You know, I usually... well, I actually usually switch back and forth between writing linearly and not. All the stories with urbanspaceman were written very linearly, but that's easier to do when you have someone else you can tag in when you get stuck. Finding a Voice was written completely out of order, mostly because I wasn't actually intending to post it when I started writing it-- I was just writing a collection of scenes I wanted to see, and then it gradually started resembling a story (and also I got frustrated with the lack of content in the Legolas/Gimli tag). But I wrote chapter 22-- the confession chapter-- before I'd written either of them realizing their love for one another, and Erebor before Mirkwood, and the covert cuddling scene long before I'd even conceived of the characterizations that drove the story... This was all more detail than you needed, haha, I'm sorry.

For one of the stories, I know where I'm stuck, and that's because I've foolishly decided to write about the royal family of the Greenwood. My gosh, the history of that realm is tragic, even if you're only starting in the very late Second Age like I am, and how do you write about the kind of losses they faced during the Last Alliance? It's something for which I have absolutely no emotional context whatsoever, so every attempt feels paltry-- and yet I know I can't write anything later until I understand what kind of impact that had.

Actually, a lot of the places I'm stuck are because of that, I think. I'm trying to write about a magnitude and variety of grief in both stories that I've never experienced, and I just don't know... how to put myself into my characters' heads. I have all these ideas for how things should go, I have a planned plot, but the feeling-- the thing I have long prided myself in being good at-- just isn't there, and I don't know how to write it.

I'm trying to sort of... write around it right now, writing little snippets of plot here, character there, and kind of hoping that I'll eventually piece it all together-- or that sometime this grand "aha" moment will happen and I'll suddenly understand what the piece is that I'm missing. But as of yet it has NOT happened, and I'm impatient with it, heh. :)

Thanks for listening! I'm sorry to ramble; I just want to talk about my writing all the time and given the slightest hint of permission I will write paragraphs and paragraphs. I'm so grateful to you for letting me do that! <3

Also, re: taxes... UGH. *crumples into even tinier ball* I've only ever done them as a student before, and now I have to do them for one half year as a student in Canada and one half year working back in the US. I am not excited. :P I wish you best of luck with yours, also! *invites you into little stress huddle*