LOVE ME!!!

[thewhitelily]

I'm a little bit devastated right now.  And stressed.  And generally not feeling so good.

So... I've posted Ring Truly.  At last.

The history of this is...

Ten years ago, I decided to write a Smallville fanfic for my sister's birthday.  And I duly did.  Only the characters took control of my amazing idea and killer twist, and turned it into an utter tragedy.  A beautiful tragedy, but a devastatingly painful tragedy nonetheless.  Which... is not my sister's style.  I knew this.

I showed her Glass Darkly anyway, once it was finished and polished, and she was... well, nice, but upset by the way it all ended.  Okay, I thought.  I can fix this.  So the story sat on my hard drive for nine years, and every now and then I'd open it up and have a play and it didn't get any closer to being a happy ending, because... well, the tragedy was right, for the characters.  And the wordsmithing of the tragic resolution was... wow.  I couldn't make myself break it.

Fast forward to the future, where I've got back into writing, into fanfiction, and resolved to get back into finishing things and posting them.  It's always aggravated me that Glass Darkly was finished, but I'd never posted it.  So I showed it to my new beta, and we worked out that perhaps, if I couldn't fix Glass Darkly, maybe I could write a sequel to fix it.  Brilliant.  Sold.

So I spent a couple of months trying various combinations, wrote bits and pieces but nothing was really coalescing.  And I posted Glass Darkly, knowing the kind of motivation it would be to have something half-finished up there, and it was, with readers telling me they loved it but they were bleeding out waiting for the sequel.  And... everyone mentioned how horrifyingly absorbingly awful the end was.  But no one mentioned the ideas, or the twist, or any of the things that I felt made the fic amazing.  Only how bad it had made them feel and how much they wanted me to fix it.  Great.  Just what I needed.

I set to reading a bit more Smallville fic, looking to grasp hold of the characters again after five years out of the fandom.  And then ushobwri had WIP month, and I thought great, I can do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to finish this story. So I decided to knock off two other unfinished Smallville stories on my hard drive to get back into the characters, and then go for this one.  Both of those are great.  Red Tulips was... more amazing than I realised, and has clearly resonated deeply with a lot of readers.  Conservation is a lot of fun, much longer than I expected it to be, and I'm looking forward to posting it on April Fools.

And then, I was having a conversation with my beloved, beloved sister and...

She made an offhand comment mentioning that I only ever write tragedies.

And it shattered me.  Yes, I'm pretty good at angst.  And I don't write fluff.  I don't read fluff.  Or porn-without-plot.  I wouldn't want to write it. It's boring. But my stories always end with hope, even if the hope is almost always cast in an unusual light.  Always, except for this one story.  And it seems my sister has been been not-reading my work for years, thinking that I only write angst, because of this one story, because it made her feel so bad, and she's hasn't read any of my happy stuff and... to be honest, I was inches away from deleting the whole thing off AO3 and off my hard drive, because that kind of thing, the thing where someone has been secretly thinking something awful about me for a long time hits me really hard, and very deeply.  Even though I was in the middle of polishing Red Tulips, which is beautifully tearjerkingly happy. Even though I was right in the middle of writing a humour fic in which nothing bad actually happens at all.  Even though I knew that she wasn't judging me fairly, that she didn't mean anything by it, it just made me feel so horrendous about a story and a concept I love.  And I know I can't please everyone, but in combination with the feedback I got about how painful the end of Glass Darkly was, I felt triply bad about not doing something--anything--to fix what could have been an amazing story on the spot, no sequel required.

But I was going to fix this thing.  I knew how, I just had to make it happen.  And by the end of WIP month, it was mostly there.  I had a really good mental handle on Ring Truly, only a few gaps left to fill in.  The characters had fought me all the way, but I'd found ways around it.  I found the amazing moments that made it worthwhile.  I constructed a (mostly) original character and fell in love with her.  I sucessfully prevented Lex from doing the same.  And it took me another three weeks to fill in those gaps and polish it up, and then finally post it.

This universe has been such a nagging weight in the back of my brain for a decade, a constant stress for the last few months: the overwhelming need to get it finished, the worries and regrets, the plans breaking down all the things I needed to do to make that happen.  I've been averaging 6 hours sleep per night for months, and losing weight from not eating.  All the anxiety-inducing worries I have about it, the things that don't feel perfect and the difficulty of pushing the characters where they didn't want to go.  But I did it.  I made it, and I learned...

I can write, even when it's hard.  I can make myself finish something even when it is painfully difficult.  I don't have to have inspiration that arrives out of the ether, to force it to flow.  Not just for a tiny transition scene, but for an entire story.  That's an amazingly valuable lesson.  If I need to write something - or just finish something that I'm already writing, even if the characters fight me - if I stick to it, I can make them do it.  I can be, not just inspired to write, but disciplined to write even if I feel like I can't.  If I'm ever going to make it as a professional, that's something I need to know.

And again, I knew it could be better.  It turned out 19,000 words long.  That's too long to be as beautiful as Glass Darkly or Red Tulips.  I can't mentally cope with chunks of more than about 10K words at once, and so it ended up chaptered.  And eventually, after lots of agonising and polishing, I needed to let it go, because I want this thing out of my head.  It's brilliant, and good enough, and I want it gone.  I want it posted. I want to rest, and go back to original fiction. And so I did.

And the response has been... well, I'm hearing a lot of crickets chirping.  I'm getting kudos, if not huge quantities of it, but... no comments.  And I *know* I'm overthinking this.  Based on the usual average comment ratio for the number of hits, I should have approximately two or three comments by now.  Two or three.  Possibly more like one, based on the kudos rate.  Seriously, I am way overthinking this.



In floods the anxiety.  Are people hating it?  Are they just completley unmoved by it?  Is it terrible?  Is it inexplicable?  Is it just plain confusing?  What?  Why does no one like my twist?  Does no one understand my concept, and how cool it is? Do they understand it, and just not think it's as cool as I do?  Or have I, again, wrecked another story which could have been amazing, but this time because of the way I've forced the characters to comply, it simply doesn't--excuse the pun--ring truly?

I know I need to write for myself.  I know I need to write for what I want to happen to the characters, for the cool concepts that are amazing to me.  Screw what other people think; writing is about me.  But... also, it's not.  Writing is about translating parts of me into something other people can see.  Something other people can understand, something they can read and make their very own connection with the story that's ultimately a connection with me.  Writing is, for me, the most intimate and satisfying interpersonal contact I can get, because it's the direct public exposure of my heart and soul.

I don't need everyone to be telling me how wonderful I am all the time.  That's not what this is about.  That's not... entirely what this is about.  Of course I love being told I'm wonderful, who doesn't?  But it's hard enough letting myself do things less than perfectly, let alone worrying that I haven't even done them successfully.  Worrying that I haven't managed to make this work at all is making me second-guess everything I know about myself and the fact that I can write at all.

Writing something amazing wasn't what this was about--this year of writing is about getting things out the door and making my peace with the fact that getting things done is actually better than getting them not-quite-perfect-yet.  This feeling?  Growing into this feeling is what it's all about.  If I'm going to write original, I won't be in the ego-stroking environment of ready-made fans with a convenient kudos button and comment textbox.  The real world is cruel, and mostly silent.  And there'll be rejection letters and critical reviews on goodreads that will break my heart.  If I can't even cope with 36 hours of no one saying anything, then I'm not going to do so well at publishing original novels.

This is fine.  It's okay to speak, even when what you say isn't going to amaze the whole room.

But it's still awful to feel that after all the effort, all the blood and tears I've put into this story, that my heart and soul are sitting out there, exposed, with people looking at them and thinking... meh.

Comments

[ringlat.livejournal.com]

I definitely know that feeling..... and it doesn't even just happen with fiction anymore. I feel like no matter what I write or talk about these days, if people even reply with something more than a "like" or an "okay" or smiley face then I'm lucky. I even posted some fansubs I made for something that had no subs before, took me a really long time to do them, and have gotten like no responses other than some likes. I get a comment on my fic (all of them together) like once every half year or less now...? Stark contrast to what, 8 years ago, when it felt like I was getting comments once a week or month at the least. Even though I write much better now!

I want to go back into the "just do it for myself" mode but for some reason it seems a lot harder now. It used to just come automatically.

[thewhitelily]

Sorry you've not been getting much feedback lately, I have all the sympathy for you. You write in pretty small fandoms don't you? I'm pretty lucky to write in pretty big ones, where if only a tiny fraction of people comment, it's something. It must be a bit soul destroying in a small fandoms - but makes what you do all the more valuable, really. :) I'm sure your fansubs were brilliant! *cheers for you*

And hah, yeah, I don't think 'writing for myself' has ever come automatically for me. Or, actually now I think about it, it does, but not as far as finishing things is concerned. I've got stacks of things I never finish, incoherent with only the interesting parts of sentences written, nonsensical except in the light of the story's headcanon, definitely completely unposted, and those I write only for me. But from the point where I decide: this one is worth it, I'm finishing this, and polishing it to the point where it will not give me a panic attack to let it go... that process is the hardest part for me, the part where the inspiration stops flowing and I have to keep on writing in my own blood. And that's for other people. It kind of has to be, because the point of that part of the process is framing those little jewels that came straight out of my heart in a way that other people will understand. I've already got the story after all, essentially as much as I need.

But I need to be doing that part for me too, to kick the plot bunny off the farm and stop it from taking up room in my head. And to actually achieve something tangible that I'm proud of, that I consider to be more worthwhile than a half-completed sketches that goes nowhere. That's seriously worthwhile for me, and the kudos/comments really have to be just icing. But I still like icing. ;)

[ringlat.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem with short random bits so that's how I ended up becoming a person who can only write drabbles haha!!

It all went downhill for me after I started getting seriously involved in fandom stuff, as in, actually TALKING TO OTHER FANS. I ended up, surprise, caring a bit about what they thought! And then all this new social media that puts tons of pressure on who gets the most likes or "update update update waste all your free time"... I try not to let it affect me but it still has.

I'm really sad that I keep falling into tiny fandoms. There's lots of other fans, they just don't make any fanworks! I want a living kink meme, dammit!!

[thewhitelily]

Lol, I can't let them go as drabbles. Flashes of fic come to me complete with a whole lot of headcanon history that needs to come out to truly make the moment great. Me = sadly not capable of letting something go if I could potentially make it better.

Getting involved in fandom actually works the other way for me--the more I know the other fans the more I realise they're not big scary anonymous judgey faces, they're just people like me who like reading stories and like my work and like me regardless of whether they liked my latest work. The more I know someone, the less hard I have to try to be perfect to impress, like I do with strangers, because people who know me will know that my missteps are aberrations rather than being all there is to me. When I'm with just with Hubby, I can sing a song with made up silly lyrics at speed, even if the lyrics aren't grammatical. When I'm writing something for a new fandom, I'd obsess for months on end over the tiniest details in the same song. I'm working on it. :) But definitely snap on the getting the most likes or the quickest updates... gargh, in some ways being able to access story statistics is great, in other ways, it's just more fuel for the anxiety.

I think one of the reasons I live in big fandoms is that I tend to not have plot bunnies emerge until I have read LOTS of fic; enough to make me go... hang on, I've read almost this exact story forty different ways, and *still* no one has done it the *obvious* way?! Come on guys, do it *this* way!!!

[ringlat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that really pushes me to write fic too. When the fandom is tiny though it just turns into "why didn't this happen in canon?! why are there no fics?!". The series I'm into now is from the 70's and is SUPER famous, as in it caused a bunch of other entire genres to be born and a lot of people copy from it even if they don't realize it. Yet there's no fandom!! It has a lot of AUs and spin-off series and the creator likes inserting almost-the-same characters into his other series. YET STILL, NO FANDOM! But what can I do to make myself sit down and write, sigh.

Giving myself a "write for 5 minutes!" was working but I just push it aside to do other things.... I'm working all day on translation projects, studying or writing nonfiction, but I feel like my status as a "fandom person" is slowly disappearing since I write fic so seldom now.

[thewhitelily]

Yeah, that makes sense. I've had that happen a couple of times, where the actual canon gave me such whiplash that I went through the same "but, but... but surely *this*!!!" process. It sounds like your new fandom has a whole lot of fandom, just with a slightly looser definition! :)

Sorry to hear you're feeling like your fandom mojo is so low. I find my focus naturally changes over time, and it's only really a bad thing if I think about it that way. I'm a naturally obsessive person, so I tend to go deep into whatever's got my attention at the moment, and it's taken me a while to come to terms with that being okay. I'm writing now. Next year, it may be sewing. Or Taekwondo. Or writing computer programs. Or stopping the house from falling apart around us. Or maybe I'll still be primarily writing. I do bits and pieces of all my loves all the time, but only one can have my heart at a time. You can't expect to be able to give your all to translation/study/nonfiction AND fandom - you've got to let yourself be where your heart is right now. If you're less of a "fandom person" at the moment, that's okay. Maybe you've left your mark on fandom and it's done the same on you, and now you're ready to move on to focusing on making a difference somewhere else for a while. Maybe you'll be that person again once you're over what sounds like a bit of burnout, and become inspired to go there again. That's how I'd try to look at it, anyway. :)

[ringlat.livejournal.com]

That makes me feel a little better...

[thewhitelily]

*hugs* Your icon always looks like it needs a hug. :)

[ringlat.livejournal.com]

Thanks ;_;

If I'm remembering the right series (this guy draws the same characters in different series), the character in this icon developed incredible psychic powers after his just-became-girlfriend was raped and he was beaten almost to death. Naturally after all that, he was pretty messed up.

In my other icon, the "blond sweaty guy", he's slowly (or not-so-slowly) turning into a crazy person with a lot of bloodlust and has just realized that he may in fact be possessed by a demon.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

(This is my hug icon; it doubles as a zombie icon.)

[thewhitelily]

Thanks. :) I'm feeling much better now about the whole thing, now. Overthinking is a pain in the arse, but it's what I do best. :P

It's always cheering to be hugged and infected with an apocalyptic virus at the same time. Efficiency is always pleasing.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I am a World Champion at Overthinking! So I know how you feel.

I always strive to be efficient. (It's kind of a silly icon, so I always let people know about it when I first use it, because I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm making fun of them.)

A propos of nothing, would you mind if I friended you?

[thewhitelily]

Lol, overthinkers unite! :) And please do friend away! I've been meaning to get around to friending a few of the Shoobies, I just haven't got around to it yet. :)