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redbellyturtlesthis is mostly an excuse for me to talk about myself so <3
playlist + quotes i stuck in my notes app
spotify playlist (i was not kidding when i said it’s the majority of troye sivan’s blue neighborhood + 2 other songs): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/63cYBXQ6SDCLD4XVfBFRkP?si=d4fc3fb5c2284929
quotes:
“every august without fail is like i will give you some of the most beautiful golden summer moments of your life but also you will be thinking about childhood and loss constantly. it will always be either 5 pm or 2 am”
- solarflowers
“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”
- Trove Jansson, ”Moominvalley in November”
“to the person listening to “moon song” by phoebe bridgers on repeat:
love will not always feel this way.
the dark blue of it all.
the sinking.
it won’t always have you by the throat like that.
- Trista Mateer, from “girl, isolated”
I also had a few images but I don’t really want to go through the trouble of uploading them off my local drive so <3
actually writing
Just a quick warning that this is super all over the place!
The first thing that I came up with was the title, which was originally “nautical twilight” because it’s my favorite time of day. (I later changed the title because I searched up “twilight” on google to find photographs of, well, twilights, and then movie scenes from the Twilight Saga popped up and I was like “oh dear god what if people think of sparkly vampires going sailing.”) I wanted a fic to go with the title, and I had a couple different ideas bouncing around my head.
Then I read “just like another season” by Shakti (predebut), and I was like fuck you know what twilight reminds me of? Coming of age films. At this point, it was late July, and ealry August always makes me feel some kind of way (nostalgia, loss of childhood, etc. etc.), and I think that definitely made its way into the fic. And I found the quote above about August and twilight both being borders roughly halfway into writing the fic, and things finally clicked into place.
The first thing I wrote was the paragraph about sunshowers, which I later moved onto the very last scene for Reasons I Will Go Into Later. I wrote it on my phone one afternoon, and later that night, I couldn’t go to sleep because my brain kept coming up with lines, so I kept sitting up and typing them into the notes app of my phone half-blind, and low and behold, that’s how I ended up with the first 600 words of this fic. They were all super disparate lines, and I think they ended up spreading into 6 different scenes. Which is pretty on-par with how I usually write.
I admire people who are able to write their scenes in linear order because I just can’t do it for any fic. I always find myself stuck if I force myself to write in order, and I end up skipping ahead to the scenes I actually want to write, then come back and fill in whatever I feel like is necessary for the narrative. (I couldn't even manage to write this dw post in order.)
And there’s nothing wrong with doing this, but it definitely creates inconsistencies. Luckily, this fic wasn’t at all plot-based, so I could get away with it. I think the only two fics that I’ve planned out are “twisting kaleidoscope” and “heat of a rolling wind,” and even “heat of a rolling wind” was a cobbled together mess of scenes that I didn’t stick to.
Planning out “twisting kaleidoscope” made it harder to write in some ways, and I would often get stuck on scenes because I just didn’t want to write them. Then I would force myself to sit down every day and write even if I didn’t particularly feel like writing, which sucked some major ass, and I would feel super unproductive because I’d only be able to chug out 500 words or so. And I think that might contribute to why that fic might be my least favorite.
With “nautical twilight,” I wanted to give myself a break from all of that, and I wanted to give myself room to explore and as much time as I wanted to spend. I think this is the longest I’ve ever taken to write just 5k, but it felt so much better. I’m still feeling a little burnt out just because that’s what writing does to me, but I genuinely like this fic. Like, I’m proud of how it turned out! Which feels a little unusual. That being said, I still wrote it pretty quickly, and I regret posting it so soon. I wish I had given myself a week away from writing then gone back to edit it ruthlessly, but then I might’ve spent forever trying to perfect it. So maybe it’s for the best that things turned out the way they did.
Of course, anyone who has seen my priv tweets knows that this fic has made me want to tear my hair out, which is true. But it was less of a “I (genuinely) hate this fic and think it’s not going well and I hate writing it” and more of a “I feel so weird writing in this style and not pressuring myself to write every day and I wish I knew where this fic was going and this makes me so insanely uncomfortable so I’m going to shorten that all down to i h8 this fic.” But I don’t! I kind of love her. And maybe I’ll come back to it in 5 years and be like “what the hell is this,” but for now, I love her, and that counts for something!
Even though I didn’t put pressure on myself to write every day, like I had with my other fics, I did have some goals. I went into this fic wanting to work on elevating my prose and use of figurative language, which I think I accomplished? It’s definitely a different style than my other fics, which generally were more casual and “Character A did this then Character B did this then Character A did this” and contained lots of dialogue. Arguably, I overdid the figurative language a little bit because there’s genuinely no reason for me to fit so many similes into 5k words!
I think I might give myself some distance from this one then go back to edit it and pare down anything that isn’t necessary. But I hate editing my own fics because I always get super attached to literally every sentence that I write, so we’ll see how that ends up going.
In regards to the second person, it’s how I first conceptualized the fic, and I’m usually very hesitant to use second person POV because it can, frankly, turn out horrendously. But there was this one fic I read back as a wee 13 year old that has since been deleted (maybe 5 years ago?), and it’s genuinely one of the best uses of second person that I’ve read (not that I’ve read that many, to be fair). That fic was my original comfort fic, and I took screenshots on my phone so I could read them on the bus on the way to school every morning like a #fucking_nerd. And then I broke my phone, so the screenshots were lost forever AND the fic was deleted, so here we are! But for real, I can’t believe this fic that I haven’t read in the past 5 years still affects how I write. It’s kind of insane.
I think I got a couple of scenes into this fic before I realized that I wanted to incorporate in photography for genuinely no fucking reason other than the fact that while I was looking up things related to nautical twilights, sites about photography kept popping up. I’m sure I could make my incorporation of photography sound #deep_and_meaningful but it’s really not? I need you to understand that I stumble my way ass-backwards into half of my ideas for fics.
But once I realized I wanted to incorporate photography, I really doubled down on the style of writing. I wanted it to feel photographic, like a moment taken out of time. And that ended up extending to me packing as many different descriptions of lighting as I could into this fic. And then I realized that if I wanted my writing to feel photographic, then it would make sense for the narrator (Jay) to have a connection to photography, particularly because this fic is in second person, where the reader feels more closely tied to the main character/narrator.
In regards to the writing process itself, I wrote the first 55% in one non-linear chunk then got a little stuck because I wasn’t sure how I wanted the second half of the fic to go. Originally, I had planned on Jaywon explicitly getting together, but I was less and less sure of how I would exactly go about accomplishing that because it would involve a very extensive and open conversation, and that just didn’t fit the style of this fic. I stumbled through the following few scenes, completely unsure of where they were leading.
And I hate that I’m saying this, but then I went for a walk and touched some grass, and the ending lines of the fic just popped into my head. From there, I filled in the rest (the second swing set scene, the breakfast scene).
Going back to what I said earlier about planning on having the sunshower paragraph as my first paragraph of the fic, after I got to the end, I realized that that wasn’t going to work. It felt like the paragraph signaled that Jaywon were going to get together in the end, and I didn’t want to do the whole “surprise! Plot twist!” thing. But I also didn’t want to get rid of it, so I stuck it at the end to signal that there’s more to the story because people grow throughout their lives!
I'm sure that if I worked at it, I could have written an explicitly happy ending for this fic, but as of right now, I’m glad I ended it how I did. Right after I wrote that scene, I actually texted one of my friends (Mun, my beloved) and was like “shit I think I tricked myself into writing a second Jaywon fic.” But now, I’m not entirely sure that’s necessary or that I want to. Something something there are certain things that are better left unwritten.
Anyways, tldr this fic is my favorite out of the ones I’ve written so far. It was a gift. For myself <3
what's next + writing in general
I think I’m actually going to give myself a break from writing fic. Completely. I was already really tired after “twisting kaleidoscope” and “heat of a rolling wave.” And then this fic happened, and it drained me in a completely different way.
And I think I really do need to force myself into a break because I’ve written almost 40k in the past month and a half, which might not be a lot for some people, ut as someone who has pretty much just picked up writing pieces longer than a 20-line poem, it’s been pretty tiring. Until I get so excited about an idea that I genuinely just cannot stop, I don’t see myself writing anything else?
Plus I’m going back to school pretty soon, and I’m overloading on credits next semester and still working and probably volunteering. So I don’t think I’ll have the time or the mental capacity to write anything for fall semester. But like I always say, we’ll see how things go!
playlist + quotes i stuck in my notes app
spotify playlist (i was not kidding when i said it’s the majority of troye sivan’s blue neighborhood + 2 other songs): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/63cYBXQ6SDCLD4XVfBFRkP?si=d4fc3fb5c2284929
quotes:
“every august without fail is like i will give you some of the most beautiful golden summer moments of your life but also you will be thinking about childhood and loss constantly. it will always be either 5 pm or 2 am”
- solarflowers
“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”
- Trove Jansson, ”Moominvalley in November”
“to the person listening to “moon song” by phoebe bridgers on repeat:
love will not always feel this way.
the dark blue of it all.
the sinking.
it won’t always have you by the throat like that.
- Trista Mateer, from “girl, isolated”
I also had a few images but I don’t really want to go through the trouble of uploading them off my local drive so <3
actually writing
Just a quick warning that this is super all over the place!
The first thing that I came up with was the title, which was originally “nautical twilight” because it’s my favorite time of day. (I later changed the title because I searched up “twilight” on google to find photographs of, well, twilights, and then movie scenes from the Twilight Saga popped up and I was like “oh dear god what if people think of sparkly vampires going sailing.”) I wanted a fic to go with the title, and I had a couple different ideas bouncing around my head.
Then I read “just like another season” by Shakti (predebut), and I was like fuck you know what twilight reminds me of? Coming of age films. At this point, it was late July, and ealry August always makes me feel some kind of way (nostalgia, loss of childhood, etc. etc.), and I think that definitely made its way into the fic. And I found the quote above about August and twilight both being borders roughly halfway into writing the fic, and things finally clicked into place.
The first thing I wrote was the paragraph about sunshowers, which I later moved onto the very last scene for Reasons I Will Go Into Later. I wrote it on my phone one afternoon, and later that night, I couldn’t go to sleep because my brain kept coming up with lines, so I kept sitting up and typing them into the notes app of my phone half-blind, and low and behold, that’s how I ended up with the first 600 words of this fic. They were all super disparate lines, and I think they ended up spreading into 6 different scenes. Which is pretty on-par with how I usually write.
I admire people who are able to write their scenes in linear order because I just can’t do it for any fic. I always find myself stuck if I force myself to write in order, and I end up skipping ahead to the scenes I actually want to write, then come back and fill in whatever I feel like is necessary for the narrative. (I couldn't even manage to write this dw post in order.)
And there’s nothing wrong with doing this, but it definitely creates inconsistencies. Luckily, this fic wasn’t at all plot-based, so I could get away with it. I think the only two fics that I’ve planned out are “twisting kaleidoscope” and “heat of a rolling wind,” and even “heat of a rolling wind” was a cobbled together mess of scenes that I didn’t stick to.
Planning out “twisting kaleidoscope” made it harder to write in some ways, and I would often get stuck on scenes because I just didn’t want to write them. Then I would force myself to sit down every day and write even if I didn’t particularly feel like writing, which sucked some major ass, and I would feel super unproductive because I’d only be able to chug out 500 words or so. And I think that might contribute to why that fic might be my least favorite.
With “nautical twilight,” I wanted to give myself a break from all of that, and I wanted to give myself room to explore and as much time as I wanted to spend. I think this is the longest I’ve ever taken to write just 5k, but it felt so much better. I’m still feeling a little burnt out just because that’s what writing does to me, but I genuinely like this fic. Like, I’m proud of how it turned out! Which feels a little unusual. That being said, I still wrote it pretty quickly, and I regret posting it so soon. I wish I had given myself a week away from writing then gone back to edit it ruthlessly, but then I might’ve spent forever trying to perfect it. So maybe it’s for the best that things turned out the way they did.
Of course, anyone who has seen my priv tweets knows that this fic has made me want to tear my hair out, which is true. But it was less of a “I (genuinely) hate this fic and think it’s not going well and I hate writing it” and more of a “I feel so weird writing in this style and not pressuring myself to write every day and I wish I knew where this fic was going and this makes me so insanely uncomfortable so I’m going to shorten that all down to i h8 this fic.” But I don’t! I kind of love her. And maybe I’ll come back to it in 5 years and be like “what the hell is this,” but for now, I love her, and that counts for something!
Even though I didn’t put pressure on myself to write every day, like I had with my other fics, I did have some goals. I went into this fic wanting to work on elevating my prose and use of figurative language, which I think I accomplished? It’s definitely a different style than my other fics, which generally were more casual and “Character A did this then Character B did this then Character A did this” and contained lots of dialogue. Arguably, I overdid the figurative language a little bit because there’s genuinely no reason for me to fit so many similes into 5k words!
I think I might give myself some distance from this one then go back to edit it and pare down anything that isn’t necessary. But I hate editing my own fics because I always get super attached to literally every sentence that I write, so we’ll see how that ends up going.
In regards to the second person, it’s how I first conceptualized the fic, and I’m usually very hesitant to use second person POV because it can, frankly, turn out horrendously. But there was this one fic I read back as a wee 13 year old that has since been deleted (maybe 5 years ago?), and it’s genuinely one of the best uses of second person that I’ve read (not that I’ve read that many, to be fair). That fic was my original comfort fic, and I took screenshots on my phone so I could read them on the bus on the way to school every morning like a #fucking_nerd. And then I broke my phone, so the screenshots were lost forever AND the fic was deleted, so here we are! But for real, I can’t believe this fic that I haven’t read in the past 5 years still affects how I write. It’s kind of insane.
I think I got a couple of scenes into this fic before I realized that I wanted to incorporate in photography for genuinely no fucking reason other than the fact that while I was looking up things related to nautical twilights, sites about photography kept popping up. I’m sure I could make my incorporation of photography sound #deep_and_meaningful but it’s really not? I need you to understand that I stumble my way ass-backwards into half of my ideas for fics.
But once I realized I wanted to incorporate photography, I really doubled down on the style of writing. I wanted it to feel photographic, like a moment taken out of time. And that ended up extending to me packing as many different descriptions of lighting as I could into this fic. And then I realized that if I wanted my writing to feel photographic, then it would make sense for the narrator (Jay) to have a connection to photography, particularly because this fic is in second person, where the reader feels more closely tied to the main character/narrator.
In regards to the writing process itself, I wrote the first 55% in one non-linear chunk then got a little stuck because I wasn’t sure how I wanted the second half of the fic to go. Originally, I had planned on Jaywon explicitly getting together, but I was less and less sure of how I would exactly go about accomplishing that because it would involve a very extensive and open conversation, and that just didn’t fit the style of this fic. I stumbled through the following few scenes, completely unsure of where they were leading.
And I hate that I’m saying this, but then I went for a walk and touched some grass, and the ending lines of the fic just popped into my head. From there, I filled in the rest (the second swing set scene, the breakfast scene).
Going back to what I said earlier about planning on having the sunshower paragraph as my first paragraph of the fic, after I got to the end, I realized that that wasn’t going to work. It felt like the paragraph signaled that Jaywon were going to get together in the end, and I didn’t want to do the whole “surprise! Plot twist!” thing. But I also didn’t want to get rid of it, so I stuck it at the end to signal that there’s more to the story because people grow throughout their lives!
I'm sure that if I worked at it, I could have written an explicitly happy ending for this fic, but as of right now, I’m glad I ended it how I did. Right after I wrote that scene, I actually texted one of my friends (Mun, my beloved) and was like “shit I think I tricked myself into writing a second Jaywon fic.” But now, I’m not entirely sure that’s necessary or that I want to. Something something there are certain things that are better left unwritten.
Anyways, tldr this fic is my favorite out of the ones I’ve written so far. It was a gift. For myself <3
what's next + writing in general
I think I’m actually going to give myself a break from writing fic. Completely. I was already really tired after “twisting kaleidoscope” and “heat of a rolling wave.” And then this fic happened, and it drained me in a completely different way.
And I think I really do need to force myself into a break because I’ve written almost 40k in the past month and a half, which might not be a lot for some people, ut as someone who has pretty much just picked up writing pieces longer than a 20-line poem, it’s been pretty tiring. Until I get so excited about an idea that I genuinely just cannot stop, I don’t see myself writing anything else?
Plus I’m going back to school pretty soon, and I’m overloading on credits next semester and still working and probably volunteering. So I don’t think I’ll have the time or the mental capacity to write anything for fall semester. But like I always say, we’ll see how things go!
