Off the prompt "cuddles."

So because I'm super terrible at doing things with no deadline I've been contemplating making myself weekly schedule of all the things I want to do and keep failing to get to. It's funny because when I was a kid somebody told my parents I needed more structure, apparently it's true, except that with externally imposed structures it's too easy for me to see the arbitrariness and refute them. I apparently need internally imposed arbitrary structures, I guess. The current iteration of weekly schedule I'm contemplating looks something like:

Sunday: relax, read fanfic
Monday: bake or batch cook (to be replaced by jobhunting after I have done the schedule a week and am okay with the idea of the schedule) (cooking tends to happen on its own, I do get sufficient satisfaction from it to compel myself to do it without a scheduled day)
Tuesday: writing
Wednesday: vidding
Thursday: quilting
Friday: alternate between mending day and cleaning the bathroom top to bottom
Saturday: Knitting for me (there was a knitting for other people item on Friday, but knitting for other people tends to happen without the schedule because those have holiday deadlines mostly, and this list is for items that I want to do but I'm not getting done)

So I looked at the list today to see what I was going to be doing and trying to figure out writing freaked me out and I wanted to switch the days around to do quilting today or something. I think it's okay to alter the schedule for like, workflow reasons? Like I am considering making Saturday the relaxing day and putting a doing something item on Sunday because Saturday my roommates are home from work and I am likely to hang out with them and not do Things, versus on Sunday they are at work and some of these items I feel more comfortable doing without other people around. However I don't think it's okay to change the schedule because on a particular day I don't want to do to thing that's on schedule because if I give into that I will just constantly move the things that I don't want to do into the future and they won't get done and it will thus defeat the purpose of the entire concept.

So even though it's not what I originally meant by writing (I was thinking narrative fiction, probably fanfiction, maybe eventually in the future pro writing, scripts for things I want to produce, when that concept terrifies me less) I decided that writing this entry that's all meta about writing would be my stab at writing for the day. Yay success.

Part of the reason writing narrative fiction caused me to freak out was that I can't pick which story to write. And then part of it is I have notes for different stories, disorganized, stashed in years' worth chat logs, and occasionally I start the project of sorting through chat logs for all the stories or a specific story but it's such a gargantuan project and it doesn't feel like actually writing, prose is not produced. I think it's okay to write a story out of order (although I've never really done so) so I'm going to try to give myself permission to, if I find a scene notated in a chat log that grabs me, translate it into the narrative prose on the spot without finishing the gargantuan project of sorting all the chat logs because I can't finish that project first and then start writing, even though I feel like that's the right order to do things, because doing that just puts off writing indefinitely.

The other thing I want to do today is pick a limited set of all the stories I'm interested in writing, with and eye to limiting how many years of chat logs I need to sort through to get my data. My most recent plotbunny-generating fandoms are Teen Wolf and Cherryh's Foreigner series, and my participation in Teen Wolf extends back a sufficient number of years that I'm not willing to put all of my plotbunnies for that show on this limited list, there's too many, there's too much volume of chat log to go through.

So the stories I'm willing to look at and work on are:

–Wolf wife, a sort of fairytale deconstruction I was working on at the end of last year/beginning of this year which I actually wrote a few thousand words of narrative prose for and planned out to the actual ending. That's only about two months of logs to look through and the existing readable prose might encourage me to write more.
–Bren-daja, an AU of the Foreigner series in which the protagonist is female instead of male, featuring menstruation in science fiction, cross cultural discussions of queerness with aliens, and chocolate smuggling. I don't believe I wrote any narrative prose on this but it's a plotbunny I had this year so all the chat logs should be like January through May, and I think I outlined it all the way to the conclusion as well.
–The Yes Story, a magical allegory on consent and also one manifestation of an archetype of a story I have had plotbunnies for across multiple fandoms, and also a wallow in whumping and hurt/comfort for when I have depressive moments and need something external to be sad about (this happened last month when I was having my downswing, I started thinking about this story and poked chat logs, and had the funny realization that it was much less distressing to focus on the terribleness of Stiles under a curse than to feel like everything in my life was terrible. Especially when I had crying for no reason days. Crying over a story feels much less broken than crying for no reason because depression. So I don't want to focus on this story all the time but I sort of want it to be there when I need it, and to be on this list of stuff I can poke.) These logs go back to April 2013 so that's a longer chunk of data and will be intermixed with other stories like Magic Rituals that I might also get distracted by, but at least this one is also outlined beginning to end. (It actually came into the world fairly fully formed, the first scene I thought very much about was the end when Stiles and Lydia are burning the body and breaking the curse. I was driving from LA to Phoenix and that scene playing in my head was sort of an odd companion, yet still better than when I let my brain wander down dark depressive holes, which it can do when I'm on a long drive alone at night--I need to keep a better collection of audiobooks and radio plays and maybe podcasts for that drive, they're the best distraction from the inside of my own brain.)

So the other day Steve tweaked me about something, and I said, whoa, wait, what?

For the longest time, Ivan Vorpatril has been the only character in my head who's had enough independence to have his own opinions, and notice and respond to me, and it was largely a function of what his personality is--he's a slinker, so what I noticed was he kept trying to slink off and hide from me. That and the intelligence.

The Steve in my head has apparently woken up enough to have... similar independence. And I didn't notice for the longest time because he didn't try to slink off--but that's not who he is. He's nice! He's a sweetie. Unlike Ivan, he doesn't hate me. So I didn't notice that his compliance wasn't the moldable plasticity of the ordinary kind of character I shape until he got comfortable enough to drop his sense of humor on me. It's subtle! Kind of wry. Usually self-deprecating. Except if he knows you well enough he'll nudge you the way he'd nudge himself. (See also: "Don't do anything stupid until I get back" "How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you.")

Seriously, most of my characters don't talk back! And Steve doesn't really do backtalk, but, he's decided he's hung out in my head long enough to start teasing me for my foibles. So that's apparently a thing now.

*laugh* I was talking to niqaeli about it and the differences between how the Steve in my head and the Ivan in my head behave towards me, and we rapidly concluded that no shit Ivan runs for the hills when he can and Steve doesn't feel the need--we do hilariously awful things to Ivan because we delight in watching him squirm, whereas we do cute, fun things to Steve because he grins like a loon and it's fantastic. This icon, this icon is TOTALLY the world I keep writing for Steve. The future is awesome! I keep introducing him to interesting people. Some of them are robots! Or centaurs! Or his soulmate! Why exactly would he run away?

Somewhere in my head Ivan is sulking, because there's a new chewtoy as independent as he is, who has somehow drawn a better lot in plot bunnies and has no interest in coming to hide in a corner with him.