Where to begin?

I know I haven't posted anything here of substance in a while, not including my little "So it's been 2 years..." posting I did not -too- long ago. I seem to have some weird sort of love/hate relationship as it pertains to my writing: I love to write, but I often end up hating what I write.

Okay, perhaps it's not that serious. I like to think I'm, at the very least, decent with my writing skills. I never really took any extra writing classes or anything of that nature, to try to 'learn' how to write better or anything like that. Maybe it was to my detriment, but considering I'm extremely well-read and able to comprehend what I read very quickly, I never have had what I'd consider to be any issues at putting down words into coherent sentences.

My problem(s) stem from the fact that I perhaps try to emulate a bit too much of what I read. I read A LOT, every day. Many people would tell you "Well hey, that's great. Reading a lot is much better than sitting around playing games or watching TV or etc., etc., etc... To me, that is both true and false. Reading, especially as it concerns anime/manga fanfiction, or sci-fi, or adventure and so on... is just another means of entertainment. Anyone I talk to when they ask what I do for entertainment, and I tell them that I occasionally play games and do a crap ton of reading... they always look suitably impressed.

Then it gets into the 'What do you read?' and I can start rattling off books that I've read, and most of them just go 'uh-huh', because they are trying to be interested but haven't read what you have. Or they will change it to 'I haven't heard of that, but I will check it out.' (they are just saying that to be polite) and then suggest something they've read. Which is usually some kind of classic that most people read in lit classes in school. Not bad, but most of those I haven't read in so long that I don't completely remember them anymore.

Except Flowers for Algernon. My fave all time 'grown-up' book. Short and sweet, even if it is bittersweet. Also a pretty big fan of No Gumption, if only because it's how I feel sometimes.

"That's nice and all Paradox Jast, but I'm here about your writing. What about that?"

What, indeed.

Long story short, I dabbled in fanfiction for years when I was younger. Liked some things I read, wanted to put down some ideas of my own. I go back and look at my profile sometimes, seeing Corpse Parade both gives me a 'wow' moment, as well as a cringe. It was 2007... almost 10 years ago. Gosh, I was working 2 jobs then, both of them part time so I had ample free time. I had actually been reading fanfiction for probably 2 years before that, and wanted to try my own. Corpse Parade was me testing the waters. It was simple and too the point. Too long to be a drabble but too short to really be a 'short story'. Didn't really expect anyone to read it, and looking at the stats, it has barely over 600 views in almost 10 years. That sound you can't hear is me giggling.

Living the Dream was another thing I participated in, but I guess I wasn't comfortable in writing something myself. I partnered with another doing this one... sadly I think our writing styles clashed too much, and I lost interest because I ended up waiting a long time for my partner's chapters to come out. Coupled with the fact that X-Men was a 'popular' section, but not as popular as X-Men Evolution... I can only shrug. It has a respectable 4.5k views for a story of its size and age, and was a good opportunity for me to get my feet wet.

Then I just went ahead and dived off the deep end.

Whirlpool Country and Hindsight::Foresight. Cue heavy sigh. I had an outline (that I kept deviating from), I drew pictures in MS Paint (only ever posted the maps on DeviantArt), and instead of just working on one fic, I decided to work on two... back to back. Yeah, I was a bit of an idiot, but I was still rather 'fresh' as a writer and thought I had a really, really good idea. Looking back, it was a decent idea, but then I was stretching far from Naruto canon while still trying to somewhat-follow Naruto canon, and it just became one big mess. I got frustrated with it (as can be seen of its incomplete state) and gave up. I've actually contemplated a re-write over the last couple years, but never quite gathered enough energy to act on it. I would put them both up for adoption, but I don't think anyone really cares about it at this point. It still gets the occasional random review, and I hate to hurt people with incomplete stories (goodness knows I've read hundreds, if not thousands of them myself) but sometimes the will to continue just up and disappears.

What a lot of people who don't write may not realize - what happens (or doesn't) in canon can very, very much impact a person's will to write things. That's a sort of segue into my next fic I worked on....

... my second largest story (1.2 MILLION views) is Fire Shadow of Fairy Tail. I was out the gate strong with this one. Had a great idea, wanted to start before FT canon did. It was one of the biggest new fics, since the FT fanfic section was surprisingly sparse when I began writing it. However, I shot myself in the foot again, because I wasn't just working on that fic by itself. I had also started Experiments in Empathy months before, because I was always intrigued by the Naruto x Kyuubi pairing, back when we still new very little about Kurama. I wanted to do it differently than most others I had seen do it, with a more natural progression over many years. While many reviews adore the growth in Naruto's and Kurama's relationship in that fic, and how it actually seems to work on a natural level, canon sort of ruined it for me (and I'm sure a fair number of others). I started losing the will to write it as we learned more of Kurama, and canon Kurama was conflicting with what I had in my head for EiE's Kitsune. Even though it was my fic and I could have continued writing it the way I wanted to, I was just put off from it.

Technically, I still can continue it. I still have the outline, but it is one where I would strongly consider a rewrite.

Back to Fire Shadow for a moment... I began losing interest in Fairy Tail around the Tenrou Island mark, when they did the time skip. Then after the arena and Ultear was aged (one of my fave chars, after Erza and Gray), I pretty much completely dropped it... and with it lost any real impetus to work on that particular fic.

That brings us to my one truly completed multi-chapter fic, Rewritten. At 1.5 million views and almost 1.9k reviews, it is by far my most popular fic, probably because it has both the 'complete' tag attached and it is a rather unorthodox pairing. The biggest difference about this fic, though? I pretty much had the entire thing written, minus about 3 of the final chapters which I was fiddling with, before I posted anything at all. I admit to doing this in part because I actually wanted to have a complete fic, but also because I thought regularly updated fics garnered a lot more attention (for better or worse) than ones updated randomly, or sporadically. Besides that, it is much easier to write something that you are writing continuously, instead of piecemeal.

However, I had a huge advantage to writing this fic. Firstly, I was currently in a job, that while full-time, had a fair amount of downtime. In that downtime where there was nothing going on, I was able to do a fair chunk of writing and revision. I eventually left that job and moved over to another job (where I am now) at a new location that had opened up, and things were very slow, so I still had time to write. As a result, I finally got to finish a fic... even though the Tobi reveal in the canon Naruto manga tripped me up a bit.

I haven't forgotten Rewritten: B Side either. Actually have a chapter of it fully written, I'll more explaining about the reasons for not posting anything in a bit.

Lastly we have Of Vampires and Foxes. Had a few really good ideas for this, based on a challenge from The Engulfing Silence. Right about the time I started getting into a new groove, though... Rosario Vampire II concluded, and work at my new location started getting busier, so I was having less and less time to write.

That brings us to now. Work is busier than it has ever been before. At the end of my work day, I'm usually left mentally drained... and therefore I would much rather consume than produce. This leads me to my very first points of this post - I'm much more in a reading mood than I am in a writing one, most of the time.

Does this mean I have stopped writing completely? No. However most of my work now seems to revolve more around writing outlines and making adjustments to the things I have written, getting me stuck in some sort of loop. I'm trying to get myself out of it, because believe it or not, I would like to start posting things again.

"So then, what exactly are you doing?"

Like I said, I haven't forgotten Rewritten: B Side. I've got a chapter written, and an outline for more.

“I believe the best way to begin this is to start where it all began: When was the first time you met Uchiha-sama?” 

Minato Namikaze closed his eyes and hummed for barely a second as he pondered that question. It was one that actually had two answers – he technically knew about Naruto before the other blond knew him, merely as a result of circumstance. As far as actually meeting him though… 

“To be honest, I met him at a nice little ramen stand near here. Or rather, it used to be a ramen stand. Since the previous owner's daughter took over, it has since expanded greatly.”

I've also got a Harry Potter fic that I started work on (years ago, actually), but haven't ever made it past the first couple of chapters because I can't seem to decide how I want to put Harry into the story. I mean, I know what I want him to do, and I know where his path is going to take him. I also know the pairing, and how that will come about. The hardest part, strangely, is getting him into that point, and figuring out what exactly he should start with. I'm as much a fan of cliche guilty pleasure fics as the next person, but I'm trying to avoid the 'Harry Starts out Impossibly Strong' trope this time. Still working on it....

(A reminder:)

There are only two certainties in life. Death, and taxes. 

For the average person on a small blue planet named Earth, they are rather familiar with the latter, while only having a passing acquaintance with the former. 

As Harry James Potter sat on a bench looking up at the black sky dotted with lights of various shapes, sizes, and colors, he idly mused about how well-versed he was with death for someone so young. He might have contemplated taxes, as well, but he hadn't had much of an opportunity to deal with those in his almost 18 years that he had been alive. 

"Welcome back." 

The simple words snapped the teenager from his blank reverie, surprised to hear anyone speaking to him. If he had to be honest, he really wasn't sure what to expect. Well, correction – he was expecting to end up any place but here, his own lonely little section of Kings Cross Station. Again.

Lastly, coming back to Of Vampires and Foxes. Its very likely not going to stay as it is now. I might use a couple of characters from it to move various plot points along, but it's going to be a Naruto/Highschool DxD crossover instead of Rosario+Vampire. For multiple reasons, the largest one being that HSDxD has a much more expansive plot, while R+V was a lot more compact. Yes, it ended, but there were a lot of open plot points left dangling, which made me feel that it ended early.

I'm currently about halfway through the HS DxD anime, and into book 2 of the light novels, just so I have all my bases covered. I've also got an outline for the first 5 or so chapters, if it goes the way I plan (and I actually get to start on it) I could see it being a 250k-ish word story.

I've figured that I will probably have to go hunting for a talented beta to keep my ass on track if I ever start it, but we'll see. I don't have much free time, like I mentioned above, but I'm really starting to get that burning desire to do something. Maybe 2016 will be a big year for Paradox Jast in fanfiction. We'll see.