My regular Saturday night Date Night with my girlfriend has been cancelled because tomorrow night we're doing something else instead. So my plan was to start writing Just Unrequited this afternoon, either before or after running errands such as picking up some new clothes at the thrift store for my upcoming trip.

But after class, my 20 year old hijacked me and whisked me away for an hour as he cleans off his bookshelves. He is perfectly capable of doing this by himself, but the ADHD means that it's easier for him to do this with if there's another person there for him to narrate every step to.

So instead of doing my own work, I'm sitting here listening to someone else doing his work, haha.

Luckily, I'll have all of this evening to catch up. He set an alarm on his phone, so I won't be held captive all afternoon!

It's really nice to hear my kid going through the different things he's accumulated over the years and reminiscing about them. I know that I've messed up parenting many times, but at least I've created a person who has had good experiences in life so far -- friends, hobbies, activities, plays -- and at least he is motivated to clean up his room! I feel like these are huge wins!

I tried really hard to fold down all the events I needed to get through onto just one more chapter... but it wasn't happening. So I just finished and posted Chapter 3, with the sad understanding that I will need to work my tail off later on today / tonight / tomorrow morning to get Chapter 4 done and published.

Why do I do this to myself?

I'm happy with Chapter 3. Historically I haven't written much hate-sex / hate-making-out, but I put some into this chapter. I hope it comes across the way I want it to, and I hope people like it!

Last night I published chapter 2 of my offering for Unconventional Courtship, which is due in just a few days, on the 6th. I chose the 6th because 6 is my favorite number, but now I'm kicking myself for not choosing a number after this next weekend!

I'm especially kicking myself because in the process of writing yesterday's chapter, I have somehow increased the chapter count up to 4. So now I'm only halfway done, with 2 days to finish.

I'm busily pondering whether I can fold down the last two chapters into one, which would be far more feasible to do. I think I might pursue that path -- so in that case it'll be back down to 3 chapters total soon.

Stay tuned!

I just want to take a moment to congratulate myself for not being even vaguely tempted to pick up a pinch hit from the Hurt/Comfort exchange. I have way too much to do between now and my trip, the night of the 11th, to even consider making another writing commitment! The two deadlines staring me in the face already are more than enough! 😅

The deadline to post for Hurt/Comfort is, as I write this sentence, 18 hours, 57 minutes, and 1 second away.

I have 2 good chapters out of 3, totaling over 9k words, and I have a start on Chapter 3. I've done all the hard work already (the research, etc.), and the first two chapters contained the Hurt, so now "all" I have to do is let the Comfort flow out through my fingertips.

I hope to deliver a satisfactory experience for my gift recipient! After messing up an exchange last summer, I'll forever be paranoid about missing a Do Not Want prompt, so I've gone back to their prompt letter again and again to try to tailor something they'll like. But it's always hard to tell whether they'll really like it until they comment. I hope they will!

It's been a busy day involving writing, martial arts class for 2 hours, a dump run to get rid of an old mattress, cleaning and vacuuming, and I just finished Date Night, in which we watched an Indian movie, "Crew." It was amusing! I'm already fasting for the night, so I can't give in to my urge for a late night snack. I guess I'll need to write instead!

Just now, I received the nicest compliment on a fic that's over a year old. They left a small, simple comment on each of the first two chapters of "Rise Up and Take the Power Back," and then they left this at the end:

Imagine having a really tiny but really itchy spot in your brain that you can't possibly reach to scratch no matter how much you try, then somebody invents a tiny scratcher and scratches until the flesh falls off. That's how this story feels. This is a compliment! It is not often that I find something that fits exactly what I look for in superhero stories holy shit this was amazing thank you 😭😭

I am so tickled -- or scratched? -- by this expressive, visceral, embodied comment. The fact that my story made them feel things makes me feel things!

This is why I write... so that every so often, my brain can touch someone else's brain and we can both have that "ZING!!!!" of recognition. Like -- I KNOW you, stranger on the internet. We dream the same dream.

In news that will surprise no one, I ended up splitting my Chapter 1 of Hurt/Comfort into two, and adding a bunch more from Character 2's POV to chapter 1. Having mixed POVs within a chapter is something I've been getting away from in the past year, but there's nothing wrong with it; I used to do it all the time.

The other day I was thinking that my recent Gingerpilot fic "we're gonna drain that cup dry" would have benefited from a different structure in which I mixed the POVs more. As I wrote it, Chapter 2 is all Poe's POV, and goes up through a certain event. Then in Chapter 3, which is all Hux's POV, I rewind time and we see things through his eyes -- but would it have been stronger if I'd kept the chronological timeframe and just mixed the POVs?

Well, it's too late for that story now, but thinking about it made me decide that it's okay to mix POVs in a single chapter, after all. And I'm doing the same in my new fic for Unconventional Courtship, as well.

Mixing POVs -- it's all the rage nowadays!

ANYWAY, my Chapter 1 for Hurt/Comfort is all sorted out now. I've been working for the last 4 hours to bring it to a better form, and I'm happy with it now...

... but Chapter 2 is barely started, and I'll probably end up spinning to 3 chapters, and Chapter 3 is barely a twinkle in my eye. And I have less than a week...

There's a barbecue and board game day at a friend's house this afternoon, in honor of Memorial Day. I think I'll take my laptop and get some work done while the others divert themselves.

So technically I hadn't watched the entirety of the canon for which I had committed to write in the Hurt/Comfort exchange... whoops! I finished watching it last night and fleshed out my outlines that I had already started, coming up with a third possible story outline and deciding that it would be the winner.

I also looked through some supplemental materials from other parts of my past life that I can use to weave into this story, and got that all sorted out in my Scrivener document.

This morning I woke up around 6:30 and wrote 3800 words, finishing Chapter 1 of 2.

I'm pretty confident that now it's well started, I should be able to finish it this weekend. It's a three-day weekend here for Memorial Day, and I'm quite pleased with my progress, since it's only 9:36 on Saturday morning!

I might even have time to write another chapter of something Gingerpilot this weekend!

Once Hurt/Comfort is done, I'll just have to finish Unconventional Courtship and then write something for Just Unrequited, and then all my hard deadlines will be over. At that point I'll feel prepared to go on a two-week trip out of state with my girlfriend without worrying about writing deadlines.

Hooray!

I woke up early this morning and knocked out 1300 words of the next chapter of my offering for Unconventional Courtship. I figure that's about 1/3 of the way through this chapter, which is 2 out of 3. I'm not incredibly motivated to write this -- the deadline is the only thing forcing me to do it, and I know myself well enough to know that, which is why I join so many exchanges! Joining so many exchanges and forcing myself to produce does make my life worse in the moment, but then after it's over and I've produced something, that's a net positive that probably would not have happened otherwise.

In the other part of my brain, I've been spinning out a prequel to The Blending of Flour with Salt, explaining Baylan Skoll's tragic backstory (TM) and *why* he felt like kidnap and rape was a totally normal way to Get His Guy. (Because in his experience, that's just what people do! It's romantic! Right??? hmmmm, by the end of the story I've already written, he realizes his mistake... but I'm busy spinning out the reasons why he thought that in the first place.) Star Wars is such a large property, with so many aspects to it, that you can really do whatever you want if you just find a corner of the universe that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet. :)

The Blending of Flour with Salt is up to five (5) kudos now, and that's probably where it's going to stay, because no one is searching for Baylan Skoll/Hunter. The two of them never interacted; they're in totally different shows! The only people who might read it are (1) my gift recipient, the requester, and they read it already AND LOVED IT; (2) people looking for fics starring Baylan or Hunter specifically and willing to take a chance on an unusual ship that has both rape AND mpreg (very few of these), and (3) any of my user subscribers who trust me enough to take a chance on this. I was kind of hoping for more people from category three once the stories went de-anonymous, but none of my regular commenters have left a kudos or comment on this story, so I figure that everyone saw the announcement, twisted up their faces in incomprehension, and moved on with their day.

Ah well! I really like this story, and so did my gift recipient, and that's all that counts. :)

A conversation on the Discord server had me pondering the modern day jobs we give to our characters. Here are the ones I've used for Poe in my modern AUs!

Left in a Lyft: Massage therapist / dolphin trainer / croupier / con man (that last one was just Hux's judgy interpretation because he thinks Poe is a honey pot in a corporate espionage plot set up by Kylo Ren)

Have Yourself a Merry Little Caroler: Works at his dad's auto shop

The Cat's Meow: Part time fitness instructor, part time scuba diving instructor. (Last winter he was a ski instructor!)

Feast of Innocents: Riding instructor (and certified hottie) (after being discharged from the British army after sustaining a disabling wound in the Punjab)

Dotted Lines: Tattoo artist (after dropping out of art school)

Falling for His Rival: Chef (after an early life of crime)

I tend to give Hux more high-intensity, high-pay, high-prestige jobs -- CIO, engineer, architect, etc. -- but not always. In one story (Dotted Lines), I tapped into his rage and used that for his profession instead of going with the cool, calm, and cerebral vibe.

-- in totally different news, I'm 5 minutes away from completing my first 36 hour fast! I'm going to break it with bacon, salmon, and a boiled egg.