Big Shot | ✓

postlude

August 2, 2024

Wow. Finishing this one and saying goodbye was a lot harder than I anticipated it would be. Jo and Reid hold such a special place in my heart, and they have truly become one of my favorite romantic couples I've ever written. I'm not a sequel/series person at all and yet here I am trying to figure out if I can extend Jo and Reid's story any more. Maybe a few bonus chapters here and there. I've truly found joy in writing again because of BIG SHOT, and that cannot be understated.

So that being said, here is my VERY long-winded anecdote on all that. This is your only warning that I'm about to ramble on a lot, so strap yourselves in.

I finished OVERDRIVE in November of 2022, and afterwards I went into a slump. I had terrible writers block, I couldn't come up with any new story ideas that I genuinely liked, and everything I tried to write I couldn't bring myself to continue. I was trying to force out a certain kind of story that I eventually realized I no longer have the capacity to write. I haven't really spoken about this at all (mostly because there hasn't been a need to), but I was diagnosed with PTSD in late 2022, right around the time I finished OVERDRIVE. Shortly afterwards, I just thought okay now I'm gonna write a story about my experience - not just as a means to cope, but because of my life experiences, I felt that it was sort of my duty and responsibility to do so. All of that stuff about drugs and addiction is still very important to me, but the more I tried to write about it, the more I realized how much of a toll it took on me. I'm still living with and recovering from my PTSD experience, and I think I just no longer have the willpower to share these kind of things in writing. At least not right now.

Fast forward a few months and I ended up turning to fanfiction for a bit - some of you might even remember I was pretty inactive on this account for a while, just chugging along with my silly little Eddie Munson fanfic (RIP). Believe it or not, it helped me tremendously. I had a side account with almost no followers, found a little group and got to interact with people who had the same niche interests I did, and it forced me to detach from the external validation and constant impostors syndrome that writing on this account embedded in me. But, the most important thing that writing my silly little fanfic taught me was that sometimes you just need to have fun writing a story, and it doesn't have to be any more than that. In a kind of backwards way, it helped me cope more than anything else I could have written. Not a week goes by where I don't miss Cass and Eddie!!!

A little while later (this is now summer 2023), I was given the opportunity to potentially pitch something to Wattpad as a creator. This one was for any type of contemporary adult/new adult with a focus on romance, and I noticed that sports romance was one of the subgenres listed as a suggestion. Aside from my lovely little co-writing entry for ONC that year, I had absolutely no WIPs, no ideas, no nothing going on at this point for myself, so I said fuck it why not take a crack at it. I hadn't written anything football-related since BLIND AMBITION, and it was just around the time that college football season was starting, so naturally it was already like 75% of what was going on in my head on a regular basis. It required more direct and concrete planning and plotting than anything else I'd ever written, but I came to find out that the planning part of it was not only rewarding but extremely fulfilling and fun for me. And then the lightbulb kind of went off, and here we are. I ended up not pitching it obviously, but that's okay.

I took the fun and experience I had writing my fanfic (as well as the detachment from comparison and external validation) and tried to bring it into my process for BIG SHOT. I had to remind myself constantly while planning and plotting the story that something terrible doesn't need to happen. That it can really just be about finding love, women in sports, and all of the things I love about college football, and it can still be a great story. Simple as that. This was the kind of thing wanted to write now, and this was the way I wanted to do it. I've never been a pantser per se, and I've always done a bit of plot outlining, but now I've become an obsessive planner for everything I write, in the best way possible, and I now try and approach all of my new stories the way I did for BIG SHOT.