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Drop it like it's hot! Or... Updates from Dee. :o)

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nicksgal:
I hope you all enjoyed those ancient PBox pictures! I do have some PNecklace pictures for you, though I realized I did not draw Howie's new outfit, so oops! I started sketching it this week, but didn't finish coloring it. I will post it next week.

Brian with a shiny gold cape

AJ with a shiny gold shirt

I owe you all one Howie.

Please find updates as follows (links included in titles):

Pandora's Box on Absolute Chaos (with shiny updated chapters 46-50, including one new bit in ch. 50 "Incomplete" which is probably what I would have written more of if I wrote it now). If you have been waiting for all the chapters to be updated to reread, now is your chance, though I won't lie to you, I was planning the tiniest cursory edit now that it's all finished (mostly hunting out errant commas that I think are in the first couple of chapters).

Chapter Seven ("Melt") of Pandora's Necklace on Absolute Chaos

Pandora's Box on AO3 (now has all 50 chapters if you want to chat with me inside the story and not on this forum, though the forum is more fun!)

Enjoy! Continue to feel free to ask me anything and get answers. Some new characters joining team PBox in PNecklace! I wonder who else might be joining soon and how that'll go for our buddy Nick!  ;)

nicksgal:
I apologize, I've written another novel about my novel. This may be last one for a moment.

We left off this author talk two weeks ago at the burnout. At this point, we're somewhere in early 2007 and trucking along because I finally got to write "Wishes/Disciple" after a lot of NSYNC focused chapters. "Wishes/Disciple" was the chapter I'd dreamed of writing since introducing Nick, since he and Justin battled back in Emeradotouhou, since they got to Rubiihoppou and I figured out that Nick had a lot to say about who he was and what he wanted to do. You could just tell that I was wholly invested in this chapter. It was brimming with great character interactions, fun action, foreshadowing, and mystery. When they were one chapter, there were over 6,000 excited word vomits for it (it was only called "Disciple" back then). They're still two of my favorites through all the editing.

In addition, the updated versions of ch. 11 "To Emeradotouhou" (for the "you ask, I answer" game), ch. 12 "Disappear" (for the introspection and Nick/Brian banter), ch. 17 "Something Precious" (for the Nick/Brian banter), and ch. 27 "Knot of Love" (nerding out on rites and rituals of their world in story) are up there in my favorites of PBox after the edits. I also always liked ch. 33 "Abyss." But I still feel like all those chapters will never be on the same level of excitement and love as "Wishes/Disciple." In PNecklace, I think my favorites so far are (no spoilers for why, just chapter titles, which are intriguing clues): "Fear," "Truth," "Soul," "Den of Demons," and "Memories." You'll probably figure out why when I post them and you're able to read them, but it's fun to speculate for now.

Back when I wrote "Wishes/Disciple," I wrote in order, so I waited a very long time with all that excitement to write it! Unlike now, where I would have thought about it excitedly and then just wrote the whole thing (as tiny, persistent Nick says "write what's interesting, then fill it in later."). "Back to Safaiananpou" (PNecklace's ch. 4) and "The Crater" (PNecklace's ch. 5) were actually the first two full chapters I wrote of PNecklace for this reason, I was excited about them and they spilled out. I definitely worked backward and went back to finish  "Illusory," "Kiresaseru," and "Unbroken" afterward, but it all worked out. As I'm sure you're now wondering, part of the middle and end of "Unbroken" were the first snippets of any part of PNecklace that I wrote when I started again in September. I think because I was like "Alright, Nick, let's talk about how you feel about all these shenanigans, since you've been bugging me about it for such a long time."

On that note, back to the history of PBox. I was able to chunk through "God" and "Chaos" (renamed in the edit) in a couple months and then I was stuck. So very stuck. The writer's block was overwhelming. At the beginning of the writer's block, I sat there and thought, "How can I get to the end of this story and not be able to finish it? There's six chapters left! I even have a summary: Brian dies. Howie dies. Minako gets the box because Nick and Kevin help her and then she sends everyone back to their world where they're actually the Backstreet Boys." (Is that a spoiler? Surprise twist ending! They were always the Backstreet Boys because it's actually a story about [spoiler][redacted][/spoiler]! All in good time, friends... All in good time... I know a legitimate spoiler when I try to spoil it for you.)

The fear and disappointment of maybe not being able to finish was overwhelming. Every day was an "open word/stare at the blank page/close/repeat" excursion. I thought maybe I wrote myself into a corner and that's why I was stuck. I thought, "If I'm stuck, maybe I miswrote something somewhere..." So I went back and reread. I started editing while I reread. How can I get this to be the best while I'm stuck and help get me unstuck? I cringed a lot. The beginning was just not what the end deserved. I split "The Shapeshifting Demon" into two chapters because it was massive (5,000ish words of what's now ch. 28 "The Final Demon" and ch. 29 "Demonic Heart," I renamed them in this update) and then I split "Wishes/Disciple" into two chapters for the same reason.

And, surprise, surprise, I hated myself even more. "Now there's only four chapters left including this one and I'm still stuck?!" Did 00Carter start around this time? I feel like I was working on anything else to avoid the PBox guilt. Or my grades were freakishly good that fall, maybe I buried myself in school, I can't remember. PBox got featured in July during this writer's block, which was so wonderful and appreciated, but I still didn't write anything. I think the attention made it worse, to be honest. What if people started reading it and they hated it? Will they notice that the beginning is not as good as the end? What if the end is worse than the beginning once I write it down?

Then finally in January of 2008, I updated. Looking back, I wonder if maybe my writer's block was caused by wanting Brian to live deep down, but knowing that at that point, the plot was what it was and things were inevitable. "If I avoid writing and getting you killed, Brian, then you're safe! You can stay and make jokes until the end!" I probably would have figured this out back then if I'd edited more diligently and got to ch. 12 when he was introduced. Not sure how knowing earlier would have solved that problem though. And I think I stopped editing around ch. 10 because I wasn't yet far enough from the young naivety to fix it in the way it actually needed to be fixed, but didn't know that at the time.

It took another month to write Howie's last chapter, but that seemed exponentially better than six months. I continued editing my brief beginning chapters because by then, they didn't match the juggernaut feeling of the end and I wanted it all to be cohesive. But at the same time, finally after a lot of writer's block, the last two chapters just wanted to be excited word vomited out. So I wrote them and was just too excited to get to the end, so up they went in the same week like in the beginning. And then I took a deep breath and said, "Oh wow, it's done!" Then I put it away and took another break from my personal writing because I was tired. I'd finished an epic! Our buddy tiny,  persistent Nick was like, "Hey, remember how we--" "Shhh, no more PBox. We finished." "But my--" "Shhh... We finished." I wrote another couple of chapters of Gobosei that summer, but decided I wanted to do anything except juggernaut fantasy, never posted them, and started writing Beta Sigma Beta instead while working on the same collaborations (00Carter for sure existed by early 2008, right?).

But over the course of the next year, I slowly realized that I had nothing. Even those collaborations that were always more about the friendship than the writing seemed impossible. Every day was a "open word, stare at it for a while, close" day for each thing I was supposed to work on, just like it had been for PBox. I thought "Do I have any BSB fanfic left in me? Or worse, anything creative at all?" And then I decided I needed a break, but I knew I couldn't take a break from those collaborations . So I just stopped the open/stare/close process for my own work, but I kept trying for those collaborations, probably longer than I should have and definitely way past the point where screaming "Help, I can't!" actually allowed help. At that time, I was young and always eager to please and focused on loyalty over sense (PBox Nick has some of that projected onto him and probably a little more heavily than actual Nick focuses on it, I'm sure). It all finally got to the point where the clear solution seemed to be "panic and avoid the guilt and the nothingness, consequences be darned!" As a much more mature me a decade later, I can tell you that "panic and avoid" is never the answer, but is still a solution I struggle with actively not choosing when panicking seems inevitable. I have gotten better with it over the years, though. Ultimately, I "retired" from BSB fanfic (I'm trying to be nice to myself, but "ran away" is probably more accurate phrasing). No ragrets! (Not even one letter!)

I actually had a lot of regrets, but still nothing to write or say. I tried coming back once to see what it would feel like, but panicked and left just as quickly. Sorry again to everyone that whole thing hurt. I hope everyone here knows that our friendships really were/are important to me. And if I did not properly apologize to you in the way you would like, please tell me and I will make the proper amends. Next, I threw myself into real life and even distanced myself from the Boys for a bit. "Maybe that part of my life is past," I thought. I'd always tied a lot of my enjoyment of the Boys to my enjoyment of the fandom, so it was hard to reconcile in the beginning. Especially because, as it turned out, a lot of my enjoyment of the fandom was tied up in my enjoyment of the fanfic community within the fandom. But, then In A World Like This finally came out and I was like, "I could never forget you guys, who was I kidding! You bring me too much joy." Although I've spent the past few years more involved in enjoying the music than keeping up with their personal lives in great detail. And it was kind of a lonely island for a while without all this.

Over the years where I thought about writing or opened/stared/closed (which I did sometimes with varying degrees of success), the hobbies topic came up a lot. Things like "coffee enthusiast" and "world traveler" became defining parts of my shorthand personality, but I also always said "writing." Then later, I yelled at myself privately because I didn't write anything anymore so why would I say that? (See it's "Incomplete" gnawing again, song arcs in real life!)

I don't know where to end this, since I already talked about my catalyst for writing again and that's what would come next chronologicall y in this reflection. I guess maybe it should be a thank you note? Thank you to PBox for becoming something over the years that gave me a lot of pride, helped me become a better writer to tell you better, helped me figure out my favorite parts of writing (the characters mostly, but also some nerdy world building things), and spawning some really great characters, especially our buddy tiny, persistent Nick. Thank you to tiny, persistent Nick for being annoyingly self-absorbed (I'm kidding) and never giving up on me, then bugging me until I stopped giving up on myself. Thank you to the Boys for the decades of music, inspiration, and joy. Let's have many more decades. Thank you to Absolute Chaos and Ash for creating a website where I could share what I had to say, keeping it safe while I popped away, and providing me with some great memories and friends, who I probably missed more than the writing itself. Thank you to those friends for those great memories and the support now. And, of course, thank you to the readers for enjoying my musings. Even if you never said anything or found me long after I was gone, I appreciate that you read anything I had to say. I hope it's been just as meaningful for you.

And now we've come to the end of PBox and this reflection. I hope you all enjoyed it over the years. So I guess, onward to the next part! Hopefully I have many more things to thank PNecklace for in the end.

nicksgal:
I hope you all enjoyed the second part of my long diatribe about PBox. And that's it for now! We updated a whole novel folks! Thanks for reliving it with me. I have a few pictures for you this week.

First, I owe you one PNecklace Howie.

A picture actually related to the end of PBox: Minako and the aforementioned box.

And this last picture I wanted to leave you with was something I doodled when I was starting to get back into the story. As you can see, Nick's pants are the wrong color and Minako has a midi blouse on without buttons. Clearly I did not remember what their outfits really looked like after such a long time, but I had a vague idea and wanted to doodle them. That should have been my sign that maybe inspiration was going to stick.

Nick and Minako

If you would still like to read PBox, I will include both location links below. While all fifty chapters of PBox are complete, it is undergoing the tiniest cursory edit where I change the paragraph alignment of the "~*~" and fix a couple errant commas, but otherwise it's all there. Feedback is always appreciated. :)

Pandora's Box on Absolute Chaos

Pandora's Box on AO3

Please find updates as follows (links included in titles):

Chapter Eight ("Bewitched") of Pandora's Necklace on Absolute Chaos

Chapter One ("Illusory") of Pandora's Necklace on AO3 (If you wanted to leave feedback on the story instead of chatting here. You've been able to read this chapter here since December.)

Enjoy! Continue to feel free to ask me anything and get answers. How's everyone enjoying Nick's blast from the past? More than Nick? Less than Nick? I wonder how it will go for him! Those of you who know me and PBox probably already know the answer... By the way, this whole one chapter to update thing goes so quickly. This only took me 30-40 minutes to do all of this... crazy!

FrickingKaos:
Thanks for sharing the drawings. Nick looks kind of how I pictured him to look lol. I pictured him with the floppy blonde hair and the horns sticking out.

nicksgal:
Of course! He's basically Never Gone Nick; as are all of them, except I just wanted Howie to have long hair still... So call it creative license. Though in initial drawings, I usually went with Millennium hair because that's just kind of how I picture Nick when I think of him (Nick circa 1998-1999) even though I know what he looks like now and through the years.

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