A succubus walks into a clinic . . .

Why I can't write long works:

My daydreaming development process does not go "Here is a conflict! That conflict is introduced in A, then B happens, and C happens, and everything is resolved when D happens!" It does not even go: "Here is a conflict! I know that A happens and D happens, so what are B and C to connect these events?"

No, my brain goes: "Conflict? What conflict? Here are emotional beats e!A, e!B, e!C, and e!D. What situations A, B, C, D can I fabricate to get these emotional beats to come about?"

I don't actually care much about the situations themselves. They're simply vehicles to get to the pathos/catharsis I want. It's why my fanfics are emotionally situational: I just want to explore those mentalities and/or emotional journeys and developments without much thought to the "action."

Like, I've been just putting stuff on the page regarding that Morrigan-owned!Lauren story I've been going on and on about in random posts (for my own amusement and to get it out of my head) and I stepped back and looked at what I've written and went "It's so mundane. Nothing is happening! I don't care about outside conflicts like PI cases though I should probably make some half-assed effort at thinking some up, I just want to talk about these Bo and Lauren! But I need context, why do I need context, this sucks."

If I had my way, all my stories would just lack context and be vignettes loosely strung together by emotions, i.e. the ShizNat Drabbles. It's not an actual coherent story where the story unfolds along events, but snapshots that unfold across emotional moments.

THIS IS MY PROBLEM.

In other news, I have no idea who this Bo and this Lauren are in this alternate universe and I'm trying to decide if I can chase 'em. Dark!Lauren may be running away from me a bit; she's hot and cold, hard and soft, partly because I don't think she can find the happy balance, a bit lonely but also more integrated into her work environment and with her patients than canon has shown us and yet surprising me with how really, really distant she is. Part of this is because I'm mostly looking at her through a Bo!filter. (I really don't get why more [Light] fae in canon aren't kinder to Lauren because I feel like she's probably played physician to so many of them, so what gives, you ungrateful bastards?)

My other problem writing is that I tend to give the characters and the situation room to run and morph away from what I (thought I'd) originally had planned if it feels organic. (This ends up becoming a game of retroactive character building because I start going, "Hrm, but if that would be Character X's response, what in the world would have shaped Character X to be that type of person?") And, uh, it kind of escalated quickly between this Bo and Lauren:

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I don't plan for this fic to be a "real" fic with actual work and editing (I keep finding ridiculous typos, actually, and am starting to question my mental health regarding why I think one word but type a completely different one), but I am having fun thinking about this Bo and Lauren's dynamics and writing up scenes exploring it. Even if their interactions have already managed to go places I hadn't originally imagined. (I also need a mythological creature/fae who feeds on information and/or cool brain stuff that I can interpret willy-nilly-like. See, again, I know what needs to be done so I work backwards to fit things into the way I need them to work, rather than let the situation inform the circumstances.)

Have I mentioned I like Google Drive as a word processing tool? I have one huge gripe, though, and that is that you do need an Internet connection to work on any document; like I can't take my tablet with me and sit in a park and just write in the document. You can download a document to view it offline, but you can't work on it through the Drive app without being connected. Annoying.

But things I do like are the sharing feature, the comment feature, and other cool collaborative functions. I also enjoy that all the keyboard shortcuts for formatting like italics and bolding work. I'm not sure how crazy I am about the constant saving that goes on, but I've mitigated that by never deleting anything. Ctrl-X (keyboard shortcut for "cut") and Ctrl-V = OTP. Since I'm not doing anything crazy, it's not much different from writing on Word.

*sigh* New episode tonight, not sure if I am anticipating or dreading it.