Someone criticized me for my miserable profile. Wow, thanks, so this line especially goes out to you, you who know who you are. I'm changing it, so there!

Anyway, that aside, I'm taking a look at the numbers, and I am sort of amazed that I've gotten almost this far. Well, truth be told, it's been almost a year since I've set foot (cyber foot?) on , and I've written a grand total of... Bah, nine stories? That's weak for a year's worth of work isn't it? Considering that three are still incomplete? That averages like what? A story every month and a half? I used to hate authors who update their stories once a year, and now that I'm much more familiar with the writing process, I sort of understand what happens.

Other than the typical problems of writing blocks and real life interruptions, I guess I've learnt that sometimes a story can become too much to handle. It just grows out of proportion sometimes that it needs re-envisioning. And with every subsequent chapter, further options become less and less, and they sort of dwindle down to the conclusion and finale. So yeah, it's really hard to write especially if I don't know the end in mind, and praying that someone would lead me there is just as hopeful as hoping that global warming would fix itself. (Who am I kidding? It does fix itself! Only through tumultuous climate change which we might not survive from!)

Okay, there goes my political speech. Back to me. Since this is my little cubby hole on the Internet and I can say what I want here (within the limit of FFnet omniscient censors). So yeah, anyway, I'm really sorry for the long updates sometimes, and it's between weeks, I know. So here's a little brief of how I work.

Day 1 - Brainstorm. Which usually means watching television, lazing around and showering. Most of my ideas come to me while I'm in the shower. Which is why I'm not providing a video diary of how I work. So I get this idea in my head and bounce it around a bit, before roughly imagining where I want to start, where I want to end. It's a roughly drawn picture in my head that usually gets put on paper.

Day 2 - I procrastinate some more, and maybe get started by stop surfing the Internet and trolling for good stories to read, and toss down a paragraph or two. This is one of the hardest part of the process. Getting the first paragraph down is so hard. I usually scrap a couple of first paragraphs before one comes out that sounds nice. This usually annoys me as it sets the tone for the rest of the chapter, and it's kinda important.

Day 3 - Through the miracle of sheer persistence and perspiration, I manage to roughly bang out the rest of the chapter. I aim for anywhere between 4,000 to 6,000 words, with liberal allowances. Also it helps that I think as I type, and I have actually clocked myself at over seventy words per minute. So writing a full chapter might take me anywhere from an hour and a half to three? It depends on how the creative juices flow. Sometimes it's agonizingly slow, and with sufficient interruptions, it might take up to five hours. God, where do I get all this time from?

Day 4 - After my own first pre-read, I drop it off in my beta's shared folder, and patiently wait. It is here that I usually look back and address my previous work's reviews. Here, I find myself typing a hecklong reply to most reviews. Though it's usually proportional to the review you leave me, but content matters a lot too. Opinions are greatly valued, and while I am disinclined to reply to a "You suck and your story sucks too!" I do find that this community is generally supportive in their criticism. But I'm apt to be defensive about certain remarks. But wholly receptive, nonetheless.

Day 5 - I take a break. I watch some more television, and I whine about the fact that other people haven't updated their stories in a long while. I whine. A lot. One of my pet peeves is having to read a summary that goes along the lines of "i st8ink at summaries. plz r&r." My first unkind thought is usually, if you stink at summaries, you probably stink at writing too. Especially if you don't properly punctuate. I have a secret, I stink at summaries. But thing is, I don't let people know that. Shh...

Day 6 - My beta gets back to me with a first pre-read. Now if there's a problem, I might have to rewrite certain huge parts, but those incidents are by large, few in between. But then again, he gives me a damn good job, and I accept most of his changes, and we proceed on to rehashing the more difficult parts. Namely to do with flow and consistency.

Day 7 - After sending the fic back and forth a couple of times, I finally add in the Author's Notes, my one little blurb of complaints that I feel entitled to after so much effort. And then a final pre-read and it's ready for posting. And the cycle begins anew.

Now, this is how each chapter should be produced in a perfect world. But then again we all know that this is not a perfect world, and we don't need red-headed cheerleaders to tell us that. So I end up slipping a couple of days here and there, or a terrible writer's block stumbles, or I make a major mistake and I need to re-evaluate where I'm going.

So instead, I do the smart thing and have backup chapters in the pipes. I feed in a couple of chapters at first, and hopefully, I'll still manage to get things out on time. But then again there are problems with that. I'm currently working on four stories, three of which are on my profile, and the last one is a shared one with my beta. That makes a lot of chapters to write, read and pre-read and if I devoted equal time among the four, I would eventually have a story update once a month. Which is far too long. But then again it's impossible to do it any sooner, right?

And yet I find time typing out this long profile. Gee. I'm such a hypocrite.

Anyway, I'd amuse you guys with some numbers. So far, just before I wrote this, I checked my total number of hits on my stories, and I discovered it to be 44662 hits. That means I have, I dunno? One enthusiastic reader who just happened to refresh 44661 times? Thanks whoever you are.

Then I have 4214 hits on my profile! Which means there are over four thousand of you who'd like to know me a little better! Or looking for more stories of mine to read! Yay! That's always a good sign!

Then I got a total of 602 signed reviews for 38 different chapters! That's like, 15.8 reviews per chapter! Yay! That's another fantastic plus!

Of course then again I only wrote a total of two signed reviews this whole entire year. So yup, I'm pretty much a hypocrite and undeserving of these reviews.

Then on my author profile, I got 41 favorites and on the alert list of 59 people. Which means I still have this little gap of 18 people to sufficiently impress before they would consider putting me down on their favorites list and hence pumping my ego a little.

So all in all, there's room for improvement, there's a lot of things that could be done, and I hope that in the coming year, I'd finally finish that one long multi-chapter fic and embark on new projects. I do really enjoy my conversations with most of you out there, and I thank you humbly for a warm reception into this community.

With that, thank you all very much, and yup, there will be an update this weekend!