headstone | writing year in review: 2019

i’ve been trying to pick away at a variation of this post (with the usual writing meme questions i fill out every year in more or less the same way, etc) for weeks and not getting much of anywhere with it, and also feeling stressed out by the prospect, which is silly because if this isn’t causing me joy or at least a feeling of clarity why am i doing it? but also i’m concerned that if i don’t write anything at all reflecting on how i’ve done with my writing in 2019 i’ll regret it. so i’m going to talk about things i’ve written, which mostly just means talking about tender prey, because besides a few bright spots here and there, the rest of my finished projects this year feel more or less like afterthoughts to me, which is too bad. i started and worked on a lot of things i feel more connected to or hopeful about, but none of those things are finished (yet). sadly. :(

gk fandom was really kind and generous to me in its feedback to all of my fic, especially tender prey. i feel really blessed to have found a fandom that stimulated my urge to write so much and that clarified for me so many of my own interests and priorities wrt origfic. i’m also really excited to be in the mood to write for chf again, since i didn’t know if i ever would; there’s something really comfortable and familiar about revisiting that emotional landscape with what is hopefully an evolved and improved ability level. being able to track my fic writing over the last five years through the fandom i’ve repeatedly gone back to over the years feels like a really valuable tool.

things that have changed in my approach to writing over the last year/year-and-a-half:

i’m not afraid of length anymore. in fact i literally cannot keep to a small scale and need to relearn concision, lol. this is why i need to take an extended break from exchanges T__T i budget time to write stuff in the 2-3k range and then CANNOT DO THAT or at best write something really rushed and half-realized
i’ve shaken off whatever residual guilt i had over writing a lot of m/m. transitioning/detroit becoming irl em-ell-em will do that to ya i guess lmfaooooo
i still feel like i rarely have Good Lines anymore, more like... sections that i enjoy in their wholeness. i don't know if that's preferable or not
i’ve gotten sooo reliant on being similewriter69 it’s fucking bad

Fics completed (not counting <1k ficlets):

a good sky to die under: golden kamuy, tanigaki/ogata, ogata bullying tanigaki into sex after breaking him out of a bear cage. completely silly.
soft targets: golden kamuy, koito/tsukishima, post-showdown on the ice, wound care hurt/comfort with koito in the role of the caretaker, for once.
tender prey: golden kamuy, sugimoto/ogata pre-canon divergence longfic wherein sugimoto experiences the war as a member of the 7th division, sugimoto and ogata have a torrid trench romance, and also tsurumi and yuusaku are there. wartime coming of age drama by way of gothic horror coming of age bdsm romance. yeah
palmfuls of miracles, houses on the moon: golden kamuy, sugimoto/ogata post-eye accidental soulbond fic, written for a zine that hasn't come out yet so almost no one has read it LOL

for the record, i posted 17,469 words of tender prey’s 68,219 total words in 2018.

Primary "coming-soon" (I hope) WIPs that I’m including in this post:

drowned at sea: golden kamuy, tsukishima/tsurumi russia-years backstory fic about having chronic depression and getting stuck in a bdsm marriage to the devil himself
perfectly still in the dark: chihayafuru, suou/taichi future fic about getting back in touch with your old mentor you haven't spoken to in years who made you realize you were gay and also about self-actualizing as a gay man and bottom

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?:

writing and completing (long) chapterfic! i’ve only done one-shots before. also writing things that have actual synopsis-able action plots! i learned a lot about story structure and planning and where i fall on the outline-to-pantsing spectrum, and basically all of that can be summed up by “just include a lot of motifs and themes and emotional arcs and then you’ll be able to wrap things up Somehow you dumb bitch”. writing things that include real emotions and statements on the human condition is a favour to your future self because it tells you how to finish things when you’re stuck.

Hardest story to write:

this tsutsu russia wip i’ve been writing on-and-off for a year and a half, because the amount of very specific and also difficult research it requires is nightmarish and because it’s depressing as Fuck

Story with the single sexiest moment:

tender prey has the climactic bayonet hand trauma breakup scene which i think i'd nominate for this question because i'm busted in the head.

… but really tho; that scene was both planned out from the beginning (in the sense that i knew that the entire story was leading to a sudden burst of violence after simmering suspicion and distrust grows; that it would happen in the woods, after they’ve “won” and escaped their external enemies and grown to half-trust and rely on each other; that it would be sparked by sugimoto finally connecting the dots and admitting to himself that ogata is the one who tried to kill yuusaku, who for sugimoto represents all the innocence/kindness/goodness he sees himself as lacking and feels a need to protect) and also almost not fully planned until the moment i was actually writing it for publication. initially i was just planning on sugimoto fucking up ogata’s face half-unintentionally while brawling. i eventually decided that the tone it needed to strike was that the way he hurts ogata is completely deliberate and cold-blooded, but also not inherently fatal, and that he leaves him knowing he’ll survive because he loves him and has to show him mercy despite having no real reason to besides that inconvenient love. hence stabbing him through the palm with a bayonet while writhing around on top of him in a reflection of all the way they’ve had horrible life-altering rough sex together in the past, because despite his completely irrational moment of mercy, he can’t leave him unscarred either. the violence is necessary so they can be on something approaching even ground again, when they meet in the future. ach….. love

Your most popular story of this year:

tender prey, no contest. longfic for a juggernaut ship will do that! i shouldn’t be glib though because if that fic bombed i would’ve probably been forced to do sth drastic. the labour hours alone…

Most unintentionally telling story:

perfectly still in the dark has gotten me over a four-month spell of writer’s block and it’s pretty much entirely me working thru sum shit so…….. [laughs]

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?:

more for the first half of the year, less for the second. being job hunter / grad school application writer and having a longfic hangover will do that to you i guess

Biggest disappointment:

god, so many things. basically the only thing i wrote this year that i like and don't hate rereading is tender prey and that's mostly out of pride over the accomplishment rather than delight in my work. sigh

Favourite title:

drowned at sea, because the title comes from what is probably my favourite part of that story. and… The Themes.

Favourite opening line(s):

No photographs exist of Tsukishima Hajime as a child. The earliest found is an image of the corporals of the 2nd Division lined up for a record-keeping portrait before sailing away for the first war with China. He stands third from the left, rifle in hand, a short, stocky figure in a line of infantrymen, looking older than his twenty-something years. One can’t help but imagine him always looking like that, even as a boy: small, stiff, world-weary, and strong.

— drowned at sea (gk). ik this is a wip but this has been the opening paragraph the entire time i’ve been working on it. so

Favourite closing line(s):

He licked his bottom lip. Split. Bleeding. Sweet with the phantom taste of a kiss.

“You know where I’m going. I’ll see you there, you hear?"

— tender prey (gk). lmfaaaaooooooo i don't even "like this" it's just like. don't. talk. to me. about it

Favourite 5 line(s) from anywhere:

going with two excerpts from tender prey and one each for three other things i like, because of the crazy length disparity. it do be like that

A couple of them gambled at cards for cigarettes, but Sugimoto didn’t feel compelled to join. He’d never been a very good liar. He did watch, though, as the players dealt and squabbled over their hands and the peacocks on the cigarette cases preened their feathers, even as the cheap mass-produced ink had smudged on the surface of the cardboard.

It was cramped, of course, in the belly of the ship, and Ogata sat next to him with his knees splayed outwards. The sides of their thighs were pressed against each other. There were two dozen men in earshot, and no one would think twice of it, but the casual touch felt like an incitement, like a slow-burning coal hidden in a fire you thought you had put out.

— tender prey ch. 7 (gk sugimoto/ogata). this is mostly a favourite because i did a STUPID amount of research on meiji era cigarette pack designs so i could write this tiny scene faithfully

It felt like the half-dead hours in the middle of the night. In the hush of the darkened forest, the high-pitched sounds that involuntarily escaped Ogata’s windpipe were deafening. Dizziness settled in. His extremities seemed further away than usual, numb. Ogata felt as enclosed by Sugimoto’s body heat as if he were a little boy again and falling asleep in front of the hearth.

— tender prey ch. 11 (gk sugimoto/ogata). sometimes thinking about your childhood neglect while jerking off to being strangled is something that can be so personal,

He doesn’t want something to hold onto, but something to let go of. He wants to grant himself permission to feel dangerous and new, a transgression made safe by how quickly it will necessarily end. He won’t be here much longer—in the city, or this shabby apartment—and he’s going somewhere no one knows his name. He might as well have something to remember this part of his life by besides exams and sleepless nights. Something he didn’t let wash over him, but something he chased for no reason but wanting it; reached out for and taken, like a card heard with perfect clarity.

— perfectly still in the dark (chf suou/taichi). this paragraph and this fic are about taichi self-actualizing as a bottom and i think that’s just really beautiful and brave of me to write

He’d never wanted to kill someone more than he wanted to wring the life out of Ogata’s body then. He’d never felt something as warm as the blood flowing into his own mouth from the hole in Ogata’s head. The dreams can’t get across the firmness of Ogata under him, or the way he’d struggled as though Sugimoto was butchering him rather than saving his life, but Sugimoto remembers. He does always wake, however, with the same feeling he’d had after he plucked out Ogata’s eye: the sense of something lost, and something unnameable gained.

— palmfuls of miracles, houses on the moon (gk sugimoto/ogata). love is real and i don't want to talk about it

Clothes were removed, identifying features slashed. It was shocking how heavy a body was after death, but it wasn’t the first time Tsukishima had dealt with a fresh corpse—though it was different in wartime, and after a while you just gave up and let them rot until there was a free afternoon to lay the dead to rest. He did what he always did: lifted with the legs, and didn’t devote much thought to what he was carrying. The black water of the Songhua River swallowed the body with a hungry plop and a surprisingly small splash. They left the open streets as quickly as possible as not to attract undue attention. Back to the rat-hole.

Later: the glint in Tsurumi’s eye returned. Dazzling. His touch was more feverishly urgent than their bedroom comings and goings in Vladivostok had ever been. I see now, Tsukishima thought, why the army beckoned him. The stock exchange, the courthouse: far fewer opportunities to draw blood.

— drowned at sea (gk tsukishima/tsurumi). oh my god this fic is an emotional wasteland

Leitmotif of the year and the story that demonstrates it the best:

experiencing gay love that you don't think you want or deserve in whatever fucked up delivery package you're able to accept it. that's it folks

Fic-writing goals for next year:

finish drowned at sea and perfectly still in the dark; get back into using a word count tracker spreadsheet because that was WILDLY motivational when i was sticking to it for the first half of this year; chip away at origfic as well as a couple enduring shorter fic projects i’ve been bandying about for a few years.

also: auuughhhh i have nooo clue how my writing reads to literally anyone else but i feel like i have the pov voice version of sameface and it’s so tough trying to break out of it. so i’d like to work on that. also: READ MORE. jesus