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[RokofAges75]

Hopefully the Nick and AJ scene went well once you got back into it! Glad you were able to finish the transition scene! I keep meaning to do that with PBox and haven't because I don't remember exact dates except for a few of the chapters, lol. I think it's "I want to focus on my writing, but need a break after sloughing through this transition scene." I do stuff like that too; lately it's been editing my end of book outline. I'm impressed it only took you an hour. That's like a minute and a half per chapter. Probably easier if you do have a running record of exact dates.

That's exactly it.  It's something that feels "productive" and writing-related, but requires no thought, just repetitive clicking.  I'm glad it didn't take as long as I thought it would.  I started doing the same thing with Undead on Thursday and got halfway through it, so I might finish the rest of that later today.  Thanks to my site, I have an archive of all of my updates dating back to the summer of 2000 when I started writing update blurbs, so those have been super helpful and kinda fun to scroll back through.

That would be a whole year for both if you posted them one after the other, yeah? That does seem like a long time when they're available on your site and here just fine. Maybe there's a space for an Author's Note at the end of Curtain Call that's something to the effect of "If you enjoy my writing and Nick cancer stories, here's another one I'm known for [link for Broken]. It also has a sequel [link for BMS]." But, then again... spoilers.

I may eventually post them if I get bored enough after posting SAMS and AHTIM, but I would want to edit them first.  I found SO MANY TYPOS when I reread them last year for my retrospective blogs.

An author's note isn't a bad idea.  In some ways, I'm more okay spoiling the cancer aspect of Broken than Curtain Call because it takes so freaking long to get to it, it might be the incentive a reader needs to make it through the beginning, which reads like a bad romance.  Whereas in Curtain Call, I think putting a cancer tag on it would take away from the experience of reading it and finding out the same way the main characters do.

You're right, I see what happens when you explicitly say you never do something, lol. Meanwhile, I have never underestimated your ability to write a lot quickly for a Nick cancer story. Especially in the summer, lol. Were you still updating as soon as you finished writing when you were writing Curtain Call or had you started the hoard by then?

I hoarded with Curtain Call at first, but not as much as I do now.  I know I had written the first 5 or 6 chapters before I started posting it, but that only took me about a week.  From there, I pretty much posted chapters as I wrote them.

YAY!!!! We made it! It's supposed to rain a lot this weekend here, but so far just cloudy. I've been running the slippery slope of messing with the thermostat since the hubs is on work trip. I realized that I made a mistake when woke up sweating on Wednesday because I turned off the AC for an entire day, lol.

Happiest of three day weekends! I got tired on Wednesday, as is often the case post-update, and went to bed after doing some dishes. I've apparently been more tired than I thought this past week because I took a two hour nap Thursday afternoon/evening after writing "[stuff?]" on my dragging scene, then couldn't find the motivation to write and deep cleaned my kitchen and bathrooms instead, sweatily... as once again, I made the mistake of turning off the AC prior to my nap, lol. Now the first floor of our house (and upstairs bathrooms) are beautiful and I did manage to write about 118 words afterward. Yesterday I had some friends over and hurriedly wrote six words at 11:56pm to keep the streak alive, lol. Then I slept until about 10am this morning, so I must have really needed the rest (especially after staying up way too late on accident).

The first thing I did this morning was rearrange Thursday's writing and delete yesterday's hurriedly typed six words. At least I tried yesterday, lol. Then drank two coffees and got into the scene I'd started. I've gotten about 1400 words today, so it's going much better than the past couple of days. I think I just needed the school year to end and then do something different to recharge. Back in action and ready to finish this novel! I'm about 600 words from finishing this chapter and I think I'll be able to jump right into the next chapter afterward. I'll be a sadist once I post them with a million cliffhangers, but the next chunk of chapters really all happen one after the other, so it feels like it could be a really productive weekend if I get into the right groove with the end of this chapter.

How's everyone else doing after our quiet couple of days?

I went from having the AC on to turning the furnace back on for a couple days to nothing.  It was like 50 degrees and rainy yesterday for the last day of school... brr!  Today is sunny and 60s though.

Yay for a clean house and fun with your friends!  I was a little worried about you when I hadn't seen you on for a couple days, but I'm glad it was for good reasons.  Sometimes you definitely need to take a break and do something different!

I cleaned up my upstairs writing room that I haven't used in months because there have been holiday decorations and boxes all over the place.  Got all that stuff packed back up and put away so I can actually use that room this summer.  Next up is organizing my bedroom closet, but that can wait for another day.

I wrote a little bit this morning and am close to finishing my current Nick chapter.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish that tonight.  It should be the last tour chapter for a while.

I'm glad your writing is going better today!  Way to push through the problem spot!  I hope you do have a productive weekend.

[nicksgal]

Yep, I agree with all of this.  Part of the problem is that I've locked myself into this format of alternating POVs every chapter, so while I have a lot of Kevin content to write during this period, I'm stuck trying to come up with enough Nick content to give him a chapter for every one of Kevin's.  That is the downside to following a strict format like this; there's not as much flexibility as I would have if I had opted to just write in one character's POV or third person.  

LOL I have actually written a couple of scenes similar to that which took place during the Millennium Tour, but alas, I don't have anything dramatic planned for this part of the tour.  There was a time when I probably would have tried to come up with something just to make it more dramatic and interesting, but I guess I have grown up just a little bit.

I think it's a trade off. Didn't you feel like you had more for Nick in the beginning? And now it's the opposite. Maybe once you get through this part, it will feel more even. I usually limit my 1st person to one POV for that reason, but I think if you can effectively get intimately into two characters heads to tell the story right, then it's more interesting. You're almost through this portion!

I believe that, because what a perfect dramatic event for the Millennium Tour! I'm glad you're not deviating from your plan to give Nick a traumatic injury that seems more interesting, but ultimately doesn't fit.

Good for you!  It's so hard to cut a scene, but it sounds like you made the right choice.  This is another case where it would be better if you were making a movie - then you could just include a few shots of them trudging across the desert set to some dramatic music and move on to the next scene.

It is hard! But I think that sometimes it's better if we cut the things that feel unnecessary either after the fact or preemptively like I did in the beginning. Sometimes I feel like every little thing is important if I felt bothered to write it down, but it just isn't and it's a good skill to hone and recognize to tighten up the narrative.

Yes, that cinematic shorthand would help a lot in this case, lol!

 

LOL!  That could be the equivalent of Bella Swan's dramatic "October.  November.  December" across three pages.

One chapter just has the "f" word in all caps followed by the month, lmao!

I agree, those short transitions are the best!

There are a couple of things that are important to Nick's character and plot development that I'm trying to show on this tour, so I'm trying to just focus my scenes on those and summarize the rest.  And yeah, they wouldn't work well as flashbacks, although that can be a good technique for some scenes/stories.

That makes it hard, especially when you want to give him equal time, but those things don't feel like they take up equal time. In a movie, you could just frame it as a narrative "brown out." There's probably a way to do that in prose that involves less transitions, but it would probably feel really disorienting as a reader. Unless that feeling was the goal, but I'm guessing it's not.

[nicksgal]

That's exactly it.  It's something that feels "productive" and writing-related, but requires no thought, just repetitive clicking.  I'm glad it didn't take as long as I thought it would.  I started doing the same thing with Undead on Thursday and got halfway through it, so I might finish the rest of that later today.  Thanks to my site, I have an archive of all of my updates dating back to the summer of 2000 when I started writing update blurbs, so those have been super helpful and kinda fun to scroll back through.

You're almost ready to start posting your next backdated novel if you're getting through both of these! It's good sometimes to have something that feels productive, but requires less brain power. It must be nice to have those update blurbs with dates. I think I have four from the original posting of PBox where I know one chapter was specifically updated on 06/06/06 because I mentioned it vaguely and others that cement themselves as "this month," but who knows when in that month until the update thread board got added here. I don't have my old laptop either to have any vague idea of when I wrote those chapters either; not even sure 2005-2008 word would tell me that.

I may eventually post them if I get bored enough after posting SAMS and AHTIM, but I would want to edit them first.  I found SO MANY TYPOS when I reread them last year for my retrospective blogs.

An author's note isn't a bad idea.  In some ways, I'm more okay spoiling the cancer aspect of Broken than Curtain Call because it takes so freaking long to get to it, it might be the incentive a reader needs to make it through the beginning, which reads like a bad romance.  Whereas in Curtain Call, I think putting a cancer tag on it would take away from the experience of reading it and finding out the same way the main characters do.

I wonder why we're more prone to typos in our old works. Were we typing too fast and not looking back over it enough? Was grammar and spell check worse at catching mistakes back then? And I agree, on a repost, typos are sure something to fix.

It feels weird to call the cancer in Broken a spoiler, because it just feels like so much a part of our community and fandom narrative, but it's probably not everywhere. Especially since you said you have newer fans (or fan) reading along with MBK. It feels like it would be nice to be able to go back, read, and connect with something with the same feelings from the first time.

If you came up with the Broken idea now, what do you think you would change about the beginning? Hypothetically .

I hoarded with Curtain Call at first, but not as much as I do now.  I know I had written the first 5 or 6 chapters before I started posting it, but that only took me about a week.  From there, I pretty much posted chapters as I wrote them.

Five or six is still a lot to hold on to for the way we used to write! I specifically remember saying I was going to keep the last chapter of PBox for a while and then decided I couldn't do it anymore. I think I got four days, lol.

I went from having the AC on to turning the furnace back on for a couple days to nothing.  It was like 50 degrees and rainy yesterday for the last day of school... brr!  Today is sunny and 60s though.

Yay for a clean house and fun with your friends!  I was a little worried about you when I hadn't seen you on for a couple days, but I'm glad it was for good reasons.  Sometimes you definitely need to take a break and do something different!

I cleaned up my upstairs writing room that I haven't used in months because there have been holiday decorations and boxes all over the place.  Got all that stuff packed back up and put away so I can actually use that room this summer.  Next up is organizing my bedroom closet, but that can wait for another day.

I wrote a little bit this morning and am close to finishing my current Nick chapter.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish that tonight.  It should be the last tour chapter for a while.

I'm glad your writing is going better today!  Way to push through the problem spot!  I hope you do have a productive weekend.

This weather, I swear, lol! Glad it's sunny again. Although, rainy days are great for writing.

I did see your post from yesterday this morning and I told myself that no matter how writing went today, I should check in. And continue our conversation on transitions, because I still had thoughts, I just couldn't form them in brain, lol.

Glad you prepped your writing room! Sometimes I think clutter can affect how my brain works, so every now and again, I have moments of "I just need to take care of this thing no matter how long it takes." I have a little more of that I need to do this weekend, but I woke up (eventually) and felt like I had a solid point to start writing from. I have a bunch of things in our closet that I've been meaning to donate, but haven't. I need to do that this summer at some point.

Glad you're almost done! Is the exciting part next then if you've reached the end of the tour?

I should be productive again, but I also feel like I should take a shower, even though it's late, haha. I got distracted this afternoon by Nick's instagram live and his reassurance that he's investing his own money killed me. Like, sure, Nick, you invest $1,000 but if I invested $1,000 back when I was living paycheck to paycheck, it would not have gone well for me. Hypothetical $1,000 here, he did not name a specific amount. I swear, I end up on his instagram lives when I feel ho-hum about the content and his good ones are when I'm not available. Shower and then back to writing! That's my plan.

[RokofAges75]

Right?! It felt so nice to write my little holiday story and then think, "Oh, I wrote this and now it's done forever. Hooray!" lol Meanwhile in novel land six months later... still trucking along, lol.

I have some guesses just based on the timing, even though I'm not totally sure. It probably started with the omnipresent feeling of both Nick and AJ on tv weekly (at the time) and my brain probably thought "This year is complicated. Remember how we used to write when things were complicated? Here's an old friend that might resonate with you in this time of 90's nostalgia as you try to process things." *enter PBox Nick* "HEL~LO! I've returned to bother-- *ahem* inspire you until you do something about it!" lol

I've definitely spent most of my free time in the past decade out doing things, like volunteering for various organizations, so it probably felt (though I never really thought about it much) that there just wasn't time to write. That and the last two times I had any sort of inspiration were both around the time I was back in school for my licensure program, so it just felt busier doing all those things. This time? There was busy, but also a lot of not busy since many things were virtual or closed.

I also think it helped that I decided to reread PBox before I started writing and it had enough seeds for the rest of the complete story to get invested in and remember where I was headed. And again, that PBox Nick is a loud and picky spotlight hog, lol. I always did really love the characters in PBox; it always felt like they were what breathed life into the story, rather than the idea itself. And it felt like reconnecting with an old friend after a long time.

That's a lesson I've taken from all of this. I've always thought characters were a strength in my writing, but I've definitely thought more about just how important a compelling and breathing character is to the story. Coupled with an idea with investment and I think it was easy enough to pick PBox&Co back up. And then I look at my two more "recent" old ideas, besides PBox and think... Okay, Gobosei, I always found to be an idea with investment, it's one I always said I go back to (even back then), but as it stands (and probably the reason PBox stayed pushy), the characters were less compelling and didn't breathe quite the same way. Beta Sigma Beta is the opposite; I no longer feel invested in the idea, but think back on the characters being more compelling. One of those things feels easier to tweak in a rewrite, mainly because the Boys had compelling moments in Gobosei, but now that I've written over half of grimdark and epic PBox, it feels as though the original plan for Gobosei feels too much like PBox and what was compelling about it when I looked back over it briefly were actually the more light-hearted aspects. And it still feels like I can adjust the narrative to give more of those things the focus.

All that makes sense.  Sounds like it was the perfect blend of time plus inspiration with a bit of nostalgia thrown in.  All the elements you need to go back to writing fanfic!

That's interesting that Gobosei and Beta Sigma Beta feel like opposites when it comes to compelling characters vs. a compelling storyline.  I wish there was a way you could marry the two ideas by using Beta's characters with ideas from Gobosei, but they may be too different from each other.  They were also fully enough formed ideas for you to start posting them.  I think combining ideas works better when you have ideas that may not be compelling enough on their own that could work with other ideas.  But hopefully you can revise Gobosei to give it a different feel from PBox while keeping the things you find compelling about it.  (Although, if it helps, no one has ever complained about me writing stories with similar plots.)

Didn't you say that where you left off Guilty Roads was a part where it felt like Nick wouldn't do whatever it is he was doing? If Guilty Roads still seems compelling enough, maybe that's the thing you should look at. Either going back and adjusting Nick from the beginning to be someone who would get to that point and do what you wanted him to do or letting him pick up and do what he wanted to do and figure out how to adjust the timeline of the plan or change the plan completely to fit with that. I also think that going back and changing the beginning wouldn't be the worst thing after this much time if that's what you felt like needed to be done for the story to work. I'll be honest, I will probably change some things for what's posted of Gobosei when the time comes and feel zero guilt about it since it only got a little ways in (whereas despite feeling that the rewrite of PBox was necessary, I was more meticulous about what I allowed myself to change). I don't know if any of this is the road map to a "magic formula," but maybe it's a start for us both to pick back up our long hiatus projects.

Yeah.  Here's [one of] the problem(s) with Guilty Roads.  It was a manufactured idea based on The Lion King.  I'm basically stuck in the part of the story where Simba (Nick) is chilling with Timon and Pumbaa (the Amish), while everyone else thinks he's dead.  I want to keep Nick in Amish country because that was supposed to be a major part of the story, but I've always struggled to come up with reasons for him to stay instead of going back to the rest of the Boys.  Turns out I also dislike writing about the Amish, so I should just have him go back... but then my plan for the rest of the story falls apart, and the introduction of the Amish characters seems pointless.  It's definitely a situation where I, as a plot-driven writer, have come up with a plot that doesn't make the most sense with my main character, and I'm trying to force him to do what I want, and he's fighting me on it.  Maybe I should let him do what makes sense and see where else he can take the story, but I don't even want to open that can of worms right now and risk derailing MBK.  So we'll see... maybe I'll explore that more when I'm between novels again.  I should probably just have him go back and promptly get diagnosed with cancer because then I would have no problem finishing the story LOL.

If I remember correctly, it was mushroom "coffee." Blech! Another great use of the barfing emoji we don't have, lmao! I didn't used to be a black coffee drinker, but it's definitely grown on me in the past year. I do enjoy a latte every now and again still though, so you drink your beige coffee with pride.

Team Pamplemousse! (LaCroix) But I do enjoy their lemon and lime from time to time as well. I think it's about finding flavors you enjoy in their natural state. If you're not a huge grapefruit fan, pamplemousse might not be your jam. I like LaCroix better than the other brands, but in my first ventures into bubbly water there was a more colorful brand that I drank first, I think it was "Sparkling Ice"? It eventually felt too sugary and it was an easy transition to LaCroix. LaCorix is usually on sale though and enough other people like it that if it's not your thing, you can share it. I think Aha has caffeinated flavors? And Hi-Ball sounds familiar?

Ew!  I hate mushrooms, so that sounds disgusting.  Not sure why mushrooms are better for you than coffee beans.  They're both natural!  And to my knowledge, mushrooms don't contain caffeine, which is the whole point of coffee.

Thanks for the recommendation s!  I don't think I've tried the LaCroix brand, so I will have to give that a try.

[RokofAges75]

I think it's a trade off. Didn't you feel like you had more for Nick in the beginning? And now it's the opposite. Maybe once you get through this part, it will feel more even. I usually limit my 1st person to one POV for that reason, but I think if you can effectively get intimately into two characters heads to tell the story right, then it's more interesting. You're almost through this portion!

I believe that, because what a perfect dramatic event for the Millennium Tour! I'm glad you're not deviating from your plan to give Nick a traumatic injury that seems more interesting, but ultimately doesn't fit.

Yep.  It should even out when I get past this section and get both main characters together again.

LOL The other boys would kill me if I gave Nick a TBI on top of what Kevin's been dealing with.  Nick is supposed to be the uninjured one in this story!

It is hard! But I think that sometimes it's better if we cut the things that feel unnecessary either after the fact or preemptively like I did in the beginning. Sometimes I feel like every little thing is important if I felt bothered to write it down, but it just isn't and it's a good skill to hone and recognize to tighten up the narrative.

Absolutely!  I have gotten better at that, as well as just not writing pointless stuff in the first place, but it's still hard to cut whole scenes you spent time writing.

One chapter just has the "f" word in all caps followed by the month, lmao!

That makes it hard, especially when you want to give him equal time, but those things don't feel like they take up equal time. In a movie, you could just frame it as a narrative "brown out." There's probably a way to do that in prose that involves less transitions, but it would probably feel really disorienting as a reader. Unless that feeling was the goal, but I'm guessing it's not.

LOL!  Yes!

Yeah, I'm not trying to disorient the readers.  If anything, I'm trying to reorient them to the world as it was in early 2008.  I made myself laugh in my last chapter when I was writing some chitchat between AJ and Kevin to lead into the more serious conversation they needed to have, and AJ was talking about missing new episodes of "Big Brother" while he was out of the country.

“I wish there was a way you could watch Big Brother online or something,” I said.

“No shit.  That would be amazing!  Maybe someday...”  AJ sighed.

2008 does not seem like that long ago, but it was before streaming TV shows was a thing, and smartphones were brand new.  The first iPhone came out in the summer of 2007.  So I'm having to factcheck myself a lot on anything related to technology.

[nicksgal]

All that makes sense.  Sounds like it was the perfect blend of time plus inspiration with a bit of nostalgia thrown in.  All the elements you need to go back to writing fanfic!

That's interesting that Gobosei and Beta Sigma Beta feel like opposites when it comes to compelling characters vs. a compelling storyline.  I wish there was a way you could marry the two ideas by using Beta's characters with ideas from Gobosei, but they may be too different from each other.  They were also fully enough formed ideas for you to start posting them.  I think combining ideas works better when you have ideas that may not be compelling enough on their own that could work with other ideas.  But hopefully you can revise Gobosei to give it a different feel from PBox while keeping the things you find compelling about it.  (Although, if it helps, no one has ever complained about me writing stories with similar plots.)

Definitely nostalgia was a requirement to pick up fanfic again for sure! I think it also helped that I had at least attempted NaNo in 2019 so I just didn't go from writing nothing to suddenly thinking I could write 50,000 words in a month, lol.

Wouldn't that be nice? But yeah, they're probably just too different. You're right, it's probably easier to combine ideas when they're less formed like how you put your "I want to do an ARok something" going into your "disaster survival" to get Bethlehem. Although in a rewrite, maybe it's worth it to try writing in first person for a hot minute and see if I can find what makes Gobosei Nick breathe like PBox Nick breathe. Then again, I did start writing Beta Sigma Beta after PBox and Gobosei before, so maybe going into a rewrite of Gobosei without PBox's strict editing rules would just solve the problem on its own having gotten better at compelling characters since starting Gobosei. LOL! It may turn out to still need to be grimdark too. I'll see when I actually look at it to get back into it.

Yeah.  Here's [one of] the problem(s) with Guilty Roads.  It was a manufactured idea based on The Lion King.  I'm basically stuck in the part of the story where Simba (Nick) is chilling with Timon and Pumbaa (the Amish), while everyone else thinks he's dead.  I want to keep Nick in Amish country because that was supposed to be a major part of the story, but I've always struggled to come up with reasons for him to stay instead of going back to the rest of the Boys.  Turns out I also dislike writing about the Amish, so I should just have him go back... but then my plan for the rest of the story falls apart, and the introduction of the Amish characters seems pointless.  It's definitely a situation where I, as a plot-driven writer, have come up with a plot that doesn't make the most sense with my main character, and I'm trying to force him to do what I want, and he's fighting me on it.  Maybe I should let him do what makes sense and see where else he can take the story, but I don't even want to open that can of worms right now and risk derailing MBK.  So we'll see... maybe I'll explore that more when I'm between novels again.  I should probably just have him go back and promptly get diagnosed with cancer because then I would have no problem finishing the story LOL.

Hmmm... Here's my first thought, when and if the time feels right to go back into it, have you thought about rereading Hamlet? The Lion King is almost Hamlet with lions, so it might give you some new ideas. There's also the thought about whether he could do something instead of hanging out with the Amish. Accidentally get sucked into a cult? Take up hippie lifestyle? All three? Something totally different that seems more like a Nick thing to get distracted by? Playing World of Warcraft for six months? lol Unless it's the Amish specifically that need to be in the plot for a reason other than that they're already there. I guess my question is what would drive Nick (who has apparently taken up coding now as well) who loves technology into an environment defined by it's lack of technology (among other things). I'm guessing it's not a robot uprising that murdered his loved ones, but I'm sure there's something more realistic that would do that, I'm just not really sure what it is.

My other thought would be... well is it that bad if he does decide to go back? I know Simba is gone for a long time in the Lion King, but does Nick need to be? But, yeah, you're on a roll, definitely think about these things later! Get any of this that seems worth thinking about into your outline and then ignore it.

LMAO! "No! The technology that I love has once again diagnosed me with cancer! I should have stayed with the Amish! Why does this keep happening to me?!"

Ew!  I hate mushrooms, so that sounds disgusting.  Not sure why mushrooms are better for you than coffee beans.  They're both natural!  And to my knowledge, mushrooms don't contain caffeine, which is the whole point of coffee.

Thanks for the recommendation s!  I don't think I've tried the LaCroix brand, so I will have to give that a try.

I love mushrooms, but they don't make sense as a beverage! Caffeine, being warm, being delicious, and smelling great. I don't know if mushrooms contain caffeine either, but it was not very good.

Any time! Here to chat writing, life, and bubbly water, lol.

[RokofAges75]

You're almost ready to start posting your next backdated novel if you're getting through both of these! It's good sometimes to have something that feels productive, but requires less brain power. It must be nice to have those update blurbs with dates. I think I have four from the original posting of PBox where I know one chapter was specifically updated on 06/06/06 because I mentioned it vaguely and others that cement themselves as "this month," but who knows when in that month until the update thread board got added here. I don't have my old laptop either to have any vague idea of when I wrote those chapters either; not even sure 2005-2008 word would tell me that.

Yep!  I probably will start posting SAMS soon.  I do like having little projects that take time but not a lot of mental or physical effort.  That's why I started posting my stuff on AO3 last year in the first place - it gave me something to do while I had to be on the computer anyway monitoring my Google Classroom while school was shut down.  I couldn't focus enough to write during the "school day," but I could copy and paste chapters.

I love that you can go back into the version history on Google Docs to find out exactly what you wrote when.  Word didn't do that, and even the dates for when my files were supposedly created are wrong from me moving them from computer to computer over the years or recreating them after losing everything in hard drive crashes.  I don't even have Word anymore since getting my new computer for Christmas.  I downloaded Open Office so I can open the .doc files I have saved on my computer if I need to, but I have moved to doing everything on Google.

I wonder why we're more prone to typos in our old works. Were we typing too fast and not looking back over it enough? Was grammar and spell check worse at catching mistakes back then? And I agree, on a repost, typos are sure something to fix.

In my case, I still make plenty of typos, but I'm more likely to catch them because I hang on to chapters longer and read them more times before posting than I used to.  I posted Broken and BMS chapters as I finished them, sometimes with only one quick read-through right after finishing, so I missed a lot.  I also never had the grammar check on Word turned on because it was usually wrong, and the blue squiggles annoyed me, but that may have helped me catch missing words and stuff like that.  It's been helpful since I turned it back on on Docs, except I've noticed it will miss things and then catch them weeks later in old chapters I've already posted, and then I have to go fix them three more times.

It feels weird to call the cancer in Broken a spoiler, because it just feels like so much a part of our community and fandom narrative, but it's probably not everywhere. Especially since you said you have newer fans (or fan) reading along with MBK. It feels like it would be nice to be able to go back, read, and connect with something with the same feelings from the first time.

If you came up with the Broken idea now, what do you think you would change about the beginning? Hypothetically .

I know, but it's so old at this point, I bet most of the writers on AO3 haven't read it.  It also doesn't have any anal sex in it, so I'm not sure they'd want to read it anyway LOL.

I would ditch the Leah the Gold-digging Stripper storyline from the beginning of Broken and get to the point within the first 5-10 chapters instead of taking 18 to get there.  I originally wanted to disguise it as a Nick romance, thinking I would attract more readers that way, but Leah was completely unlikable as Nick's early romantic interest, so that didn't really work.  I actually got more readers through word of mouth once the cancer storyline came into play.  I should know better because, as a reader, I wouldn't have stuck with Broken unless I knew what it was really about.  The beginning sucks, but it gets better as it goes along.

Five or six is still a lot to hold on to for the way we used to write! I specifically remember saying I was going to keep the last chapter of PBox for a while and then decided I couldn't do it anymore. I think I got four days, lol.

It is!  I made myself wait because I had literally just started posting Guilty Roads like three weeks before I got the idea for Curtain Call and didn't want to post a new novel unless I knew it was going well.  The end of Chapter 5 is where you find out Nick is sick (see, I learned from Broken LOL), so I told myself if I got that far and felt it was going well, I would start posting it.

I think it's a lot harder to hold on to last chapters.  I waited at least a week after finishing to post the end of BMS so I could put it up on Nick's birthday, which was when I had posted the beginning of Broken five years earlier, and it was hard to sit on those chapters too.  The only reason I hang on to chapters once a story is finished now is to give myself more time to get started on a new story so I can keep up with weekly updates as long as possible.

I did see your post from yesterday this morning and I told myself that no matter how writing went today, I should check in. And continue our conversation on transitions, because I still had thoughts, I just couldn't form them in brain, lol.

Glad you prepped your writing room! Sometimes I think clutter can affect how my brain works, so every now and again, I have moments of "I just need to take care of this thing no matter how long it takes." I have a little more of that I need to do this weekend, but I woke up (eventually) and felt like I had a solid point to start writing from. I have a bunch of things in our closet that I've been meaning to donate, but haven't. I need to do that this summer at some point.

I'm glad you checked in!  I was starting to worry something had happened just because you've been on every day, but I looked at your Nano goal and saw that you had added to it yesterday, so I knew you were still around.

That's so true about the clutter.  I'm the same way.  I could have never written in that room with stuff lying around everywhere.  I've written in every room downstairs instead LOL.  I did get a new desk, chair, and computer last year for my downstairs office/den, so it has been more pleasant to write there than it used to be, but my upstairs room feels more like an escape.

Glad you're almost done! Is the exciting part next then if you've reached the end of the tour?

I should be productive again, but I also feel like I should take a shower, even though it's late, haha. I got distracted this afternoon by Nick's instagram live and his reassurance that he's investing his own money killed me. Like, sure, Nick, you invest $1,000 but if I invested $1,000 back when I was living paycheck to paycheck, it would not have gone well for me. Hypothetical $1,000 here, he did not name a specific amount. I swear, I end up on his instagram lives when I feel ho-hum about the content and his good ones are when I'm not available. Shower and then back to writing! That's my plan.

Yeah, I'm almost to the heart of the story, or at least the heart of my original idea.  I'm looking forward to that section.

I did not watch Nick's live.  I don't care to watch him talk about cryptocurrency .  Did he talk about anything else worth watching?  I haven't watched his Twitch yet either.  Sometimes I enjoy just watching him mess around, but other times I get bored watching him play video games or his own songs and feel like there are better things I could be doing.  (You know, like discussing fanfic on this forum, obviously LOL.)  I wish he would sing his songs live when he's streaming instead of just playing the album versions.  We can listen to those any old time, Nick.

Go shower!  And then go write!  I need to get back to writing and finish this chapter at some point too.

[nicksgal]

Yep.  It should even out when I get past this section and get both main characters together again.

LOL The other boys would kill me if I gave Nick a TBI on top of what Kevin's been dealing with.  Nick is supposed to be the uninjured one in this story!

That'll feel exciting! Soon!

They'd be like "Gosh darnit, Nick! can't you let someone else be the dramatic injured one just one time?!" I'm sure Nick wants that too. Don't listen to my ideas on how to spice up concert scenes, lol!

Absolutely!  I have gotten better at that, as well as just not writing pointless stuff in the first place, but it's still hard to cut whole scenes you spent time writing.

I have also enjoyed getting to a point where I feel like I haven't spent too much time on something that felt pointless later. Almost. I'll be honest, getting to the end of this story, I look back at the beginning and feel like chapter four did not need to be posted, but I still needed to write it for me. It's a very confusing feeling, haha.

LOL!  Yes!

Yeah, I'm not trying to disorient the readers.  If anything, I'm trying to reorient them to the world as it was in early 2008.  I made myself laugh in my last chapter when I was writing some chitchat between AJ and Kevin to lead into the more serious conversation they needed to have, and AJ was talking about missing new episodes of "Big Brother" while he was out of the country.

2008 does not seem like that long ago, but it was before streaming TV shows was a thing, and smartphones were brand new.  The first iPhone came out in the summer of 2007.  So I'm having to factcheck myself a lot on anything related to technology.

Always here to make good jokes. 

OMG, that's hilarious! You're right, it's crazy to think that being worried about missing new episodes of a show was an issue! Technology has really flown in the past decade. 1999 doesn't even feel that long ago to me either, but it'll be thirty years ago before we know it. It's crazy we lived through it and still have to fact check things like that.

[RokofAges75]

Definitely nostalgia was a requirement to pick up fanfic again for sure! I think it also helped that I had at least attempted NaNo in 2019 so I just didn't go from writing nothing to suddenly thinking I could write 50,000 words in a month, lol.

Wouldn't that be nice? But yeah, they're probably just too different. You're right, it's probably easier to combine ideas when they're less formed like how you put your "I want to do an ARok something" going into your "disaster survival" to get Bethlehem. Although in a rewrite, maybe it's worth it to try writing in first person for a hot minute and see if I can find what makes Gobosei Nick breathe like PBox Nick breathe. Then again, I did start writing Beta Sigma Beta after PBox and Gobosei before, so maybe going into a rewrite of Gobosei without PBox's strict editing rules would just solve the problem on its own having gotten better at compelling characters since starting Gobosei. LOL! It may turn out to still need to be grimdark too. I'll see when I actually look at it to get back into it.

It wouldn't hurt to try rewriting Gobosei either in first person POV or in third person and see what happens.  Maybe that will help you get back into it and beef up your characters.  It's definitely okay if it still needs to be grimdark.  We here on Team Dark like darkness!

Hmmm... Here's my first thought, when and if the time feels right to go back into it, have you thought about rereading Hamlet? The Lion King is almost Hamlet with lions, so it might give you some new ideas. There's also the thought about whether he could do something instead of hanging out with the Amish. Accidentally get sucked into a cult? Take up hippie lifestyle? All three? Something totally different that seems more like a Nick thing to get distracted by? Playing World of Warcraft for six months? lol Unless it's the Amish specifically that need to be in the plot for a reason other than that they're already there. I guess my question is what would drive Nick (who has apparently taken up coding now as well) who loves technology into an environment defined by it's lack of technology (among other things). I'm guessing it's not a robot uprising that murdered his loved ones, but I'm sure there's something more realistic that would do that, I'm just not really sure what it is.

My other thought would be... well is it that bad if he does decide to go back? I know Simba is gone for a long time in the Lion King, but does Nick need to be? But, yeah, you're on a roll, definitely think about these things later! Get any of this that seems worth thinking about into your outline and then ignore it.

LMAO! "No! The technology that I love has once again diagnosed me with cancer! I should have stayed with the Amish! Why does this keep happening to me?!"

I've had that thought too.  I've never actually read Hamlet (I only read Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth in high school), but I know Lion King is based on it.  It may help to see how a human character acts, although the circumstances are different.  How Nick came to be living among the Amish is fairly cliched and convoluted as well, but there is a suspense storyline that got him in that situation, and I'm using fear to keep him there.  I don't think it would make sense for him to do something totally different, so it's either stay or go back... but if he goes back now, the story is basically over.  And while that would solve my problem of leaving it unfinished, I don't think I would feel satisfied.  I have hurried stories along to finish them because I was tired of writing them before, and it shows.  I would almost rather leave it unfinished and be happy with what I have written (which I am for the most part) than slap a half-assed, rushed ending on it and call it done.  Technically I already did slap a half-assed, rushed ending on it for my April Fool's joke one year, but that doesn't count LOL.  Although maybe it does count because it's still posted as Chapter 17 of the story on my actual site, so anyone who goes to read it now will read that chapter.  It has an author's note at the end saying it's not a real ending, but may be the only ending I ever write for it.  Nick doesn't get cancer, but he does die in that version LOL.

That'll feel exciting! Soon!

They'd be like "Gosh darnit, Nick! can't you let someone else be the dramatic injured one just one time?!" I'm sure Nick wants that too. Don't listen to my ideas on how to spice up concert scenes, lol!

LOL Poor Nick.  It's just a good thing this is the Unbreakable tour and not the Millennium tour, or I may be tempted.  But I just finished my last concert scene (for now) with no injuries, so Nick is safe for now.

I have also enjoyed getting to a point where I feel like I haven't spent too much time on something that felt pointless later. Almost. I'll be honest, getting to the end of this story, I look back at the beginning and feel like chapter four did not need to be posted, but I still needed to write it for me. It's a very confusing feeling, haha.

Eh, you're allowed to be self-indulgent.  That's the fun of fanfic - you can write whatever you want!

OMG, that's hilarious! You're right, it's crazy to think that being worried about missing new episodes of a show was an issue! Technology has really flown in the past decade. 1999 doesn't even feel that long ago to me either, but it'll be thirty years ago before we know it. It's crazy we lived through it and still have to fact check things like that.

It's almost easier to write stories set in 1999 because I feel like I remember what we did and didn't have back then better, as weird as that sounds.  Both my long-unfinished stories (Guilty Roads and my Harry Potter crossover) are set in 1999, and I don't think I had to do as much fact-checking for technology things for those.  (The fact that neither the Amish, nor the Wizarding world really uses technology helps LOL.)  But the mid-2000s are more of a blur.

[nicksgal]

Yep!  I probably will start posting SAMS soon.  I do like having little projects that take time but not a lot of mental or physical effort.  That's why I started posting my stuff on AO3 last year in the first place - it gave me something to do while I had to be on the computer anyway monitoring my Google Classroom while school was shut down.  I couldn't focus enough to write during the "school day," but I could copy and paste chapters.

I love that you can go back into the version history on Google Docs to find out exactly what you wrote when.  Word didn't do that, and even the dates for when my files were supposedly created are wrong from me moving them from computer to computer over the years or recreating them after losing everything in hard drive crashes.  I don't even have Word anymore since getting my new computer for Christmas.  I downloaded Open Office so I can open the .doc files I have saved on my computer if I need to, but I have moved to doing everything on Google.

Same! Backdating PBox will probably be my next one as nothing else is complete enough to cross post for fun, or it is, but it's so old that I just can't bring myself to do it, lol. It's easy enough to copy and paste when you're multi-tasking. Actually writing would make you less available for your students... or your boss.

Same! The version history has saved me. Equally great is that you can name the versions in case you want to track specific things too. It helps me quickly find when I wrote specific chapters. Yeah same. The oldest version of PBox I have definitely says it's from 2012 or something like that. Clearly not. Open office is a savior for that. I'm glad it exists.

In my case, I still make plenty of typos, but I'm more likely to catch them because I hang on to chapters longer and read them more times before posting than I used to.  I posted Broken and BMS chapters as I finished them, sometimes with only one quick read-through right after finishing, so I missed a lot.  I also never had the grammar check on Word turned on because it was usually wrong, and the blue squiggles annoyed me, but that may have helped me catch missing words and stuff like that.  It's been helpful since I turned it back on on Docs, except I've noticed it will miss things and then catch them weeks later in old chapters I've already posted, and then I have to go fix them three more times.

You're probably right. I think I'm the same. I know I have an upcoming chapter in it with a couple typos, but just haven't bothered to fix them yet since I'm so close to editing it anyway. I just leave it turned on because of that, though I've noticed with longer documents, it does sometimes take it longer to catch them. Word was hit or miss on how well it caught grammar mistakes. That's the one thing that's been nice about being on a different schedule here and on AO3, I'll usually catch a mistake before posting the next chapter there and only have to go back and edit it here. Oh well, seven more weeks to enjoy that! lol

I know, but it's so old at this point, I bet most of the writers on AO3 haven't read it.  It also doesn't have any anal sex in it, so I'm not sure they'd want to read it anyway LOL.

I would ditch the Leah the Gold-digging Stripper storyline from the beginning of Broken and get to the point within the first 5-10 chapters instead of taking 18 to get there.  I originally wanted to disguise it as a Nick romance, thinking I would attract more readers that way, but Leah was completely unlikable as Nick's early romantic interest, so that didn't really work.  I actually got more readers through word of mouth once the cancer storyline came into play.  I should know better because, as a reader, I wouldn't have stuck with Broken unless I knew what it was really about.  The beginning sucks, but it gets better as it goes along.

You're probably right on the age, but stop selling yourself short. Choppage is just as interesting as anal sex, lol.

See, I see you calling her Leah, but I'm pretty sure you mean Willaford, lol. While accurate, I feel like none of us read a Backstreet Boy romance to see them with an unlikable love interest. I think that's a good thing to want to change, especially since the cancer was the important part and the romance was not... yet.

It is!  I made myself wait because I had literally just started posting Guilty Roads like three weeks before I got the idea for Curtain Call and didn't want to post a new novel unless I knew it was going well.  The end of Chapter 5 is where you find out Nick is sick (see, I learned from Broken LOL), so I told myself if I got that far and felt it was going well, I would start posting it.

I think it's a lot harder to hold on to last chapters.  I waited at least a week after finishing to post the end of BMS so I could put it up on Nick's birthday, which was when I had posted the beginning of Broken five years earlier, and it was hard to sit on those chapters too.  The only reason I hang on to chapters once a story is finished now is to give myself more time to get started on a new story so I can keep up with weekly updates as long as possible.

That makes sense why you would hoard then if you were trying to work on Guilty Roads. No fake love interest and getting to the point, good. That's a clear testament to you learning and growing as an author. In the beginning, did it feel like you started it too close to finishing BMS?

Aw, what a cute full-circle thing. I always wanted to finish PBox in fall too, since that's when I had started writing it originally, I think. So I guess, how fitting that I hit my stride for PNecklace in November as well. Think I can finish the third one by November? lol

If you get started on a new story quicker, do you stop hanging on to them or do you keep your weekly update schedule through the end of the novel?

I'm glad you checked in!  I was starting to worry something had happened just because you've been on every day, but I looked at your Nano goal and saw that you had added to it yesterday, so I knew you were still around.

I appreciate that! Sorry for worrying you and missing our weekly "we want to be involved in our writing, but not in the actual writing it part" chat on Thursdays. I'm still here and still writing! Although, now that it's summer for you, does that tend to happen as much where you get burnt out by the end of the week?

That's so true about the clutter.  I'm the same way.  I could have never written in that room with stuff lying around everywhere.  I've written in every room downstairs instead LOL.  I did get a new desk, chair, and computer last year for my downstairs office/den, so it has been more pleasant to write there than it used to be, but my upstairs room feels more like an escape.

Maybe that's my "blah" feeling up here in the office... Hubs would be happy if I started meticulously going through it again. I'm choosing to ignore it by keeping it behind me and focusing on my happy desk, lol. It's good that you have multiple places that are more conducive to writing with desks, chairs, and computers. Do you have a desktop downstairs and upstairs, or just in the den?

Yeah, I'm almost to the heart of the story, or at least the heart of my original idea.  I'm looking forward to that section.

I did not watch Nick's live.  I don't care to watch him talk about cryptocurrency .  Did he talk about anything else worth watching?  I haven't watched his Twitch yet either.  Sometimes I enjoy just watching him mess around, but other times I get bored watching him play video games or his own songs and feel like there are better things I could be doing.  (You know, like discussing fanfic on this forum, obviously LOL.)  I wish he would sing his songs live when he's streaming instead of just playing the album versions.  We can listen to those any old time, Nick.

Go shower!  And then go write!  I need to get back to writing and finish this chapter at some point too.

You've got this! Keep writing!

Nope. The people watching halved after his initial hellos to people commenting in the chat, but you'll be glad to know he's figured out how to add people to his instagram lives, lol. He said once he figured out his coding, he'd play video games on twitch again. He should sing live; I can't imagine everyone watching him actually wants to watch him play video games. Do more fan interactive things, Nick! And yes, clearly discussing fanfic here is a better thing to do than listen to a pitch for cryptocurrency or watch someone play video games, lol.

I showered! I wrote! I finished a new chapter! Six left to go!

It wouldn't hurt to try rewriting Gobosei either in first person POV or in third person and see what happens.  Maybe that will help you get back into it and beef up your characters.  It's definitely okay if it still needs to be grimdark.  We here on Team Dark like darkness!

Definitely agree, I think it would be fun to try a couple of things. They need some beef, lol; I'll figure it out. I know, I feel like I'm betraying Team Dark by saying it doesn't need to be grimdark, lol. Although, I call PBox&Co "grimdark" and by definition it's not, it's the opposite. Grimdark really means there's no hope now nor any chance of hope ever, whereas one of the major themes of PBox is that there's always hope. I don't think I could write a true grimdark story, to be honest.

I've had that thought too.  I've never actually read Hamlet (I only read Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth in high school), but I know Lion King is based on it.  It may help to see how a human character acts, although the circumstances are different.  How Nick came to be living among the Amish is fairly cliched and convoluted as well, but there is a suspense storyline that got him in that situation, and I'm using fear to keep him there.  I don't think it would make sense for him to do something totally different, so it's either stay or go back... but if he goes back now, the story is basically over.  And while that would solve my problem of leaving it unfinished, I don't think I would feel satisfied.  I have hurried stories along to finish them because I was tired of writing them before, and it shows.  I would almost rather leave it unfinished and be happy with what I have written (which I am for the most part) than slap a half-assed, rushed ending on it and call it done.  Technically I already did slap a half-assed, rushed ending on it for my April Fool's joke one year, but that doesn't count LOL.  Although maybe it does count because it's still posted as Chapter 17 of the story on my actual site, so anyone who goes to read it now will read that chapter.  It has an author's note at the end saying it's not a real ending, but may be the only ending I ever write for it.  Nick doesn't get cancer, but he does die in that version LOL.

You should definitely read it at some point. Hamlet's my favorite Shakespeare tragedy (Twelfth Night is the best one overall). I feel like Hamlet's probably a lot more introspective and over-analyzing than Nick or Simba though, lol.

Fear is a powerful emotion. Is there a way to amp up the feeling of fear a little more prior to that and still keep the parts you like? I could see Nick staying somewhere longer than he would want to because of fear as a driving force. Maybe he tries to leave and something happens that stops him. I get not wanting to find an ending just finish it when you don't feel like it's ready to end. You're right, sometimes it's better to appreciate what's there and what it felt like writing it the first time.

Haha, how did it feel to turn it into an April Fool's joke? And he can't always die of cancer. Sometimes other things have to kill him, lol.

LOL Poor Nick.  It's just a good thing this is the Unbreakable tour and not the Millennium tour, or I may be tempted.  But I just finished my last concert scene (for now) with no injuries, so Nick is safe for now.

"Nick, where did you get that hoverboard? This is the wrong tour... Just... just don't do anything drastic to show off... Oh no..." lol Glad Nick can continue remaining uninjured with the concert scenes over.

Eh, you're allowed to be self-indulgent.  That's the fun of fanfic - you can write whatever you want!

So true! What's the most self-indulgent thing you've written recently?

It's almost easier to write stories set in 1999 because I feel like I remember what we did and didn't have back then better, as weird as that sounds.  Both my long-unfinished stories (Guilty Roads and my Harry Potter crossover) are set in 1999, and I don't think I had to do as much fact-checking for technology things for those.  (The fact that neither the Amish, nor the Wizarding world really uses technology helps LOL.)  But the mid-2000s are more of a blur.

It's because technology felt like it moved a little slower unless video game counsels were your thing. The Nokia brick didn't even exist back then, crazy enough! Like when did wifi become a thing? Kids today are so lucky that they don't have to listen to the dial-up sound.

You know I love a good loophole, lol. "Doesn't use technology, so I don't have to bother" is a great one.

Glad we finally condensed these into one long chat, lol.

[RokofAges75]

Same! Backdating PBox will probably be my next one as nothing else is complete enough to cross post for fun, or it is, but it's so old that I just can't bring myself to do it, lol. It's easy enough to copy and paste when you're multi-tasking. Actually writing would make you less available for your students... or your boss.

Same! The version history has saved me. Equally great is that you can name the versions in case you want to track specific things too. It helps me quickly find when I wrote specific chapters. Yeah same. The oldest version of PBox I have definitely says it's from 2012 or something like that. Clearly not. Open office is a savior for that. I'm glad it exists.

Yeah, same.  There's no point in me posting anything older than Broken because it's not representative of my writing style anymore.  I would hate for someone to click on one of those old stories, having never read anything else I've written, and judge me based on that LOL.

Yeah, Open Office is a godsend.  The one problem I have with Google is that some of my longer stories won't upload as one file, so I had to split them up into multiple files.  Open Office will still open the original documents with the whole story.

You're probably right on the age, but stop selling yourself short. Choppage is just as interesting as anal sex, lol.

See, I see you calling her Leah, but I'm pretty sure you mean Willaford, lol. While accurate, I feel like none of us read a Backstreet Boy romance to see them with an unlikable love interest. I think that's a good thing to want to change, especially since the cancer was the important part and the romance was not... yet.

LMAO!  I would argue that choppage is way more interesting than anal sex, but that's just me.  I would rather read about fic Nick being tortured than taking it up the ass.

Haha, good one!  There's a name I haven't heard in a long time.  I think part of the reason I gave him such an unlikable love interest was to make Claire feel more like a breath of fresh air when she came along later in the story.  Another example of us using fanfic to compensate for Nick's poor taste in women in real life.

That makes sense why you would hoard then if you were trying to work on Guilty Roads. No fake love interest and getting to the point, good. That's a clear testament to you learning and growing as an author. In the beginning, did it feel like you started it too close to finishing BMS?

Yeah, I guess that's the fun of writing a similar storyline twice - Curtain Call gave me the opportunity to learn from and improve upon Broken.  I love Broken in all its cheesy, angsty, melodramatic glory, but Curtain Call is clearly better-written and more mature.

It had been about two and a half years since I finished BMS, but since I hadn't actually finished a solo novel since then, yeah, I felt weird starting another Nick cancer story.  But it was one of those ideas that just wouldn't leave me alone, so I went for it.  It was the right decision.

Aw, what a cute full-circle thing. I always wanted to finish PBox in fall too, since that's when I had started writing it originally, I think. So I guess, how fitting that I hit my stride for PNecklace in November as well. Think I can finish the third one by November? lol

Yeah, it worked out perfectly!

Assuming you finish PNecklace in the next month or so, will you post the end in the fall?  Didn't you say you had updates ready through November?  I don't know that you'll finish the third story by this November, but maybe next November.  I guess it depends on how long it is and how fast you write!  You've been so prolific this year, anything is possible!

If you get started on a new story quicker, do you stop hanging on to them or do you keep your weekly update schedule through the end of the novel?

It hasn't happened yet where I've gotten started on a new story quicker; I'm incredibly slow LOL.  I stuck with my weekly update schedule for the last two (Bethlehem and Heroic Measures).
 I started posting a chapter every few days once I finished AHTIM, but I didn't have anything ready to post right after it.

I appreciate that! Sorry for worrying you and missing our weekly "we want to be involved in our writing, but not in the actual writing it part" chat on Thursdays. I'm still here and still writing! Although, now that it's summer for you, does that tend to happen as much where you get burnt out by the end of the week?

No problem!  Glad you were just having fun with your real life friends!

No, give me a few days to get into my summer schedule, and I won't even know what day it is anymore LOL.

Maybe that's my "blah" feeling up here in the office... Hubs would be happy if I started meticulously going through it again. I'm choosing to ignore it by keeping it behind me and focusing on my happy desk, lol. It's good that you have multiple places that are more conducive to writing with desks, chairs, and computers. Do you have a desktop downstairs and upstairs, or just in the den?

It does feel good to organize, but it's such a chore.  I didn't want to waste one of my precious weekend days doing it until summer.  So just keep your back turned and focus on that happy desk LOL.

I just have a desktop computer downstairs in my den.  Otherwise I write on my Chromebook.  I do have a little desk to sit at in my writing room upstairs, along with a futon/chaise thing.  Once in a while I'll write in my living room or sit at the kitchen table with my Chromebook.  My best weekend morning writing usually happens when I make coffee and bring it back to bed.  I've found I write best when I'm comfortable, and my bed is the most comfortable place.

Nope. The people watching halved after his initial hellos to people commenting in the chat, but you'll be glad to know he's figured out how to add people to his instagram lives, lol. He said once he figured out his coding, he'd play video games on twitch again. He should sing live; I can't imagine everyone watching him actually wants to watch him play video games. Do more fan interactive things, Nick! And yes, clearly discussing fanfic here is a better thing to do than listen to a pitch for cryptocurrency or watch someone play video games, lol.

I appreciate him going live because it's more than the other guys give us, and sometimes it's fun to just watch him do whatever, but other times I'm just not in the mood.  Especially when he's pitching something I don't understand LOL.

I showered! I wrote! I finished a new chapter! Six left to go!

Yay!!

I'm almost done with my chapter too.  I would be done by now, but I decided to take a break from writing and finish backdating Undead first.

Definitely agree, I think it would be fun to try a couple of things. They need some beef, lol; I'll figure it out. I know, I feel like I'm betraying Team Dark by saying it doesn't need to be grimdark, lol. Although, I call PBox&Co "grimdark" and by definition it's not, it's the opposite. Grimdark really means there's no hope now nor any chance of hope ever, whereas one of the major themes of PBox is that there's always hope. I don't think I could write a true grimdark story, to be honest.

I like darkness, but yes, I agree about grimdark.  I don't think I could ever write a true grimdark story either, nor would I necessarily want to read one - at least not a whole novel.  I'm okay with sad endings if they make sense, but there needs to be some light or hope or humor somewhere in the story; it can't all be dark and depressing.  My darkest stories tend to be the ones with happy endings; I'm a big fan of the "Earn your happy ending" trope.

You should definitely read it at some point. Hamlet's my favorite Shakespeare tragedy (Twelfth Night is the best one overall). I feel like Hamlet's probably a lot more introspective and over-analyzing than Nick or Simba though, lol.

Fear is a powerful emotion. Is there a way to amp up the feeling of fear a little more prior to that and still keep the parts you like? I could see Nick staying somewhere longer than he would want to because of fear as a driving force. Maybe he tries to leave and something happens that stops him. I get not wanting to find an ending just finish it when you don't feel like it's ready to end. You're right, sometimes it's better to appreciate what's there and what it felt like writing it the first time.

Haha, how did it feel to turn it into an April Fool's joke? And he can't always die of cancer. Sometimes other things have to kill him, lol.

Yeah, I do have a scene where he tries to leave and something happens that scares him into staying longer.  So maybe it is believable enough.  I dunno.  Part of the reason I set it in 1999 was so Nick was still a teenager, which I thought would help explain the poor decisions he makes LOL.  I do have a pretty solid plan for the rest of the story with some wiggle room to make adjustments, but just no inspiration.  I literally left off in the middle of a chapter that should have been fun to write (Halloween!), and every time I've opened the story in the last few years, I'm just like, "Meh," and close it again.  But if I actually go back and reread it from the beginning, I think it's a good story that's worth continuing.  I just keep hoping that one of these days, something will spark a fresh burst of inspiration.  Maybe I should try rereading the fanfic that inspired it, as well as Hamlet.  But not until I'm done with MBK because the last thing I want is to derail myself on that one again.

To be honest, it was not my favorite April Fool's joke.  I think that was the year I didn't come up with anything in advance and then had an "Oh shit!" moment on March 31 when I realized the next day was April Fool's Day and had to scramble to write something at the last minute.  Thankfully April 1 was a Saturday that year.  But I guess the fact that I was able to write a fake chapter for a story I hadn't updated in so long in less than 24 hours is impressive.

That's what 1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter is for!  I don't think he's died of cancer once in that one yet LOL.

"Nick, where did you get that hoverboard? This is the wrong tour... Just... just don't do anything drastic to show off... Oh no..." lol Glad Nick can continue remaining uninjured with the concert scenes over.

LMAO!  This conversation reminds me of an unfinished story by one of my old favorite authors where Nick fell off the stage and got impaled on some kind of post in the first chapter, and that's how the others found out he was HIV-positive and had been hiding it from them.  The girl who wrote it, Jen, also wrote the very first fanfic I ever stumbled onto, which was about Brian falling in love with a blind girl (and then getting into a car accident and dying at the end, after impregnating her with twins).  Her stories were all full of diseases and injuries, and she was a Brian and Nick girl too.  The fact that her site was the first fanfic site I ever found, back when I didn't even know what fanfic was, had to be some sort of fate at work.  I found someone who wrote the exact kind of stories I was already reading in the form of Lurlene McDaniel books, except hers were about the Backstreet Boys.  It was meant to be.

So true! What's the most self-indulgent thing you've written recently?

Probably "The Year Without a Pandaskunk," which I wrote last year.  I don't know if anyone even read it all the way through, but I thought it was hilarious.

What's the most self-indulgent thing you've ever written?

It's because technology felt like it moved a little slower unless video game counsels were your thing. The Nokia brick didn't even exist back then, crazy enough! Like when did wifi become a thing? Kids today are so lucky that they don't have to listen to the dial-up sound.

You know I love a good loophole, lol. "Doesn't use technology, so I don't have to bother" is a great one.

Glad we finally condensed these into one long chat, lol.

Yeah, it was so much easier to keep up back then!  Apparently Wi-fi was first released in 1997, but I don't think I had it until the 2010s.  I had a laptop in college in the early 2000s, but I think it still needed to be connected to the internet with a cord.  Then I didn't have a laptop for a long time because I lost everything when that one crashed and vowed never to buy another one.  By the time I eventually did get another laptop (and a Kindle Fire and a smartphone), Wi-fi was a thing.  I was still astonished to discover that the new desktop computer I got for Christmas could be connected to the internet via Wi-fi and didn't need an ethernet cord because my last desktop, which was 9 years old, definitely did LOL.

Aww, the nostalgia of listening to the dial-up internet sound!  I have played that sound for my students before while trying to explain what we had to go through to access the internet back in "the 1900s," as they call it.

LOL This took me over an hour to reply to!

[nicksgal]

Yeah, same.  There's no point in me posting anything older than Broken because it's not representative of my writing style anymore.  I would hate for someone to click on one of those old stories, having never read anything else I've written, and judge me based on that LOL.

Yeah, Open Office is a godsend.  The one problem I have with Google is that some of my longer stories won't upload as one file, so I had to split them up into multiple files.  Open Office will still open the original documents with the whole story.

I would die if someone read "The Orlando Story" now without knowing that I was like, why not, here's a really old story, we all started from somewhere. In 2006, it was one thing to post a story from 1999. It's totally different to post a story from 1999 in 2021, especially when people can read an equally old, and much better, PBox (although I did update it, so I guess that's not technically true). I was worried about being judged for it back then too, lol.

Yes! That is the only thing that annoys me about Google docs. It gets so laggy around 100 pages, I did have to split all of PBox into 5 parts and did the same with PNecklace.

LMAO!  I would argue that choppage is way more interesting than anal sex, but that's just me.  I would rather read about fic Nick being tortured than taking it up the ass.

Haha, good one!  There's a name I haven't heard in a long time.  I think part of the reason I gave him such an unlikable love interest was to make Claire feel more like a breath of fresh air when she came along later in the story.  Another example of us using fanfic to compensate for Nick's poor taste in women in real life.

Same, but I didn't want to alienate the people who might enjoy both! Is it torture if it was medically necessary? I'm sure he thought so, but... I'm pretty sure doctors won't amputate unless they need to.

I was reading an article about one hit wonders from the late '90s/early '00s a few days ago and she was on there saying something to the effect of "My second single came out on September 11th and there's just no way to recover from that. No one would ever listen to it." And my first thought was, "Dang... People died and that's what you're worried about?!" Followed shortly by "Not sure it would have done any better if it came out on August 11th, but okay. You just weren't that great." But until that article, she was also someone I hadn't thought about in a long time.

Oh for sure, I get wanting to make a foil to Claire. I love doing that with characters. It's fun when they foil each other. I've said it before! We did our best!

Yeah, I guess that's the fun of writing a similar storyline twice - Curtain Call gave me the opportunity to learn from and improve upon Broken.  I love Broken in all its cheesy, angsty, melodramatic glory, but Curtain Call is clearly better-written and more mature.

It had been about two and a half years since I finished BMS, but since I hadn't actually finished a solo novel since then, yeah, I felt weird starting another Nick cancer story.  But it was one of those ideas that just wouldn't leave me alone, so I went for it.  It was the right decision.

You got a chance to learn what worked and what didn't after honing your craft for 300 or so chapters. I know you don't want to be known as the "Nick cancer author" necessarily, but I think you do it well. I say all this having not read Curtain Call, but if you say it's better, I fully trust your opinion and am glad you went for it. I think when an idea won't leave you alone, you just have to do it. Lightening inspiration must always be seized!

Yeah, it worked out perfectly!

Assuming you finish PNecklace in the next month or so, will you post the end in the fall?  Didn't you say you had updates ready through November?  I don't know that you'll finish the third story by this November, but maybe next November.  I guess it depends on how long it is and how fast you write!  You've been so prolific this year, anything is possible!

It would be around November when I finished posting it if I kept going at one chapter a week. I think whether I keep going one chapter per week or not depends on what I write next. If it's totally different from PBox&Co in that it's not as dark or tragic, I might post two stories concurrently and keep posting PNecklace until November when I'd be potentially far enough along on something else equally dark, lol. "Nick is genre saavy" feels like a quicker novel to write if that's next. PDemons or "Nick is Brian's guardian angel" or Gobosei does not. The point could come when I stop being prolific, so who knows! They weren't consecutive, but it's only taken me six months to write PNecklace so far. Could end up being seven, could end up being six and a half depending on how these last few chapters go.

It hasn't happened yet where I've gotten started on a new story quicker; I'm incredibly slow LOL.  I stuck with my weekly update schedule for the last two (Bethlehem and Heroic Measures).

I started posting a chapter every few days once I finished AHTIM, but I didn't have anything ready to post right after it.

Slow, but dedicated and meticulous. Creates good stories. What made you decide to change AHTIM's update schedule to quicker?

No problem!  Glad you were just having fun with your real life friends!

No, give me a few days to get into my summer schedule, and I won't even know what day it is anymore LOL.

And not having fun, but doing the necessary task of house cleaning, lol. One is more fun. Here is fun too.

Just look at the little clock on your chromebook, it tells you! lol However, I hear Flurbsday is a great day of the week, lol.

It does feel good to organize, but it's such a chore.  I didn't want to waste one of my precious weekend days doing it until summer.  So just keep your back turned and focus on that happy desk LOL.

I just have a desktop computer downstairs in my den.  Otherwise I write on my Chromebook.  I do have a little desk to sit at in my writing room upstairs, along with a futon/chaise thing.  Once in a while I'll write in my living room or sit at the kitchen table with my Chromebook.  My best weekend morning writing usually happens when I make coffee and bring it back to bed.  I've found I write best when I'm comfortable, and my bed is the most comfortable place.

Don't have to convince me! Out of sight, out of mind! lol I'm waiting for a random day off too, maybe post-PNecklace. Maybe Monday. We'll see what writing feels like.

I've never been able to write in bed on a computer very well. I always write better at a desk or a table. Couch is hit or miss. I'm not sure why this is! I used to do school work on my bed when I didn't have a table in my first apartment, but in my second apartment, I did most of my work at coffee shops instead. Though I can't imagine writing a novel at a coffee shop, lol.

I appreciate him going live because it's more than the other guys give us, and sometimes it's fun to just watch him do whatever, but other times I'm just not in the mood.  Especially when he's pitching something I don't understand LOL.

Same, and since I'm not on twitch, I decided to give him a little love on Instagram so he keeps doing it. The pitch part was meh, but it was fun seeing him be really excited about it, so that's why I kept watching even though I don't care. That, and I've missed his voice since he's not in this arc. (What a weird thing to say, lol.)

Yay!!

I'm almost done with my chapter too.  I would be done by now, but I decided to take a break from writing and finish backdating Undead first.

And I got a start on the next chapter too! Though I accidentally started it in the wrong POV, but I'm since fixed that.

Yay! You're so close! And now you've backdated another story! Is that all of them?

I like darkness, but yes, I agree about grimdark.  I don't think I could ever write a true grimdark story either, nor would I necessarily want to read one - at least not a whole novel.  I'm okay with sad endings if they make sense, but there needs to be some light or hope or humor somewhere in the story; it can't all be dark and depressing.  My darkest stories tend to be the ones with happy endings; I'm a big fan of the "Earn your happy ending" trope.

I also like when the happy ending feels earned and I'm okay with sad endings. It has to fit the story. I don't know that I've ever written a longer story that was just happy with a happy ending. Did Team Fluffy ever say that they needed some dark or depressing or angsty things in their stories ever? I feel like we always say "dark, but with light moments" and I don't feel like Team Fluffy ever said the opposite.

How many of your stories would you say have happy endings versus sad endings?

Yeah, I do have a scene where he tries to leave and something happens that scares him into staying longer.  So maybe it is believable enough.  I dunno.  Part of the reason I set it in 1999 was so Nick was still a teenager, which I thought would help explain the poor decisions he makes LOL.  I do have a pretty solid plan for the rest of the story with some wiggle room to make adjustments, but just no inspiration.  I literally left off in the middle of a chapter that should have been fun to write (Halloween!), and every time I've opened the story in the last few years, I'm just like, "Meh," and close it again.  But if I actually go back and reread it from the beginning, I think it's a good story that's worth continuing.  I just keep hoping that one of these days, something will spark a fresh burst of inspiration.  Maybe I should try rereading the fanfic that inspired it, as well as Hamlet.  But not until I'm done with MBK because the last thing I want is to derail myself on that one again.

To be honest, it was not my favorite April Fool's joke.  I think that was the year I didn't come up with anything in advance and then had an "Oh shit!" moment on March 31 when I realized the next day was April Fool's Day and had to scramble to write something at the last minute.  Thankfully April 1 was a Saturday that year.  But I guess the fact that I was able to write a fake chapter for a story I hadn't updated in so long in less than 24 hours is impressive.

That's what 1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter is for!  I don't think he's died of cancer once in that one yet LOL.

I'm pretty sure Nick continued to make dumb decisions well into his twenties, lol. But you're right, a teenager is more likely to make dumb decisions than an adult. When was that, 2010ish? He started getting it together by thirty. Aw... Nick loves Halloween. How do the Amish celebrate Halloween? Do they celebrate Halloween? I think that's a good idea. Reread the fanfic that inspired it, then reread it again or read Hamlet. See what happens. But yes, definitely finish MBK first!

That sounds stressful. I know how much you like to plan your April Fool's jokes. But a scrambled ending in 24 hours? That is impressive!

Pretty sure now that you've mentioned it, cancer has to be 1,000th way. Some day, lol.

LMAO!  This conversation reminds me of an unfinished story by one of my old favorite authors where Nick fell off the stage and got impaled on some kind of post in the first chapter, and that's how the others found out he was HIV-positive and had been hiding it from them.  The girl who wrote it, Jen, also wrote the very first fanfic I ever stumbled onto, which was about Brian falling in love with a blind girl (and then getting into a car accident and dying at the end, after impregnating her with twins).  Her stories were all full of diseases and injuries, and she was a Brian and Nick girl too.  The fact that her site was the first fanfic site I ever found, back when I didn't even know what fanfic was, had to be some sort of fate at work.  I found someone who wrote the exact kind of stories I was already reading in the form of Lurlene McDaniel books, except hers were about the Backstreet Boys.  It was meant to be.

This is the one thing PBox&Co misses, my ability to make ridiculous jokes at the right times. It gets a few, but they're much fewer and far between.

Poor Nick, falling off the stage, getting impaled, dramatically revealing to the others that he has a contagious and incurable disease. That's your kind of story for sure. It was meant to be! Do you think you would have started writing fanfics had it not been for finding Jen's site first?

Probably "The Year Without a Pandaskunk," which I wrote last year.  I don't know if anyone even read it all the way through, but I thought it was hilarious.

What's the most self-indulgent thing you've ever written?

I've been meaning to ask... What is a pandaskunk? Also, you should also write more humorous stories more often too. I feel like the world needs to hear more of our ridiculous jokes.

Hmmm... Probably Beta Sigma Beta. Really it was my plan to corner the BSB College AU market, lol. That or that silly "Welcome to Fan Fiction Avenue" story where you went to a store to buy Backstreet Boy robots for your fanfic characters, lol. I'm pretty sure "Fully functional Howies are on sale" was terrible joke in it, lol.

Yeah, it was so much easier to keep up back then!  Apparently Wi-fi was first released in 1997, but I don't think I had it until the 2010s.  I had a laptop in college in the early 2000s, but I think it still needed to be connected to the internet with a cord.  Then I didn't have a laptop for a long time because I lost everything when that one crashed and vowed never to buy another one.  By the time I eventually did get another laptop (and a Kindle Fire and a smartphone), Wi-fi was a thing.  I was still astonished to discover that the new desktop computer I got for Christmas could be connected to the internet via Wi-fi and didn't need an ethernet cord because my last desktop, which was 9 years old, definitely did LOL.

Aww, the nostalgia of listening to the dial-up internet sound!  I have played that sound for my students before while trying to explain what we had to go through to access the internet back in "the 1900s," as they call it.

LOL This took me over an hour to reply to!

Oh ethernet cords! We had wifi at my sorority house and the dorms, so it was definitely a full-fledged thing by 2006. I was grateful to not have to deal with cords anymore except to charge. I remember getting a touch screen phone in 2009 when they were newer and it always shut down when it was too cool. I'm glad that's not a problem anymore! But when I first got it, it was still a million dollars to accidentally press the internet button. Something I don't even think about these days. I think our house has ethernet outlets and it was built around the time I was graduating college. But I feel like houses now wouldn't? I don't know, does anyone use cords anymore?

I hate that they call it the 1900's. That makes me feel so old! lol

Same. I made an overzealous mistake. I apologize, lol.

[RokofAges75]

I would die if someone read "The Orlando Story" now without knowing that I was like, why not, here's a really old story, we all started from somewhere. In 2006, it was one thing to post a story from 1999. It's totally different to post a story from 1999 in 2021, especially when people can read an equally old, and much better, PBox (although I did update it, so I guess that's not technically true). I was worried about being judged for it back then too, lol.

LOL So true.

I noticed when I was backdating that you can date a story all the way back to 1950!  Can you imagine some old person typing up a fanfic they wrote back in 1950? LOL.  I sorted the BSB stories by date to see how old they go, and the oldest one is from 2000.  I didn't recognize any of the really old stories or authors, but they are mostly Nick romance and BSB/NSync slash.

Same, but I didn't want to alienate the people who might enjoy both! Is it torture if it was medically necessary? I'm sure he thought so, but... I'm pretty sure doctors won't amputate unless they need to.

I was reading an article about one hit wonders from the late '90s/early '00s a few days ago and she was on there saying something to the effect of "My second single came out on September 11th and there's just no way to recover from that. No one would ever listen to it." And my first thought was, "Dang... People died and that's what you're worried about?!" Followed shortly by "Not sure it would have done any better if it came out on August 11th, but okay. You just weren't that great." But until that article, she was also someone I hadn't thought about in a long time.

Oh for sure, I get wanting to make a foil to Claire. I love doing that with characters. It's fun when they foil each other. I've said it before! We did our best!

No, it wasn't literally torture, but that's just the generic term I use for harming Nick in stories.  I guess the trope name would be "whump."  The amputation was justified though.

Ugh, Willa Ford is still awful.  What a weird thing to say.  Who would associate her song with 9/11, even if it did come out that day?  It's not like everyone would have heard it that day.  I don't even know what her second single was; I only remember "I Wanna Be Bad."

Yes, exactly!

You got a chance to learn what worked and what didn't after honing your craft for 300 or so chapters. I know you don't want to be known as the "Nick cancer author" necessarily, but I think you do it well. I say all this having not read Curtain Call, but if you say it's better, I fully trust your opinion and am glad you went for it. I think when an idea won't leave you alone, you just have to do it. Lightening inspiration must always be seized!

Thanks!  I don't mind being known for it, as long as people realize I write other stuff too.  But Broken and Curtain Call are the stories I'm best known for, at least on AC, and I'm fine with that.

It would be around November when I finished posting it if I kept going at one chapter a week. I think whether I keep going one chapter per week or not depends on what I write next. If it's totally different from PBox&Co in that it's not as dark or tragic, I might post two stories concurrently and keep posting PNecklace until November when I'd be potentially far enough along on something else equally dark, lol. "Nick is genre saavy" feels like a quicker novel to write if that's next. PDemons or "Nick is Brian's guardian angel" or Gobosei does not. The point could come when I stop being prolific, so who knows! They weren't consecutive, but it's only taken me six months to write PNecklace so far. Could end up being seven, could end up being six and a half depending on how these last few chapters go.

That makes sense and sounds like a good plan.  I guess you'll figure out what your next project is in a few chapters!  I'm curious to find out if you choose something totally different or stick with dark and tragic.

Slow, but dedicated and meticulous. Creates good stories. What made you decide to change AHTIM's update schedule to quicker?

Thanks!  I think I was just excited to post the ending and didn't see the point in leaving my readers hanging or keeping poor Nick in peril any longer than necessary.  That one was pretty intense, even for me.

And I got a start on the next chapter too! Though I accidentally started it in the wrong POV, but I'm since fixed that.

Yay! You're so close! And now you've backdated another story! Is that all of them?

Wow, you really did have a productive day!  Oops to the wrong POV, but glad you were able to fix it.

I finished my chapter with Nick and the boys flying home from the tour - yay!!  I'll figure out how to start Kevin's next chapter tomorrow.

I did finish backdating, and yep, that's the last one.  So if I feel like it tomorrow, maybe I'll start posting SAMS.

I also like when the happy ending feels earned and I'm okay with sad endings. It has to fit the story. I don't know that I've ever written a longer story that was just happy with a happy ending. Did Team Fluffy ever say that they needed some dark or depressing or angsty things in their stories ever? I feel like we always say "dark, but with light moments" and I don't feel like Team Fluffy ever said the opposite.

How many of your stories would you say have happy endings versus sad endings?

I definitely have never written a purely fluffy, 100% happy novel either.  Yuck LOL.  Even a fluffy story needs some kind of conflict.  It doesn't have to be dark, but the character should struggle in some way.

Despite my love of darkness (or maybe because of it), I lean towards earned happy ending.  I have probably twice as many happy endings as sad or bittersweet endings.  I am a big fan of the bittersweet ending, where maybe a major character dies, but you know the surviving characters are going to be okay.  I've only written a few endings that are total downers.  How about you?

I'm pretty sure Nick continued to make dumb decisions well into his twenties, lol. But you're right, a teenager is more likely to make dumb decisions than an adult. When was that, 2010ish? He started getting it together by thirty. Aw... Nick loves Halloween. How do the Amish celebrate Halloween? Do they celebrate Halloween? I think that's a good idea. Reread the fanfic that inspired it, then reread it again or read Hamlet. See what happens. But yes, definitely finish MBK first!

That sounds stressful. I know how much you like to plan your April Fool's jokes. But a scrambled ending in 24 hours? That is impressive!

Pretty sure now that you've mentioned it, cancer has to be 1,000th way. Some day, lol.

LOL Nick definitely continued to make bad decisions into his twenties - probably worse decisions than he made at 19.  He had pretty much gotten himself together by the end of 2008.  Yeah, I started Guilty Roads in 2010, so I needed to make him more immature.  It wouldn't have worked with him being 30 LOL.  Plus, Kevin is also a major part of the plot, and he wasn't in the group at the time. *kicks Kevin*

It's been a long time since I've done any Amish research, but I don't think they traditionally celebrate Halloween.  But another benefit to making Nick a teenager is that I could make some of the Amish characters he meets teenagers too, so "rumspringa" comes into play and they can celebrate Halloween English-style.

LOL If we make it to 1000 deaths, the last one should definitely be cancer.  That, or he dies peacefully in his sleep as an old man - something completely mundane, after all the crazy deaths he has endured.

Poor Nick, falling off the stage, getting impaled, dramatically revealing to the others that he has a contagious and incurable disease. That's your kind of story for sure. It was meant to be! Do you think you would have started writing fanfics had it not been for finding Jen's site first?

I don't know.  I think if the first fanfic I'd ever found had been something like the one on AO3 where Brian and Kevin were fucking like rabbits as literal bunnies with long ears and fluffy tails, I would have been like, "WTF?!" and stayed far, far away from it.  Instead, I found one that was right up my alley and sought out more, which eventually led me to trying it myself.

Do you remember how you found out about fanfic or the first fanfic you read?

I've been meaning to ask... What is a pandaskunk? Also, you should also write more humorous stories more often too. I feel like the world needs to hear more of our ridiculous jokes.

In the words of Kevin, "Ah, the mystical pandaskunk!"  Pandaskunks are the strange, flying pandas with long, fluffy, skunk-like tails in the video for It's Christmas Time Again.  https://youtu.be/8Llx2shF_Eg?t=27  We made so much fun of that video around here and on Twitter when it came out.  I was home sick with the flu either the day it was released or later that week and decided to write a short Christmas story that would attempt to explain that video.  It started as a simple Rudolph parody and then went off the rails and turned into a whole trilogy.  It's very 00Carter-like in its humor, and I credit 00Carter for helping me hone my comedy writing skills.

Hmmm... Probably Beta Sigma Beta. Really it was my plan to corner the BSB College AU market, lol. That or that silly "Welcome to Fan Fiction Avenue" story where you went to a store to buy Backstreet Boy robots for your fanfic characters, lol. I'm pretty sure "Fully functional Howies are on sale" was terrible joke in it, lol.

I still think Beta Sigma Beta was a great idea for a story - and a perfect one for you to write, especially at that time.  I just love the cleverness of Beta Sigma Beta as the name of the frat.  There really aren't too many BSB in college stories that I'm aware of.  Tracy wrote one, Finding Carter, but other than that, I can't think of any offhand.  I had an idea a long time ago about BSB Nick going to college, but it never even made it to outline stage.

LMAO at "fully functional Howies are on sale!"  Poor Howie.

Oh ethernet cords! We had wifi at my sorority house and the dorms, so it was definitely a full-fledged thing by 2006. I was grateful to not have to deal with cords anymore except to charge. I remember getting a touch screen phone in 2009 when they were newer and it always shut down when it was too cool. I'm glad that's not a problem anymore! But when I first got it, it was still a million dollars to accidentally press the internet button. Something I don't even think about these days. I think our house has ethernet outlets and it was built around the time I was graduating college. But I feel like houses now wouldn't? I don't know, does anyone use cords anymore?

I hate that they call it the 1900's. That makes me feel so old! lol

Same. I made an overzealous mistake. I apologize, lol.

My modem/router still has an ethernet cord to connect it to the internet, but all my devices use Wi-fi.  LOL It's like landline phones - I have never had a landline phone since moving out of my parents' house.  The kids today don't even know how to use that kind of phone.  If they need to call home on our phones at school, a lot of them don't even understand that you have to pick up the receiver and then dial a number.  And yes... we were born in the 1900s.  So old! LOL  My student teacher this year was born in 1999, which made me feel really old.  And that means some of next year's student teachers will have been born in 2000!

LOL I will probably be going to bed soon.

[nicksgal]

LOL So true.

I noticed when I was backdating that you can date a story all the way back to 1950!  Can you imagine some old person typing up a fanfic they wrote back in 1950? LOL.  I sorted the BSB stories by date to see how old they go, and the oldest one is from 2000.  I didn't recognize any of the really old stories or authors, but they are mostly Nick romance and BSB/NSync slash.

I don't know that it would be surprising that people might still writing fanfic that wrote fanfic then, but I would be surprised if they ever decided to type anything that old, yes. But maybe they did a long time ago and it's just copy/paste now. What's the oldest backdated story on AO3? (Not Backstreet.)

I looked and the one narrated by Kevin's cat felt familiar, but I didn't look into it too much. Not here to read stories about Kevin's dead (I assume) cat with six chapters to go, lol.

No, it wasn't literally torture, but that's just the generic term I use for harming Nick in stories.  I guess the trope name would be "whump."  The amputation was justified though.

Ugh, Willa Ford is still awful.  What a weird thing to say.  Who would associate her song with 9/11, even if it did come out that day?  It's not like everyone would have heard it that day.  I don't even know what her second single was; I only remember "I Wanna Be Bad."

Yes, exactly!

I first read that term the other day. Is that like "this will suck for the characters"?

I don't either. Clearly because it came out on 9/11! lol

Thanks!  I don't mind being known for it, as long as people realize I write other stuff too.  But Broken and Curtain Call are the stories I'm best known for, at least on AC, and I'm fine with that.

I think they do know you write other things, but it's nice to know you may have the Nick cancer niche market on lockdown. 

That makes sense and sounds like a good plan.  I guess you'll figure out what your next project is in a few chapters!  I'm curious to find out if you choose something totally different or stick with dark and tragic.

We shall see! I'm hopeful I can get another chapter done this weekend! I'm getting a late start on my writing today, though, so we'll see what happens. But I also feel like if I hit the right groove, these next three chapters could come out fairly quickly.

Any requests re: totally different versus dark and tragic? lol I ask, but I probably won't end up writing based purely on requests.

Thanks!  I think I was just excited to post the ending and didn't see the point in leaving my readers hanging or keeping poor Nick in peril any longer than necessary.  That one was pretty intense, even for me.

That's fair. I wonder what you'll do once you finish MBK. How many chapters are you ahead of what you're posting and do you currently have an idea of how long it will be?

Wow, you really did have a productive day!  Oops to the wrong POV, but glad you were able to fix it.

I finished my chapter with Nick and the boys flying home from the tour - yay!!  I'll figure out how to start Kevin's next chapter tomorrow.

I did finish backdating, and yep, that's the last one.  So if I feel like it tomorrow, maybe I'll start posting SAMS.

It hasn't been too difficult keeping these arcs going surprisingly. Overall, I've been able to start the next chapter after finishing one, but I haven't always been able to sustain after starting. I really want to try to get fast though, haha. I don't know that it will happen. Yeah, I wanted Howie to be the POV character, but the way the chapter was going, his thoughts and reactions weren't the most interesting of the available characters. I hadn't gotten super far, so it was a quick change.

Yay!!!! You finished your Nick tour chapter! Great work! No more tour scenes for a while, I hope. How has starting Kevin's chapter gone today?

Proud of you for backdating all your things!

I definitely have never written a purely fluffy, 100% happy novel either.  Yuck LOL.  Even a fluffy story needs some kind of conflict.  It doesn't have to be dark, but the character should struggle in some way.

Despite my love of darkness (or maybe because of it), I lean towards earned happy ending.  I have probably twice as many happy endings as sad or bittersweet endings.  I am a big fan of the bittersweet ending, where maybe a major character dies, but you know the surviving characters are going to be okay.  I've only written a few endings that are total downers.  How about you?

Short stories, yeah, but I don't think I have full fluffy novels either. I think when I originally envisioned what eventually became Beta Sigma Beta, I did want this fluffy novel, but it didn't end up becoming that because... Well, Team Dark, obviously, lol.

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure happy endings were the norm for things I finished? I started out with lots of "slice of life" stories, so they just naturally leaned happy. PBox would fall in the bittersweet category, I think, though I did originally intend it to be a downer ending. Can't say one way or the other on PNecklace at the moment, obviously -- even though I know what the answer is. None of the stories I ever wrote where I intended a downer ending (except for PBox) are finished, so... Really maybe my goal is to get to endings, lol.

LOL Nick definitely continued to make bad decisions into his twenties - probably worse decisions than he made at 19.  He had pretty much gotten himself together by the end of 2008.  Yeah, I started Guilty Roads in 2010, so I needed to make him more immature.  It wouldn't have worked with him being 30 LOL.  Plus, Kevin is also a major part of the plot, and he wasn't in the group at the time. *kicks Kevin*

It's been a long time since I've done any Amish research, but I don't think they traditionally celebrate Halloween.  But another benefit to making Nick a teenager is that I could make some of the Amish characters he meets teenagers too, so "rumspringa" comes into play and they can celebrate Halloween English-style.

LOL If we make it to 1000 deaths, the last one should definitely be cancer.  That, or he dies peacefully in his sleep as an old man - something completely mundane, after all the crazy deaths he has endured.

At least at 19, his best buddy and older brother didn't have wives to focus on... yet. I think post-Brian&Kevin marriages is when Nick got a little more lost. I know thirty-year-olds that haven't, so getting yourself together by 2008 is pretty good! Though we probably didn't fully feel like he had it together at that time. Aww, no kicking Kevin. Let's just throw plot bunnies at him. *tosses bunnies* lol

I didn't think they did either, but Halloween seems like a perfect way to rebel during Rumspringa. Candy and costumes! 

lol! Mundane would work better. He earned it after all that dying, lol.

I don't know.  I think if the first fanfic I'd ever found had been something like the one on AO3 where Brian and Kevin were fucking like rabbits as literal bunnies with long ears and fluffy tails, I would have been like, "WTF?!" and stayed far, far away from it.  Instead, I found one that was right up my alley and sought out more, which eventually led me to trying it myself.

Do you remember how you found out about fanfic or the first fanfic you read?

Literal rabbits is definitely a niche category.

I don't... Backstreet Bauhaus seems right? When did that site start?

In the words of Kevin, "Ah, the mystical pandaskunk!"  Pandaskunks are the strange, flying pandas with long, fluffy, skunk-like tails in the video for It's Christmas Time Again.  https://youtu.be/8Llx2shF_Eg?t=27  We made so much fun of that video around here and on Twitter when it came out.  I was home sick with the flu either the day it was released or later that week and decided to write a short Christmas story that would attempt to explain that video.  It started as a simple Rudolph parody and then went off the rails and turned into a whole trilogy.  It's very 00Carter-like in its humor, and I credit 00Carter for helping me hone my comedy writing skills.

There's a video for it?! I have missed so much. Please shame me, lol.

*Three-ish minutes later...*

Ummm... I love this song, but WTF did I just watch?

I love that the flu and the video inspired you to write an off the rails Rudolph story that became a trilogy, lol!

I still think Beta Sigma Beta was a great idea for a story - and a perfect one for you to write, especially at that time.  I just love the cleverness of Beta Sigma Beta as the name of the frat.  There really aren't too many BSB in college stories that I'm aware of.  Tracy wrote one, Finding Carter, but other than that, I can't think of any offhand.  I had an idea a long time ago about BSB Nick going to college, but it never even made it to outline stage.

LMAO at "fully functional Howies are on sale!"  Poor Howie.

Same. That was also one of my favorite part about it, naming the fraternity BSB, lol. I've thought maybe I'd go back and finish other unfinished things, and I did specifically say "unlikely to ever be updated" on most of them except Gobosei, where I said "I don't like to make promises, but there's a good chance you will eventually be able to read this whole story." I guess like you, I'm in the never say never camp, but we're also all past college age now, so a college story may resonate a lot less.

I know, poor Howie! I was such a terrible person! lol

My modem/router still has an ethernet cord to connect it to the internet, but all my devices use Wi-fi.  LOL It's like landline phones - I have never had a landline phone since moving out of my parents' house.  The kids today don't even know how to use that kind of phone.  If they need to call home on our phones at school, a lot of them don't even understand that you have to pick up the receiver and then dial a number.  And yes... we were born in the 1900s.  So old! LOL  My student teacher this year was born in 1999, which made me feel really old.  And that means some of next year's student teachers will have been born in 2000!

LOL I will probably be going to bed soon.

I think ours does too, now that you mention it. My laptop definitely has no way to connect to an ethernet. My college one did still have the option, though.

Yes! The students stare at me like I'm a crazy person when I use the phone. Born in 1999? Crazy! To be born into a world after Millennium was released... Is that nice or not? I can't decided.

Glad you finally went to bed at almost 3am! But at least you finished your chapter.

[RokofAges75]

I don't know that it would be surprising that people might still writing fanfic that wrote fanfic then, but I would be surprised if they ever decided to type anything that old, yes. But maybe they did a long time ago and it's just copy/paste now. What's the oldest backdated story on AO3? (Not Backstreet.)

I looked and the one narrated by Kevin's cat felt familiar, but I didn't look into it too much. Not here to read stories about Kevin's dead (I assume) cat with six chapters to go, lol.

I figured out how to use the advanced search to put all the AO3 stories in ascending order by date last updated, and there are a whole bunch dated 1950 that were clearly not actually written in 1950 LOL.  A few pages in, I found a Beatles fanfic backdated to 1964.  That could just be the year the story takes place, but it could be legit.  At least a Beatles fic written in 1964 makes sense, unlike the One Direction/Harry Potter crossover that is also dated 1964 LOL.  Apparently people were also writing Game of Thrones fanfic in 1969 LOL.  Then there are a series of Star Trek fanfics from 1975 that are legit and were originally published in fanzines.

I do remember the one narrated by Kevin's cat Quincy.  I'm not sure if I ever actually read it, but I definitely remember coming across it back in the day.

I first read that term the other day. Is that like "this will suck for the characters"?

I don't either. Clearly because it came out on 9/11! lol

LOL Basically.  It's described as a form of hurt/comfort that's heavy on the hurt.

We shall see! I'm hopeful I can get another chapter done this weekend! I'm getting a late start on my writing today, though, so we'll see what happens. But I also feel like if I hit the right groove, these next three chapters could come out fairly quickly.

Any requests re: totally different versus dark and tragic? lol I ask, but I probably won't end up writing based purely on requests.

How has your writing gone tonight?  I also got a very late start today.  My teacher bestie invited me over for day drinking and dinner, so I mowed the lawn and then headed over to her house and didn't write anything until about 9 p.m., when I wrote a sentence just to make sure I got something down.  I am not anticipating writing much more tonight, but hopefully tomorrow will be better now that I got my yard work and socializing quota in for the long weekend.

My only request is Death by Snail!  Otherwise, write what you wanna write!

That's fair. I wonder what you'll do once you finish MBK. How many chapters are you ahead of what you're posting and do you currently have an idea of how long it will be?

I don't know yet.  The Brian horror story, Fallen Angel, is still a possibility.  I also have a Nick suspense idea.  Or I may come up with something brand new.  Or maybe go back to Guilty Roads... ha!  We'll see.  I'm not far enough into MBK to give it any serious thought yet.  I just posted Chapter 10 yesterday and started Chapter 19 today, so I'm 8 finished chapters ahead.  I'm still thinking it's going to be in the 40-50 chapter range.  It feels like I could be nearing the halfway point.

Yeah, I wanted Howie to be the POV character, but the way the chapter was going, his thoughts and reactions weren't the most interesting of the available characters. I hadn't gotten super far, so it was a quick change.

LOL Poor Howie.

Hmmm... I'm pretty sure happy endings were the norm for things I finished? I started out with lots of "slice of life" stories, so they just naturally leaned happy. PBox would fall in the bittersweet category, I think, though I did originally intend it to be a downer ending. Can't say one way or the other on PNecklace at the moment, obviously -- even though I know what the answer is. None of the stories I ever wrote where I intended a downer ending (except for PBox) are finished, so... Really maybe my goal is to get to endings, lol.

Downer endings are tough.  Do you think that's why you haven't finished any of the ones that were supposed to be downers (or, in the case of PBox, changed them to be bittersweet?).

I only have one true downer of an ending to a novel in the post-Broken era, and it's the one that gives me the least sense of satisfaction or emotional connection.  It ends with two of the four main characters dead, one in prison, and one widowed.  I stand by that ending and would not change any of the characters' fates, but although I like the story, it's not one I particularly enjoyed writing or look back at with a lot of nostalgia the way I do other novels.  I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the ending itself, or if it's just coincidence that the ones with happy or bittersweet endings are the ones I feel more connected to.

At least at 19, his best buddy and older brother didn't have wives to focus on... yet. I think post-Brian&Kevin marriages is when Nick got a little more lost. I know thirty-year-olds that haven't, so getting yourself together by 2008 is pretty good! Though we probably didn't fully feel like he had it together at that time. Aww, no kicking Kevin. Let's just throw plot bunnies at him. *tosses bunnies* lol

Yeah, I don't think Nick was a hot mess yet at 19.  That was more 2003-2008ish.  Brian and Kevin getting married and then Kevin leaving the group probably didn't help, but I also think he was just at that age where he needed to find himself, the way most kids do in college.  Since he didn't go to college, he did it in his own way.

Fine... here, Kevin, have a plot bunny.  Just don't have #Anal Sex with it.

I don't... Backstreet Bauhaus seems right? When did that site start?

I wanna say 2001?  Maybe 2002?  Somewhere around there.

There's a video for it?! I have missed so much. Please shame me, lol.

*Three-ish minutes later...*

Ummm... I love this song, but WTF did I just watch?

I love that the flu and the video inspired you to write an off the rails Rudolph story that became a trilogy, lol!

Oh girl!  You did miss a lot!

That was my reaction the first time I saw it LOL.  https://twitter.com/RokofAges75/status/269142830767824896  The replies to this tweet are where the term "pandaskunk" was coined.

And then Mare made a challenge about it, but I had already started writing my story: http://absolutechaos.net/fictalk/index.php/topic,3104.15.html

Same. That was also one of my favorite part about it, naming the fraternity BSB, lol. I've thought maybe I'd go back and finish other unfinished things, and I did specifically say "unlikely to ever be updated" on most of them except Gobosei, where I said "I don't like to make promises, but there's a good chance you will eventually be able to read this whole story." I guess like you, I'm in the never say never camp, but we're also all past college age now, so a college story may resonate a lot less.

Yeah, I think I would have a harder time writing a story set in college or high school now.  Another nail in the coffin for my Broken original novel LOL.  Maybe there's more hope for Gobosei.  See... never say never!

Born in 1999? Crazy! To be born into a world after Millennium was released... Is that nice or not? I can't decided.

Glad you finally went to bed at almost 3am! But at least you finished your chapter.

I don't think it's nice.  Imagine missing BSB at their peak!  We were born at the perfect time.  The late 90s were awesome!!  I think 1997 in particular was a magical year because so many of my favorite things came out in that year:  BSB's U.S. debut, Titanic, South Park, and Harry Potter, to name a few.

It was after 4 by the time I finally went to sleep!  Two days in, and I'm already getting into my "stay up all night and sleep all morning" summer schedule.