Oh goodness what a question XD

So first thing: if at all possible I like to write well in advance of a deadline. I'm the kind of person who would start assignment 2-4 weeks early. But I do like the structure of deadlines and having something to plan and work towards, to motivate me to start working and thinking about something instead of putting it off for another day. I generally start working on snowspark 4-6 months in advance.

Generally, my writing process starts with me drifting through ideas until I find one that grabs me by the chest and that I can't stop thinking about it. I'll often dash off a scene or thoughts in a group chat or DM to a friend and then either in that same chat or in a doc, I'll write up something that's in between a first draft and an outline. Basically I'm telling a significant portion of the story with some POV moments, some dialogue where it feels right, etc. When I'm done I'll generally have 20-70% of the outline of the story written and will have hit on some major beats and moments.

At this point, I'll go back to what I've written and start 'back filling' aka I'll be reading what I wrote and filling out the scenes including adding whole new scenes. I'll keep up this process and also jump around, leave lots of [...] or [and then they did thing] as I need to. I'll also jump forward and continue my outline-first draft hybrid. Each session I will generally backread some if not all of what I've written before and edit, fill in further as needed.

This whole time I'll be sending snippets to some friends in a GC and getting their excitement feedback or sending the whole document and my friends will alpha read it/some of it. Their comments and reactions will often spark thoughts and edits for me which will push the story forwards and make me understand what I'm writing better as well as keeping me excited about the project.

Generally there's a point where I get stuck, where the POV character is really resisting me in some way and I need to do a deep read, maybe talk to a friend, maybe listen to a TTS version, probably all of the above. Often a character has some need that needs to be addressed before it feels right for that character to go to the next planned part of the plot. In 'Waxing Ecstatic' for instance, I got stuck twice, once in the scene where Jongdae takes his first bath after being waxed and once soon after Jongdae enters the club. In the bath scene, I had planned for Baekhyun to tease Jongdae and convince him to go to the club but I was totally stuck with Jongdae in the bathtub and feeling bad which I realized was coming from his character in my head. So I leaned in to those bad feelings he was feeling and wrote this whole breakdown and as I did I realized that he was actually really upset and confused by the feelings he was having after getting waxed, that he had all these fears about being left behind by his friends, about Baekhyun moving out and him being left alone forever. I then added more hints about these suppressed feelings to the first scene. In the second instance, where Jongdae has just come to the club, I was stuck because Jongdae was stuck and didn't want to be there so of course he wasn't cooperating when I tried to advance the plot. I realized he needed to have a conversation that made him willing to give the club and kink a try and since Kyungsoo and Jungian were right there, they were obvious people for him to have that conversation with. This also meant that when Baekhyun came around near the end of the story, Jongdae was disappointed to realize that Baekhyun hadn't read his mind about kink stuff just set up a meet cute with Minseok. But that also meant that Jongdae took ownership of his own growth in the fic.

The last phase of writing for me is usually the quickest. Ideally, I've given myself enough time to set the fic aside for a few days but ideally even longer. I try and read and immerse myself in other thoughts and works while that happens because I want to return to the fic with some perspective. I like to listen to a full TTS version (or read it aloud myself) as well as get a friend to do a proper beta read. Generally I've done so much editing at this point that this is pretty fast OR I've tapped in a friend while the fic wasn't all the way finished so again most of it is already done. But there is often some things that with the benefit of perspective aren't as clear they'd seemed before or a scene that doesn't have the effect I want it to and I'll make edits accordingly. Sometimes if I haven't started early enough or made enough progress, this all happens under a bit of a time crunch or I end up submitting for a fest and making some edits after the fact although I really hate doing that on AO3 because it's so easy to mess up formatting in some way.

Ultimately I would describe my writing process as being really dependent on conversations and interactions with friends and other writers because for me that's the magic of writing and fanfic. I could never write in a solitary tower, I need those reactions and conversations to give myself perspective and deeper understanding of my own work. My process also reflects that I really hate writing first drafts but love editing. At the same time if I just write a point by point outline I lose the feeling of excitement and momentum and wanting to know what happens next that drives me ahead in writing a fic for the first time. My process is designed to maximize that momentum and get down a first draft as quickly as possible so that I can move on to editing ASAP! I also make sure to give myself breaks where I'm not doing any writing because nothing is singing to me, especially if my brain is actively resisting the idea of writing. At the same time, I really value when friends mention a WIP they're excited about from me or I get a comment because those things can often spark that excitement that gets me to come back to a fic.

I hope this was helpful or interesting and thank you so much for asking!