It's nice you've gotten into a daily writing routine! That has definitely helped me be more consistent. I'm the same way as you; I usually shower first, then make a cup of coffee and write before I get too distracted by anything else. If I wait until later in the day, it's usually harder to get started.
I agree. If I wait until later, there's less incentive to write.
It's nice that you're more willing to write female characters now! That makes sense with the change in fandom, though. The BSB fandom doesn't have any female "characters" except for the guys' wives, and it feels weird to write about them in anything other than minor roles because they're not celebrities. I like creating original characters, but like you said, not everyone wants to read or write about them. I'm glad you have some good female characters to work with!
It is easier to write the females in this fandom because they are already established characters and with designated parts to already play. It's been a nice change writing a strong female lead all by herself though. I didn't think I'd enjoy that as much as I did. Not sure how people felt about her, but they did continue reading and no one said anything bad about it, so I take that as a good sign.
I've written both ways, but most of my recent stories have either taken place in roughly present day with the guys as middle-aged men or specific time periods in the past where most of them were still with their current partners. My current story takes place during the IAWLT era, so most of the guys have kids and are married, and Nick is soon to be engaged to Lauren. The only difference is that I killed Kristin in first story in the series, so Kevin is widowed and dating an original character. Mason exists, but Max does not. I don't write much about the other guys' wives or kids because the focus is on Kevin, but Mason gets a fair amount of story time. I don't usually like writing about their real kids, but I'm enjoying Kevin and Mason's father-son relationship in this story. Mason feels almost like an original character because I don't know much about the real Mason, so I just make up most of the details. He's only 5 in this story and was a baby in the first one, so I just try to make him act like a typical little boy that age.
That being said, I still try to find ways to avoid writing about their families as much as is possible/realistic. In 2020, I finished my ER crossover, which took place in 1995, so there are no wives/girlfriends and kids in that one. I also wrote a survival story that year called The Road to Bethlehem that was about the five of them quarantining in a cabin together to work on the Christmas album during the pandemic, which worked well for leaving their families out.
I still don't like denying the existence of their families or creating fictional families for them, unless it's an AU, so it's either include them as necessary, find creative ways to write around them, or set everything in the 90s. And as much as I love 90s BSB and dynamics of their relationships in those early days, I do enjoy writing them as adults. It's easier now than it was when I was a teenager, and they were in their twenties LOL. I figure forties and fifties can't be that different from late thirties.
Okay, interesting. I think writing them became increasingly difficult for me as they got older. At first people really enjoyed reading the bromances, but then I feel like as they settled, everyone became more about romance. It's weird you don't really hear Romance as a genre anymore. It seems like it's all about 'shipping' more so than calling it a romance.
I had forgotten you wrote and ER crossover. I was going to ask as a question, do you find people are asking for crossovers more? It might just be because this is a show, but I find that so many people are just taking shows or movies that already exist and plopping the Succession people in them. Like Bridgerton, or The Bear, stuff like that. I don't think I'd ever really be successful at anything like that because unless I really knew the show, I would feel lost. I know you're a huge ER fan so I'm sure it was easy for you, but I had toyed with the idea to do a BSB Supernatural crossover back in the day, but I couldn't handle it.
I do think an Only Murders in the Building crossover might be fun, but again, not that comfortable with that show, but that might be a fun one to play around with. LOL