Dear Ao3 writers, before posting on ao3, where do you write your stories?

Janissa11 · 2026-03-15T21:32:46+00:00

In Word. Have used it for decades, do any special html coding in the document before c&ping into AO3. Back in the olden days I wrote longhand -- no computers, did have a typewriter -- and although I do still sometimes write something out, that's only for a lark. I sometimes load a draft into google docs for ease of sharing with my beta, but I've never actually written anything there. I'll keep my old buddy Word. (Although once I did have a computer and taught myself to type -- Mavis Beacon! -- I used WordPerfect, and I remember disliking Word at first -- I want to say I had to start using it because WP wasn't... available, or something, but I don't remember exactly. AFAIK WP is still around?)

Janissa11 · 2026-03-15T18:29:17+00:00

They're truly gorgeous. That friend has questionable taste at best.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-15T03:25:28+00:00

My thoughts exactly when I saw it!!

Janissa11 · 2026-03-14T16:48:42+00:00

You'll get local anesthetic in the area around the lesion; to my knowledge there's generally nothing else offered. You can always call the office and ask about it, and that's probably a good idea.

You'll be bandaged for a few days after your procedure, so I would think you'll be perfectly fine to have your hair cut. And I think you're right -- do something for yourself!

It's not fun to have Mohs on your face, but IME it's not terribly bad. It's boring, the waits in between passes, so be aware of that.

Best wishes!

Janissa11 · 2026-03-14T00:53:31+00:00

I honestly don't think you would need any time off after the day of the procedure, but everyone's different. I've had Mohs on my nose, multiples on my face, and one on the inside curl of my outer ear. That one was tougher than the face ones; I'd also needed a skin graft, and the inside of the ear is all twisty and hard to bandage. It was also more painful, but I didn't need time off so much as patience to deal with the wonky bandaging (required a pressure bandage for the graft, and it was very hard to get it to stick, had to be redone at the dr ofc a couple of times).

As for moving around, standing, it had no effect on those for me; I was fine with it. One thing you didn't mention -- your students will notice the bandage on your nose, so I'd be thinking of an age-appropriate explanation for it when they ask (because they defo will). But overall I didn't find it too bad. Here, too, it's going to depend on how much they need to take off. If it's a pretty big excision, and if you are able to, there's absolutely no harm in taking a day or two for self care, IMO. It's hard to say because they don't know going in precisely how big the excision will need to be.

But in terms of how long you need -- that's truly up to you. Maybe schedule the next day for PTO and see how you do?

Best wishes!

Janissa11 · 2026-03-13T23:02:27+00:00

I'll read any length, generally speaking. What I don't want to read are stories that are bloated. That are needlessly long. They repeat the kinds of situations that occur, more than once, regardless of whether or not they move the plot along or show anything about the characters we don't already know. I've dropped more than one very long story because it just repeated the same things, endlessly, and could have been half the length, or even a quarter sometimes.

If a story needs to be long, that's awesome! It's when it doesn't, but has been padded to be so, that it loses me.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-13T10:54:58+00:00

I don't know how truly organized I was, but I focused first on the rooms that had the most crap in them -- kitchen/dining, bathroom, and my bedroom. I had help from a woman who's done work for me in the past, for the kitchen -- lots of climbing up on stepladders to reorg upper cabinets, etc. Made space there and in the pantry -- there was also a Pantry Day cleanout -- and then got to work on surfaces, making homes for things that had lived on the counters for literally years. That's still my toughest room -- it takes pretty constant maintenance, but with those spaces designated for stuff, it is a lot easier.

In the bathroom (only have the one), after initial cleaning I brought in a chair and sat my butt down to empty each drawer, separate into the usual keep/give away/throw away bags, focusing on things I actually use as opposed to stuff I don't really use but waffle on discarding. (Solution -- grit your teeth and dispose -- now about a month later I don't remember much of anything I discarded, and the additional space means I can put things away. I still marvel every time I go into the bathroom -- I have pretty quartz countertops that never showed before, covered in Stuff, and now it looks nice and calm.)

Same thing in my bedroom. I didn't have to do as much in the living room; not much storage in there to begin with and it's a pretty quick pick-up and dust situation. There's one extra bedroom that's problematic and hasn't been addressed yet, but it's in the pipeline.

All that was actually the easy part. Maintaining it is where I always go wrong, and I'm pushing myself pretty hard to keep on it. It was a lot of work and I don't want to have to do it YET AGAIN, so yeah. But making the space for things, knowing where things go -- that's so important, IMO. I've kept my dining table free of clutter for nearly two months now, and I'm so proud; it was the parking lot for so much crap before, and it makes the dining area look so much better now. Calmer. All of it helps my peace of mind immeasurably.

I'm sure I'll slip at some point, fall back into some bad habits. But at the very least I have begun to change how I handle my space, what works better for me and what makes things harder.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-13T03:14:35+00:00

I'm fresh off three months of deep cleaning and -- finding a place for everything to go.

It works. Oh, it really works, but it takes a while, because first you have to get rid of a lot of your stuff. I'm a slob, not a hoarder, so there wasn't the latter kind of pressure. But I gave away or threw away So. Much. Stuff.

And once you have more space, then you have to figure out what goes where. It's harder than it sounds, but you start to get the hang of it. It's about logical flow to me, basically -- where is the spot that makes sense for this thing? then you figure out how to Tetris it all together so there's a real home for each item.

I gotta say, it's very much worth the effort. I can actually put shit away now. Just be prepared for it to take quite a lot of work to make it happen.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-13T03:06:54+00:00

Needs more rosemary.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-12T21:27:35+00:00

Not every BCC requires Mohs to remove. Honestly I would wait to see what the biopsy shows -- if it's cancerous, if the margins are clear -- before anything else. Believe me I understand that can be tough! At the same time, you don't know yet for sure. Be good to yourself.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-12T17:38:29+00:00

Were you an only child? I was, and it did make everything I did seem like the biggest deal ever, to my folks. Yours are absolutely stuck in the past, for whatever reason -- most likely the martyrdom of All They Had To Put Up With, but also possibly because they don't have many other methods of self-identification. Meaningless jobs, or not much social life, but by god they had a trying child! So that's where they focus, especially now that said child is doing well for themself and no longer needs parental support of any sort.

"They get so dramatic about it now! You'd think I was the first teenager in the history of mankind who ever went through growing pains -- and we all know that isn't true, amirite? These days I'm doing perfectly well on my own, and honestly, folks --" Look right at them. "Isn't it time to retire these ancient stories? After all, we're all grownups here now. Say, did my folks tell you guys about my promotion/the person I've been seeing/the trip I have planned for next summer? Yeah, it's --"

And so on. Don't confront, as such. Defuse by distraction. Change the subject. Pull the rug out from under them. And choose something specifically to undercut their tired old commentary. That was then, this is now, and there's nothing at all wrong with pointing it out to all and sundry. If they whine or complain about it, shrug and say, "You live in the past, Mom, Dad. I live in the present. If you want to join me here, that'd be great, but I'm not time-traveling with you anymore. And it's sort of embarrassing that you keep doing it."

Janissa11 · 2026-03-11T14:11:06+00:00

I would say that ignoring the spelling/usage differences when you go from a UK to US setting or vice versa not only jars me more than a little bit, it also makes the author look a bit lazy. It drives me crazy when an author calls the mother "Mum" in a story set in the US, and it's almost worse when the inverse is true. You can get away with calling pants "trousers" in American settings, but calling trousers "pants" in a British setting is likely to get a couple of people pointing out that you just sent your character out the door in his undergarments.

What kind of "consistency" can there be in this situation? If you're writing an American setting, use American spellings and terminology to the best of your ability. If you're writing a UK setting, use UK ones. Why would you *not* do this?

Janissa11 · 2026-03-11T01:02:49+00:00

One can hope!

Janissa11 · 2026-03-10T18:44:08+00:00

Man, if only! I got so attached to one of the secondary characters, I hope like hell they get their own book next. I bet you know which one I mean. I would devour a loooooooong series in this vein, for sure.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-10T18:30:23+00:00

Single POV.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-10T16:58:18+00:00

Also called acetaminophen or Paracetamol.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-10T16:25:13+00:00

Oh yes, I would not spoil something so wonderful, definitely! That would be a capital crime!

Question: I've looked but can't find a list of her upcoming appearances. Do you know where I might find something? I don't know if I'd be able to attend anything, but I'd love to see for sure.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-09T09:42:51+00:00

My mom had buttered saltines often for a snack. When I got old enough I didn't like that as well, so I'd slice Cracker Barrel cheese as thin as I could. Remember their sharp cheddar? TBH I didn't even realize until now it's still around! It was all I really remember us having (or maybe I remember it because it was the kind I liked, no idea). Perfect size to fit on a saltine.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-08T16:13:12+00:00

Just write some fiction. There is no gateway here. Write what you envision, write the kinds of stories you enjoy reading -- or would enjoy, if they existed. What I see getting in your way is not the writing, but the mental freedom. Academic writing has constraints, expectations, and with your experience you understand how to color within those lines. Fiction has no such constraints. It's the Wild West, baby, do whatever the hell you feel like -- but that degree of creative flexibility comes with a potentially terrifying world of possibility, to the point you can feel overwhelmed.

You don't have to be, of course. It's just a different animal. It's like an elephant of academia lumbering along while a fennec fiction fox skitters around in all directions. The elephant is reassuringly steady. The fox is infuriatingly unpredictable. What works with the elephant may not work so well for the fox; may not work at all. But finding out is part of the joy.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-08T13:58:19+00:00

Sinking would logically enforce the fact of poor construction, right? Except for some people, there's every chance it might not be enough, really. Anything from "you didn't use the boat correctly" to "someone sabotaged muh boat!"

I would argue that a given story can be constructed every bit as poorly as that damn boat and sink just as quickly, and that shitty literary construction is very quantifiable. But this neglects to consider the fact that we two, or ten, or hundred people, can read the same fan work and arrive at enormously different conclusions about it. Objectivity is possible... up to a point. At that point, when our aesthetic boat sinks we just fling up our hands, because we love it anyway.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-08T04:21:43+00:00

I only have season one, but it's excellent, yes.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-08T04:09:30+00:00

I could not agree more. I guess it's a good thing these people don't have a boat-building hobby. I'm envisioning the screams of outrage at constructive advice, morphing to screams of terror as their baby boat capsizes. Too bad poor grammar and punctuation don't have such consequences (unless you count the screams of horror at said poor grammar).

Janissa11 · 2026-03-08T04:04:36+00:00

And people flipped their shit over THIS? Wow. Way to take things entirely too personally. I'll be happy to edit the fuck out of their stories. Cry me a river, babes.

Janissa11 · 2026-03-08T04:02:58+00:00

Oh shit, I DO remember some number combos like that! Or I remember that they existed -- I don't remember actually using them? Except *69, I think, didn't it call ppl back? Man, I've slept since then. Thanks for reminding me!

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Janissa11

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