1000 Words

I haven't posted or updated anything for months now so I thought I'd throw this up to let people know that I haven't completely fallen off the face of the net XD There's the usual reasons for my absence: school commitments, procrastination, too tired/lazy to make my brain work. To be honest, I think there's also a factor of gradual indifference. I write fanfiction as a hobby and, well, I've developed more hobbies. Writing is always in the back of my mind but it's mostly been taking a backseat these past few months. I no longer have the passion that drives me to churn out chapters every weekend. I'm simply too distracted nowadays, and even when I have the time to sit down and write, the words don't come as easily anymore. My standards have grown higher than I'm capable.

But, of course, here's me being a hypocrite - I love writing. I've been having a go at some original stuff lately, and mostly getting stuck. But every now and then, I'll strike inspiration for one of my fanfics and I'll burn through a whole chapter in a matter of days. It's sort of magical, how you can suddenly get back on track and don't even want to rest until you've reached the end. I think that's what keeps me in the middle between in and out of the fandom. Most of the time I'm struggling to write and don't produce anything, but then out of the blue I'll be madly fleshing out a story when I'm supposed to be studying for exams.

I though I'd be honest with my thoughts, because I feel that the people who still want to read my stories (thank you!) deserve to know the situation. But that said, I haven't completely given up!

To make it nice and simple (or more complicated, depending on how you look at it):

So... are you still going to write fanfiction?
Yup. It'll most likely be an on/off thing. I'm sorry; I can't entirely commit to it so frequent updates will be rare, but I do pick at the stories every now and then, especially when I have time. It's the best I can do at the moment ): But one thing's for sure: if I ever decide to stop writing fanfiction, I will definitely let you know. So until you see an update, I'm still in business.


When are you going to update ______?
I get this question a lot, and I can't blame the people who ask. I honestly don't know the answer. The progress meters on this blog are the best indicators I can give. I always update them when I write a considerable amount. Don't be disheartened if they don't seem to budge for months - most of the time, that's very normal.


Have you abandoned ______?
To this, I can definitely say no. Even Blossom In My Eyes, which has been left unfinished for... I think it's about two years, is still lurking in the back of my mind. I may not work on a story because I'm unsatisfied with decisions I've made while writing it, or simply because I'm stuck. Most of the time I'm stuck because those past decisions have put me in a tight spot: my thoughts change over time and I find that I no longer want to take the story in the direction that I had initially planned. When this happens, I just leave the story and work on something else, with the hope that I eventually figure out how to make ends meet.
    When I really, really can't make it work, I may rewrite the story. I haven't done it yet, but I will if I'm determined. For example, I scoured Precious People a few months ago. I corrected typos, reworded sentences, shuffled the structure, cut out some scenes. Nothing major, but I felt the need to brush up and reconnect with the story because it had been a long time since I started it. This process, I call a brush-up. A rewrite, on the other hand, will be massive. I'll explain this in the next paragraph since this section is rapidly becoming a block of text.

So what would happen if you decided to rewrite, say... Blossom In My Eyes?
Loads of changes, most likely. I've given this some thought in the past. If I feel that the current plot is okay, I'll just take the story as it is and give it a brush-up. If I cut out a lot of scenes, I will put out an update with this, and maybe arrange for the story to be read uncut (upload it as a pdf or something). On the other hand, I might be completely unsatisfied with the story. I might take the main idea and start from scratch, creating a story that goes in a completely different direction. Some may hate it, some may love it. Or I might start from scratch and still keep most of the original story's ideas; it'd be like a brush-up-bordering-rewrite. I'm using Blossom as an example because it's the story I'm most stuck with. But at the moment, I'm leaning more towards a brush-up. We'll see.

So yeah. A long winded update to tell the people who read this blog that I'm still alive. So what sparked this sudden update anyway? Well... I've kinda hit a bit of inspiration lately for a new oneshot. I hope I don't jinx it. I'm on holidays at the moment so I do have some time to tinkle with it. I don't usually announce work in progress stories, since there's always the possibility that they'll never get published. But I've been gone for so long and I feel bad XD I'll put up a progress meter for the story in a while. Hopefully I'll get it finished :3

If you still have questions, you can drop a comment on this post or PM me on FF.net :) To those that are still interested in my stories, thanks for sticking around!

Replacement

Because some things can't be replaced. ;)

Been working very, very slowly on the multi-chapter stories. I'm only writing a few sentences a day but they feel like very half-hearted compositions so I'll most likely rewrite them when I hit inspiration. I got stuck in Halcyon Days, and today decided to cut out an entire scene because I couldn't make ends meet. Hopefully I'll be able to put a chapter together before school gets busy again.

In the meantime, I may or may not be likely to write a few more drabbles. I'm getting better at keeping them short, haha.

Chapter 16

The don't believe this chapter could have been finished if I hadn't hit sudden inspiration while I was supposed to be studying for my exams. I found myself waking up early in the morning to work on the chapter, and eventually had to put aside a whole day to finish it before my study plans went down the drain. XD

It was really fun to write, maybe because I included a lot of Sakura development. I'm hoping to start on the third exam on the next chapter and move onto the more exciting arcs. But for now, I'm going to have to focus on school, and after the exams may work on my other stories.

Happy belated Easter? :D

Summary: The fact that Naruto left without telling her had never boded well with Sakura. So when she finally gets a hold of him, letting go is not an option. Now they're in for the toughest lesson of their lives: you never know what you've got until it's gone.

Link

Yes, a new story. XD It was born out of a slightly twisted idea I had and I get the feeling it will be slightly different to my other stories in some aspects. Oh well, let's just see how it goes.

I'll add a progress meter for Cherish after this, since it is technically a multichapter story despite my intentions to limit it to three chapters.

The title and lyrics came from the song Cherish by Otsuka Ai. If you want to check out the song, I highly recommend you check out this magnificent video. =D

Yep, another spur of the moment thing that I seem to be notorious for. If you take your gaze up to the top left hand corner of the page, you'll see that there are new links for 'profile' and 'bookworm land'. I'm still working on them right now, so that's why the profile page happens to be blank. I'll fill everything in when I have the time. Now, a quick run-through.

Profile: I'd be worried if you didn't know what this page is for. :P

Bookworm land: This is where I'll post my opinions on books I read, because a) I think that writing brief reviews will give me that final closure after finishing a book, b) I can remember what books I've read and what I thought about them, c) TO SPREAD THE LOVE OF READING! 8DDDD

You won't believe how hard it was to create those pages. They're not really attached to the main blog, which is this page - dubbed 'home'. Since blogger doesn't have an add page option (it probably does, but I obviously didn't figure it out), I had to create multiple blogs and link them to the main page. It was very, very tedious. D:

Some changes: my music player has been moved to Bookworm Land, since I think it can be put to better use there. I had to change to Grooveshark because mixpod was being an ass and limiting certain songs. Also, sudoku was replaced by a Twitter update widget.

I've left the live feed option available on Bookworm Land, which will automatically notify you of updates to that page if you choose to subscribe. I don't know about other browsers, but Flock handles feeds very well. Follower option is available as well to those that have an account. I figured that I couldn't be the only book-lover out there. XD

Alrighty... I think that's it. I've been writing again lately, though I'm getting held up by school work. I've been picking away at another Naruto story, one that will be three chapters long. I'm on the second chapter now so we'll see how I go, and I'll post it if I ever finish it and am satisfied with it. :D

Oh - and the comment function on this blog is open to everyone, including unregistered users.

Teddy Bear

I remember starting this drabble a long time ago during a computing lesson. I never really paid attention to class. XD

I've been trying to update Precious People lately but I haven't gone very far into the chapter. I did go back and do a thorough edit of the previous chapters though. I was never really satisfied with it. I rewrote pretty much every second sentence, cut out bits that seemed to do nothing but raise the word count, and added honorifics. Watching so much anime has kind of drilled honorifics into me, so it feels strange to write certain parts without it. Names are also written in Japanese format now - i.e. Uzumaki Naruto instead of Naruto Uzumaki.

I don't seem to be able to actually sit down and write something substantial. Hopefully writing some drabbles, maybe even a few oneshots, will get me back into the groove. I think I need to read some books and get my mind churning.