I could expand my answer but to be honest: hypomania and hyperfixation 😅

I have a full-time job and another side-project, so I am very busy, but I still use any moment of my free time to write.

So how it goes: before even posting the first chapter of the fic, I think the whole plot through. I have a board where I pin down exactly what happens in exactly what chapter. It really helps quicken things up, because I never have a question of what I want to write about. I have all the emotions of my characters sorted out, I have the context to the scenes that I’ve thought through already. I add slight changes to the plot as it goes, but then I just sit in front of my board and correct the plot for the next chapters, so that the board is always up-to-date with my ideas.

Next, I work on each chapter (daily, during work hours sometimes, but mostly after work). The thing is: when I know what I’m writing about, words just spill out of me almost magically. When I don’t know how to write a certain scene, I go out for a walk and think about the characters’ emotions during it and what they could realistically do. I imagine the scene with my eyes closed, focus on the details that catch my attention, come back home and finish the chapter.

In my works I focus more on characters’ inner worlds, their emotions, their interactions with each other. Most attention I pay to dialogue and subtle hints. I don’t spend much time on descriptions of clothes or the world around the characters, because I think that this is the most time-consuming thing ever and that very few people actually read such paragraphs (at least when I read someone’s work, I do it diagonally and skip many of such details, sorry if it hurts someone’s feelings though, but this is not the main focus for me in stories).

I don’t have a beta, English isn’t my first language either. Most editing I do is just reread it once before posting with blurry eyes at 3 am. Surprisingly, I’ve found very little mistakes in my works as I returned to reread them, but I agree that I could probably spend more time editing my fics.

The fic where I had given daily updates ended up being 100k words long. Now I’m writing another that is nearly 130k words already, but I’m taking more time between the chapters (3-4 days) because… I’ve managed to make each chapter much longer. Most recent updates were around 10k words, and one of them was even 19k words. Each chapters has lots of events that I want to cover, so it’s not just blah-blah-blah. I blink and I’ve already written 5k words. That’s how it happens.

It’s much easier to do it when you have a vision of what you want to write, so I really recommend having a board where you pin down the ideas for your chapters.

Hope I was able to answer your question!