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Nov. 3rd, 2019 09:37 amI've been working on this fic for the better part of this year. It has become my major writing project, one I've focused on almost to the exclusion of all else as time went on. It spans 4,000 years and focuses much more on OCs than on canon characters, and it is over 100,000 words long - officially the longest single piece I've ever written.
All of this, I know, makes it . . . not exactly what people come to fanfic for. I don't read longfics about other people's OCs, and I know most people won't want to read about mine. So I knew that if I wanted to finish it, I couldn't start posting until all of it was ready. My motivation up until this point has been merely to finish it, but I've been posting fic long enough now to understand what happens to that motivation once comments and reader interaction get involved: the motivation transfers from finishing for personal satisfaction to the external validation of sweet, sweet comments. Which I know this fic is unlikely to get many of. I knew that if I wanted to finish, I had to keep that motivation intrinsic for as long as possible, so I kept the story as my personal project, sharing the occasional snippet here and there, ranting at a few friends when it became too much to bear alone.
But now it's almost ready. Every scene I intended to write has been written, and the early sections have been revised to-- if not my satisfaction-- a point that I can hardly stand to look at them anymore. And I plan to post once or twice a week, so I'll have plenty of time to go back and revise/edit the later sections if I need to.
The trouble is that, while I'm usually eager to post-- and while I've been impatient to start sharing this story for a long time-- I feel blocked on the actual posting. I'm terrified to finally make that shift from private personal project to public work. I'm terrified to get feedback - or not to get it. And I just feel this strange reluctance to start putting the story out there, even though I've been working on it for so long that I really want to present it. It's like I've waited so long to do the posting, projected so much onto "it has to be finished before I can share it," that I don't know how to take that first step.
I don't know exactly why I'm posting this here; I just needed to process somewhere, I guess. Writing is hard sometimes, and sharing can be even harder.
All of this, I know, makes it . . . not exactly what people come to fanfic for. I don't read longfics about other people's OCs, and I know most people won't want to read about mine. So I knew that if I wanted to finish it, I couldn't start posting until all of it was ready. My motivation up until this point has been merely to finish it, but I've been posting fic long enough now to understand what happens to that motivation once comments and reader interaction get involved: the motivation transfers from finishing for personal satisfaction to the external validation of sweet, sweet comments. Which I know this fic is unlikely to get many of. I knew that if I wanted to finish, I had to keep that motivation intrinsic for as long as possible, so I kept the story as my personal project, sharing the occasional snippet here and there, ranting at a few friends when it became too much to bear alone.
But now it's almost ready. Every scene I intended to write has been written, and the early sections have been revised to-- if not my satisfaction-- a point that I can hardly stand to look at them anymore. And I plan to post once or twice a week, so I'll have plenty of time to go back and revise/edit the later sections if I need to.
The trouble is that, while I'm usually eager to post-- and while I've been impatient to start sharing this story for a long time-- I feel blocked on the actual posting. I'm terrified to finally make that shift from private personal project to public work. I'm terrified to get feedback - or not to get it. And I just feel this strange reluctance to start putting the story out there, even though I've been working on it for so long that I really want to present it. It's like I've waited so long to do the posting, projected so much onto "it has to be finished before I can share it," that I don't know how to take that first step.
I don't know exactly why I'm posting this here; I just needed to process somewhere, I guess. Writing is hard sometimes, and sharing can be even harder.
