[Bunny #3] Proper Bunny Management Pt. 1

[kalloway]

Just a reminder - this is your community, too. Feel free to use it to ask for advice, vent, commiserate, celebrate, etc.


So. We've been here a month. \o/ We have made our shiny lists and looked at our shiny lists and a few of us have possibly even despaired a bit over our shiny lists before remembering they are shiny lists of awesome things we're gonna write/draw/create/etc.

Let's talk about how things end up on those lists this week.

(Now, I am absolutely not anti-bingo/challenge/bigbang/exchange. I think those are awesome and fun activities. But it's easy to end up participating in a lot of them and get overwhelmed. You absolutely do not have to, but next time you see one you want to sign up for -- wait three days and if you're still excited and are sure you can follow through, go ahead and do it.)


And since we're at the one month mark, it's time for list revision. You are free to look over your list and remove anything that you've realized isn't working for you. There is nothing wrong with keeping all your bunnies, of course, but it is also okay to let go.


This is also a weekly check-in! You do not have to check in, of course, but if you would like to comment on the last week, feel free!


If you have a deadline coming up, you can do it! If you need a deadline, feel free to ask!


The current Brainstorming Post is here!

Comments

[green]

I finally have a thing to celebrate and I'm so happy to be able to do so here.

I FINALLY finished a fic. I started it in 2012 and it's been sitting around in gdocs since 2013 with one missing scene. Last night I wrote the scene and posted the story, since all the rest of it had been beta'd 2 years ago. So yay, finally finished and posted something, and I'm hoping that will get some kind of momentum going. :D?

[kalloway]

That's awesome and you should feel awesome! \o/

[green]

ty, bb! ♥

[retsuko]

SWEET! Go you! :D

[green]

thanks! :D

[crookedspoon]

Go you, it's always such a relief to get long-standing WIPs out in hte open!

[green]

Thanks! It's a great feeling, definitely. :D

[kalloway]

(says the person who just took another genprompt_bingo card)

I think I end up with so many bingo cards/prompt lists/etc. is because I took a card/did the challenge/whatever once and feel like I should keep doing it because it was a cool [insert event here] and I want the people who run it to know people are interested and sort of don't stop to think that I really don't need another [insert event here]. Maybe next time I'll try for 'I appreciate that you run this and want to tell you you're awesome' instead of signing up.

Typed up/posted one ficlet from a notebook, still getting caught up on living-space/etc. activities from the last couple weeks of swing-shift madness~ Plans for the upcoming week involve lots of words and canon review and words, lalala~

If anyone is curious about the fic mentioned last week, I posted it to my own journal here and need to see about adding it to AO3 and the comm it was for.

[green]

I feel the same way, and I've signed up for a multitude of challenges for that very reason and then ended up backing out. Which sort of defeats the purpose. /o\

[kalloway]

I'm looking at another couple I'd love to do but I don't think I can bend spacetime that way. I'll have to try out my 'encouraging thanks to mod' and see how it goes. ^^;;

[crookedspoon]

I know that feel. And you want to keep doing it because you've done it for so many rounds now and breaking your streak would be stupid. At least that's another reason for me.

Good luck with all the words! :D

[retsuko]

Ugh, this week has been tough for personal, real life reasons, so the only writing I really got done was on Saturday, when I went to my meetup group. Granted, it was about 3K words, but I'm a little disappointed that that was it for the whole period. And, then, last night, another plot bunny got added to my list, and I'm like... damn, real life, just slow it down for a second here! >_>

[green]

3k is a healthy number though, so hooray for that! I hope your RL things settle/calm or become healthier, whatever the need is.

[kalloway]

I think that sounds like an awesome amount of words and I hope life calms down for you. *hugs*

[taichara]

I have learned my lesson re bigbangs and the like, and that lesson is: with the possible exception of ff_exchange don't bloody do them because it ends badly despite best efforts on my end. Feh.

Did the Challenge Week at fic_promptly last week (I wish I could be interested in the themes but it's not working since, oh, December), most of which were smallish things or a drabble -- and then the 1500-word Robotech thing out of nowhere, oops.

I'd like to tinker with an idea I have for a Gunvolt fic but what I'd really like is for that last textbook to arrive because I have 5k words of burbling about a very dead man to write for coursework and I'd like to get on that ...

[kalloway]

Yay for coursework (did book arrive today?)

[taichara]

Book has not arrived and I literally just came back in from checking for a parcel tag and there was none, so I didn't sleep through the delivery ...? I think? Or else postal dude forgot to leave the tag? Tracker still thinks it went out for delivery ...

I'll phone the outlet after work to check >.>;;

[kalloway]

If you're in the groove, stay in the groove! \o/

[crookedspoon]

Nothing wrong about not wanting to do shortfics! I wish I had the ideas and the drive to write longer stuff and admire everyone who can do that :D

GO YOU!

[ldybastet]

I got burned out on challenges while I was in HP fandom. There were just so many of them, and I got roped into signing up for a whole lot of them, including being part of a comm with a monthly deadline set for me to post on... And me being a slow writer, it ended up taking all of my writing energy, and I never got to write things for myself, bunnies that came from my own mind, but always the ones constructed to fit a prompt.

So, I am very careful to not do anything like that again! (Not that there are a whole lot of things to sign up for in my current fandom.) Ah, forgot to say: this is why I like the bingo challenge (and why I run one) - because they're generally rather laid back, if you're not the competing type. I've enjoyed them because it's a lot of time to write, and I get so much to choose from and I can work with it so it fits whatever fandom or characters *I* want to use. I enjoy the freedom, and it allows me to breed my own bunnies in response to the card. And if I don't get a bingo line, no big deal really. There's no recipient or mod I'm letting down.

Looking at my Shiny List, I have been able to finish and post one item, and another is waiting to be edited and polished. Since last week, I've added about 1000 words or so to the fic I'm writing now.

I see one of the things on the list is more of a premise bunny, but I feel that I can easily make it a porn bunny when I sit down with it and let my mind play around with it. So, I think I'll keep that on the list. I'll make a point of looking at it sometimes to see if I still really want to write everything I've put on there, or if I should erase one or two.

[kalloway]

Awesome progress and yay for a premise bunny finding, um... a good direction. ^_^;

[ldybastet]

LOL All my bunnies turn to porn for some reason. ;)

[crookedspoon]

I can relate. I started participating in exchanges in 2013, because I didn't have many ideas of my own and they were a good way to create something I normally wouldn't have. I was lucky, because in the beginning I got assignments that may as well have been tailored for me, with fandoms and pairings I had been meaning to write for for years.

In 2014, however, I got a couple of assignments that were a bit too hard for me and used up all the time I could have spent writing for my own ideas that were beginning to develop. Like you, I'm a slow writer and don't like to let recipients or mods down. So this year I'm trying to cut down on the exchanges and focus more on my own stuff.

I don't know if you're on LJ too, but there is this wonderful (addictive) community called 1-million-words which hosts a LOT of challenges to help you get the juices flowing, but it's all opt-in and pretty laid back, and you can combine every prompt of theirs with any other challenge you're working on. They're also great cheerleaders and have helped me be very productive so far! :D

Also, yay for words and ideas! :D

[ldybastet]

That's why I started participating too! Little did I know I'd soon be completely overwhelmed! I do like the bingo-like challenges because they give a lot of freedom, but also might get people to write things they never would have otherwise, just for the sake of getting that elusive bingo line. ;)

Good luck with the focusing on your own ideas! (And I mean that in the non-sarcastic way! LOL English isn't my first language, so I struggled to come up with something that sounded better, but had to give up.)

I am! I will have to check that community out! Thanks! :)

[leidmotief]

I also had a challenge burnout in the distant past, so I only sign up for one once on a blue moon. What I had been waiting for was list revision, though! I can barely set time aside to write nowadays, so this should be a little easier, I hope~

[kalloway]

You don't have to wait for the beginning of the month to revise your list! Do it whenever it needs it. (I just post so people consider/remember to do it~)

[crookedspoon]

Well, wow. I've been kind of very productive at the end of last month and that even though I don't have my laptop with me and need to operate from my family's PC whenever they're not hogging it. (I think it's the lack of shiny distractions on their PC?)

My overall writing goal for this year is 80k, and so far I've been doing pretty well. This month my goal is 6k and I'm already 2/3 done. That feels pretty awesome.

The only downside of all this is that my bunnies have been spawning like mad, and I can't decide what to write next (or even which to edit next, because my podficcer-friend wants to record them and I don't want to have them read sentences I think sound stupid when I could have done better.) I have things that *need* to be done, all of which isn't for the fandoms/pairings I am excited for now, and even if I want to get them out asap, I don't really have many ideas, because the people I owe the short manageable stuff say they'd be happy with whatever I come up with and while that's very nice, it doesn't really help me come up with anything.

Moreover, this not-being-able-to-decide thing is why I continue to participate in various challenges. I have a lot of ideas that I don't take seriously enough to write. Either because there would be too much plotting and researching involved, which lazy old me doesn't want to put in, because I both can't and think i shouldn't, not with so many other projects. But sometimes, these challenges I sign up for actually help me get all those half-assed ideas out. Then it's a win. Other times they just *add* to the ideas I have.

Anyway. I have a deadline for one of those half-assed ideas tonight, and I hope I'll make it. Once again I have been procrastinating on it. But only for a day, because it's a weekend challenge and damn, those are pretty awesome for getting shite done (if it's shite you've been meaning to do anyway).

As for lists, I have too many. Especially at times when my muses go on a rampage and spawn little ficlet bunnies everywhere, I get really confused. There are exchange fics with deadline that I don't want to drop out of, there are other things with deadline which I could drop out of, there are the things I owe people that do not have a deadline but which I don't want to postpone for too long (because I have some I've been sitting on almost a year) and then there are WIPs that have their first chapter posted but which I am too afraid to touch again.

Even now, after I've pruned my lists to the essential things (exchange fics, rewards, WIPs, current ideas), it's still at 30 items. Which makes it hard to choose from.

But what I found helps: a simple to-do widget on my phone (yes, I've been finally made to cave about getting a smartphone) in which I only add my exchange fics and those current ideas I think I may be able to write soon. (Or rather, should, before the momentum is gone.)

Sorry for the long post xD Does anyone else have tips on list-keeping they'd like to share?

[crookedspoon]

I must have misphrased that! On my *immediate* list (on my phone) are 5-7 items - things with upcoming deadlines and those random ideas that I want to write before my interest in them is gone. That excludes WIPs and reward fics and challenges without immediate deadlines.

That's what my other (handwritten) list is for. Those 30 items include long-standing WIPs and other stuff I do not want to forget but will definitely do once I get around to them. (My other handwritten list was getting cluttered with spur-of-the-moment ideas that have since lost their shine.)

(See, almost all of my stuff will be handled in less than 10k words, some even in under 1k. ;D)

[kalloway]

Does anyone else have tips on list-keeping they'd like to share?

More 'notes' than 'list-keeping', but keep as much in one place (or a couple cross-pollinated places) as possible. Makes it easier to organize and find what you've worked on, outlined, etc.

Even now, after I've pruned my lists to the essential things (exchange fics, rewards, WIPs, current ideas), it's still at 30 items. Which makes it hard to choose from.

Do one at a time. Remind yourself that you can do another one later, but only one right now. If necessary, the loudest/most important wins. The others are not going anywhere. They are patient.