By ‘fic’ I’m going to assume you mean Speak With Your Eyes since it’s the biggest fic I have lol.

Okay so planning: I didn’t really ‘plan’ as such. I knew in my head where the story was going, the realistically there was no way for mnsvng to stay on the 4TZ-1024 without being made to return to earth, and that they’d eventually want to return to space. The final scene was always going to be them stepping on to the 4TZ-1024, I knew that from the moment I decided to expand the story past the end of Part One (when the 4TZ-1024 crew grabbed me by the neck and refused to just be cameos lmao). In terms of character development, I really just let the characters do what they wanted, I didn’t try to force anything. A good example was that there was only supposed to be one smut scene (the final one) in the fic, but there ended up being 2 more I didn’t anticipate lol (mnsvng were just too in love and horny)

I rewrote and restructured very little of the fic, how you guys read it on A03 is pretty much exactly how I wrote it the first time, bar a few repetitive word changes or an extra sentence here or there where Aqua thought it needed more clarity.

I definitely did not do word counts per day lmao. I work two part-time jobs and it wasn’t feasible to do that to myself. I started writing Speak With Your Eyes in December of 2022, even though I didn’t post Part One on A03 until May 2023. It took me roughly 14 months to write the whole thing. I wrote when I felt like it, though towards the end I did ‘check-ins’ with Aqua where we agreed I would send her word count updates every week because my mental health was bad and it was a good way for me to force myself to make time for the hobbies I enjoy (writing) and actively pursue it.

Motivation… I’m not going to lie, motivation was hard. Because I wrote this as part of a bingo, I had to post the first chapter before the bingo ended for it to qualify, which forced me into ‘work in progress’ land. I would never do that again. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people don’t read WIPs, I’ve been in fandom for a long time and I’ve been burned by fics I’ve loved that were abandoned more times than I can count. I don’t blame people who decide to wait until a fic is finished to read it, I do the exact same thing too. But it was extremely difficult because I was writing this hurt/comfort fic that was very emotionally draining (because hellooooo I was hurting my poor babies so much) and I was also exploring topics that can get you into a funky headspace. So I was working really hard on it, posting a new chapter and then receiving very little feedback or comments from people and it was very disheartening. I very nearly quit a few times, but ultimately my friends encouraged me not to and I kept going. I’m very grateful to everyone who read and commented while it was a WIP, they don’t know how much it meant to me. In the end, I’m very satisfied with how Speak With Your Eyes turned out and I’m glad I preserved through lonely WIP land to come out the other side. Though you will never catch me posting a multi-chaptered fic unless it’s already complete ever again lmao

Sorry for such a long answer (whoops 😳) Thank you so much for your questions and also for loving Speak With Your Eyes that much! It means a lot to me as it was the first ‘big’ fic I’ve ever written and I wasn’t sure anyone would even care about my space boys. It honestly means a lot that so many people have given my fic a chance and loved it since it was completed and I’ve been seriously overwhelmed by the positive feedback to the point it’s made me tear up 🥹