antennapedia

I hope it works out for you. I took a vow not to enter any more communities/challenges earlier this year, and failed miserably to begin with. I wrote something for winter_of_angel and then something for spring_spangel because I couldn't not, and then finally I ran out of steam and decided that I had to put everything else on hiatus so I could finish AoU.

I didn't post anything in summer_of_giles and felt really bad about it. Still do, in fact.

:gloom:

However, things were going better until I was stupid enough to sign up for a Torchwood fandom ficathon. I can't think what came over me. I must have had a brainstorm or something.

Am never, ever doing it again.

The seasonal fests are some of my favorite things, in part because I can plan for them months in advance and post something big. Which I totally failed to do this year: I stared at my dates rushing at me like a deer in the headlights. OMG bright ouch!

Torchwood ficathon: eek! I am dipping my toe into writing for Who proper, though, so who am I to criticize? (And I'm still unsure if Giles and Xander will encounter Jack in Cardiff in one of the storylines I'm working on.)

Wow! That's a lot to do! Some of those stories sound so intriguing!

~e!

It's an insane number of stories in progress :)

Good thoughts for new (and old) plans!

Ah, resolutions! Let's hope they come to something every now and then, at least.

Writing longer stories! I am so willing to read longer stories, the "Broken Glass" 'verse would be cool. Just, y'know, whatever, whenever - no pressure on the delicate writing machinery.

I like reading longer stories too. They're so much more satisfying. So! I'm gonna work on it.

Just looking at that stresses me out.

Oh, man, that list doesn't stress me out at all. Sometimes when I look at it I get so excited and frustrated I want to burst. I don't have enough time! There aren't enough hours in the day! Sometimes I resent with a burning fire every second I have to spending cleaning up the [discussion of proprietary software redacted].

Expectations from other people stress me. I have also managed to let deadlines start stressing me instead of motivating them. They're now a guarantee of poor performance from me. So they gotta go until I get the head straightened out.

If you need a beta reader, I can probably do anything without explicit sex in it. Can't guarantee how quickly I can get them done, as I'm about to start my internship, but I'd be happy to help any way I can.

My other resolution is: less sex more plot. To go along with the much more leisurely pace of writing and editing. I will likely beg for assistance you along with some other flistians who are active in their churches when I get deep into some storylines that involve religion. While my ability to quote from memory random bits of Psalms and the Gospels is decent, my grasp of Anglican liturgy is not. (Though I dunno how far it goes with my readers. There are two bits of biblicality in one of the G/X kink things I just posted, to go along with the Donne. I figure Giles has a mind like that, quoting Paul more or less the way Xander might quote The Matrix. I don't know if anybody noticed.)

Yammer yammer.

Edited at 2008-07-30 02:28 am (UTC)

I just wanted to drop a quick comment to say first, I think refocusing on craft and giving yourself more space to create and revise and live in the words is a very personal, and valid choice. I have loved reading your fics ever since I ventured into this fandom about 6 months ago...and I think maybe that is why I respect the urge to refocus - because you are that good.

And that transitions nicely to my second comment - that last little "start working on original fiction" too. I have to throw heaps of encouragement at you toward that. I used to write pretty prolifically in another fandom, and about 4 years ago I decided I needed to try my hand at some other things - including writing original fiction.

I sometimes miss fanfiction, and itch once in a while to try new fandoms (like this one), but for me I had to go cold turkey because I needed to dedicate myself to original work. I am now revising my first YA novel and getting ready to send it out.

So, I would hate to see less from you, because I so look forward to your fics, but I respect and encourage you to also focus on some original stuff, very much because I so look forward to your fics.

Good luck with all writing projects and refocusing etc.

emily

Congrats on your first novel! And may the revisions go well! And I will say one thing to you that my husband always says to me: "What's the difference between you and [insert writer's name here]? Oh, right, they *submitted their work*." Send it out!

I hope I don't have to go cold turkey, though. Fanfic-writing scratches an itch that's different from the one I feel when I contemplate my original-universe story ideas.

That list is impressive. And everything on it looks great.

Please take all the time you need, we are willing to wait for a long time for your fics. Especially longer ones. Complex ones. Wonderful ones.

I think I might be more impatient that you guys are.

!!! How on earth do you manage to work on so many different fic at once? I can barely keep up with a measley (measely? sp?) three or four, and most of those are very, very short.

I like the way you have a, uh, map/graph/diagram/thingy of where all your works are up to. Maybe I should do that.

Words. Broken. Gone. All. Or something. *headdesk*

Maybe only three or four of those are getting active attention at any one time. For instance, the first three on the list are from the same overall storyline, so I'm jumping around in them writing as I feel the urge. Then a second storyline will be what I call my "fidget story", something I tinker with when I'm stuck on the main one.

So I'm not really working on them all at once. I just have them sitting there in my fic repository, blinking at me like cats who want to be fed.

Man, just reading all of that makes me a little ill. Good luck with it all. I can't wait to see some of it.

I feel excited not ill. Most of the time :)