Just wrote a piece of what is essentially RPF for a class - a story from the worst job I ever had, in which I gleefully projected myself into the mind of a former coworker and created a significant grudge against me that probably didn't really exist - and I feel cast violently back into my high school days, when I took great pleasure in writing "friend-fiction" from the perspective of people I imagined didn't like me. And now I can't help but feel like my teacher is going to catch me at something.

1. Tea and lovely snacks!
2. A very good brother. :)
3. A really good writing day! I haven't been this productive in a long time.

I'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.

me: ooh I wanna read that scene where

me: ugh that's right I haven't written it yet.

Does anyone want to help counsel me through some quiet WIP panic? I have these two WIPs that I've been working on for quite some time, both of which are very important to me, and both of which have just-- stopped talking to me. Just planted their feet firmly where they are and refused to go any further. One of them has been like this since the summer, and I recently thought I'd try to pick it up again and found that it's still refusing to cooperate; the other was started more recently, but it's been just as firm in its silence.

( cut for length )

[The following is a thing I wrote a couple of months ago, when I was in the middle of trying to write Bane-- a story I struggled with and fought every step of the way, and did not feel I came out the winner. I feel like sharing it here because it... I dunno, seems like the kind of thing that would be well-shared here, and this platform is so dead that I want interaction.

So, under the cut: my thoughts on writing, rejection, confidence, and where fanfic fits in.]

( Read more... )

So do I post another snippet of the fun stuff on WIP Wednesday or Femslash Friday?

;)

(This makes it sound like a grand thing; it is not. It's me doodling out notes and a few lines on the very occasional day the words will come out in the right order. But since you all are a captive audience for my snippets, it lets me pretend it's bigger than it is. Indulge me, please?)