After ten years of not writing, I figured I had better get my butt off the fanfic reader couch and into the driver's seat to see if I could still string sentences together. I blame NCIS, namely Tony and Ziva who were inexplicably blown up in my brain and I couldn't get the thought out without writing it. However, my current love is writing for Castle. I find the characters absolutely fascinating.

I write when I can, a full time job and parenthood keeps me pretty busy. If you're waiting too long for an update, just tell me to shake a leg and perhaps the message will get me off watching re-runs and reading everyone else's fanfic long enough to type up some more of my own.

Ok, so I thought I better explain my writing style in case people ever find themselves frustrated with how things in my story turn out. So here are a few things about me and writing -

I do very little planning when I'm writing. Instead, I sit at my computer and stream of conciousness type whatever comes to mind within the context of what I'm working on. Case in point, I started my first Castle fic based on a freewrite I did during a minor bout with a lack of influence on where to take my second NCIS fic. The free write resulted in the prologue of that story.

I trust my stream of conciousness entirely too much. Once I have something written I very rarely go back and take it out. Of the almost 500,000 words I wrote from 9/26/2010 to 05/2011 I deleted where my mind took me exactly two times. One time it was so OOC that I had to scrap half a chapter. The other time I cut another half chapter and moved it somewhere else to play with later when I am not in the middle of two stories.

I do not catch all my own errors and do not have a Beta. You get what my brain filters to my fingers after a quick re-read and a spelling/grammar check. I feel bad for this sometimes, but I do not believe I could get a Beta that would ever be willing to read and edit 10,000-20,000 words every week, which is the disgustingly sleep depriving pace I have set as of late.

I will rarely post a chapter that is over 4,000 words or below 2,000. I'm long winded (that explains the 2,000) and when I read fanfic I do it on my phone. My old phone was not capable of reading chapters that were longer than about 4,000 words and that frustrated me, so I try to limit myself by that number so that I don't leave out people with older phones. Sometimes I will break that rule, but it is the fault of my brain for spewing more and more out onto the page.

I write Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and take Tuesday and Thursday off. My work-week is Monday through Friday 8am to 5pm Pacific Time. My daughter's bed time is 8pm. I start a chapter between 8 and 10pm on weeknights and post it when I am done, usually before Midnight, because I need at least 6 hours of sleep before work. I do my best to post on every day I have time set aside to write, because I am impatient when I'm reading a fic I enjoy and I don't want to leave my readers hanging waiting on an update. Sometimes I fall short or miss a day, but your reviews keep me motivated to get the next chapter up.

Despite my 'stream of conciousness' writing style, I do know where my stories are going. They all seem to start with a single event that I spend a lot of chapters working up to and then the conclussion from there forward seems to write itself for me one chapter at a time.

I may never go back and edit my old work or include things that I realize later that I missed or forgot to include because my brain took me on a tangent. Case in point, Spoiler Alert: I never explained in my first NCIS story about who shot McGee in the swamp cabin. It was the killer (in case anyone didn't put that together).

I hope this helps shed a little light on my writing style and explains a little on why sometimes I forget to mention a detail or drop a background story thread every now and then. Hopefully you do not find it too distracting and enjoy the work that is born of this type of writing insanity.

Thanks,

~MommaKristine