the flower field

I thought it would be fun to keep a running log of my progress on my wips, so here we are. Way later than intended, I am finally starting to put pen to paper for the upcoming ship week taking place in July. There are two weeks actually--one for veinfei (I prefer the ship name veifei, or vfei for short, but on twitter, where the week is taking place, veinfei was popularised) and one for the reverse dynamic, feivein. I lean more towards veifei than feivein, but god if I had time I'd be participating in both weeks because ahh the prompts look so good!

Unfortunately though, I am a slow, thoughtful writer, who easily gets lost in the sauce of details and what ifs and so on so forth, so I'm being selective about the handful of prompts I'm choosing. Day one is mafia/sickfic/vampire (for sfw prompts, anyway. I am eyeing the nsfw prompts though, trust and believe). For me, I always seem to like challenging myself to combine the prompts, and it gets my imagination whirring seeing how I could conceivably combine mafia and vampires and sickfic. 

Where I ended up, in terms of basic premise/vibes is: okay so, what if, post-Yingdu, Vein and Xia Fei are reunited but Vein has specifically come-back-wrong as a vampire--Xia Fei gets himself into a bad situation, nearly losing his life in the process, but Vein turns him just in time as a last resort (they can't lose one another Again, Xia Fei probably begs him to be saved). Now, a newly turned Xia Fei gets a terrible case of turning sickness, his body trying to adapt to now being a vampire, and Vein cares for him, at first distantly and regretting the pain he's inadvertently putting Xia Fei through, but eventually he opens up....

Technically speaking, the doc is at 0 words; I was feeling especially intimidated at the thought of the dreaded blinking cursor, despite having an idea. Part of that is what I said before, that I get too lost in the small details and it prevents me from starting. I process carefully, slow, and so I need to feel compelled or maybe propelled forwards by a strong image, certainty, and some sense of where I'm going. I rarely outline in a typical way anymore, especially not for (what is hopefully) a shorter fic, but recently my hack for pushing through that awful paralysis is writing on paper! I have this little ish spiral notebook, off-white paper, easy to hunch over and fill up and feel that sense of movement and progress. 

So, I started off with scribbles/word vomit/notes there. I got down what I think I know about the piece, and then the questions and the gaps, I throw out suggestions to myself, I sometimes narrate bits or write down snippets of prose as they come to me, whatever. As long as I'm writing, then I'm happy. There's something so calming and nostalgic and freeing about writing on paper--I feel like my thoughts flow better there, honestly. 

I've become more certain in the setting for the first scene; we're kicking things off with Xia Fei's nearly death, and I thinkkk I want it to be in an abandoned, dilapidated amusement park. Why? Because I think the vibe will work well, I don't know. I make so many of my choices based not on logistics but feeling, vibes, and vague intuition. Also probably because I'm rereading The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and just read a scene at an amusement park. I am somewhat certain of why Xia Fei's there (it's a trap and, rash as he is, he took the bait) and I have a loose notion of the plot beats after this initial scene. Still, there are a lot of blanks to fill...


Also an awful realisation I am constantly reckoning with, regarding writing, is that so much of it is just logistics and decision making. I have one of writing profs in my head going writing is making choices and I'm going I Know, I knowww, God I Know. This is something that is terrible, because I am the least logical and most indecisive person I know. I often say that I lack common sense, because things that occur to other people simply do not occur to me. People will come to these conclusions after some deductive reasoning, meanwhile I simply did not get there. I think this has a lot to do with me being autistic, and how I'm a bottom-up thinker, or to put it in other words, I build up from the small details, rather than having a bigger picture view first and filling in the details. My writing comes to me in flimsy fragments--a line, an image, a vague feeling I want to put into words, one small nugget that captures me. Rarely do I get ideas for plots, concepts, things with multiple moving parts. My ideas feel quite...singular in its scope. 

This can be a pro, in some ways--I've had some great feedback about my prose style, about the small nuances I sometimes capture, and the particularities of my atmosphere. But man, it's NOT conducive for writing narrative with different threads or perspectives, and the less Singular something is the harder it seems to be for me. 

Speaking of perspectives, I am tempted to make the dual pov between Xia Fei and Vein. I have yet to write a longer fic in Vein's pov, and what better time than this fic where he's a regretful, emotionally conflicted vampire (who also wants Xia Fei so so bad)? Some of the snippets I jotted down Are in his point of view, even, so maybe....! However his pov does intimidate me, exactly the reason why I've been holding off on it. No clue how long this fic is going to be but I pray that it's no more than a couple thousand words and/or I am possessed and I write it up so quickly that the wordcount doesn't really matter. For now, though, I think I'll do some more thinking and noting down, maybe take a shower (it continues to be So Hot here, and showers are good for daydreaming and brainstorming) and then set it aside and start Actually typing up some words tomorrow. 

Thank you for joining me for my first in progress rambling!

<3