On the disadvantages of ficcing ten fandoms at a time & making a long overdue resolution

[flowrs4ophelia]

When I was looking through the ridiculous number of stories I have started for all kinds of different fandoms to do the last WIP meme, it got me thinking a lot about ways I could put more effort into trying to get more things finished. The amount of work I posted all last year doesn't reflect well at all how much I actually worked on writing because I start so much that I end up deciding to go back to later, and I'm considering for the first time how my sort of unique habits of switching from fandom to fandom are the essential problem.

I've observed a lot before that I seem to have slightly unusual tendencies when it comes to my participation in different fandoms. A lot of people seem able to stay more or less consistently involved in the same one or even the same specific ship pretty much all the time. They'll keep reading and possibly writing the same kind of fanfic as part of their everyday past-times for many months or even a few years. They may usually be involved in several different fandoms at the same time with generally equal interest in all of them maintained. I see fans like this write entries sometimes saying things like "I can't seem to be as interested in Brian/Justin lately. I don't know if the fandom has been lacking good fic or if I'm just not in the mood, but I'm so bored with everything." And personally, this is the kind of thing I see and just think, Well duh, you just need a break from it because it's natural to me that I won't always be as invested in HP as I am at my heights of obsession and creativity in that fandom, but I know that's because I just work a little differently and have other expectations of myself for keeping up with and being productive in a certain fandom.

I've learned by now that my ways of drifting slightly in and out of fandoms this easily and always being heavily into just one thing at a time is not at all ideal for making many friends through them or establishing myself as a well-known writer. There are only a couple fandoms that I've been active in so much through the last few years, even if it's still been an on-and-off thing, that I've actually stayed in touch with the same people I've made friends with in them the whole time and don't feel like an unknown stranger in the comms. Though it can make me feel kind of left out at times being more of a wanderer than a permanent fixture, I've just accepted by now that it's usually going to be like that, and at least I can tell myself that's why in five years of writing pretty well-received fanfic on LJ I've never quite come close to any kind of BNF status. (Of course, there are quite enough reasons to be glad I'll never be the kind of fic writer whose name and reputation precedes their actual work and its merit and who has more fan friends than honest critics, because nothing would prevent improvement more than an illusion of some kind of already-reached important success which I think we've all seen cause inflated egos in some writers...but that's an entirely different subject for another time, lol.)

There was a time when I used to say things like "I love BSG but it doesn't strike me as very ficcable" or "I doubt I'll ever want to write for Heroes because I don't see anything left to tell about the characters I like." These days are over, and I've gradually lost any concept of one kind of story being better to write fic for than another. I'll try nearly anything and have found by now that just about any series or movie or whatever, even if it's not even a very well-done work, can have something written about it that may be a quality story worth reading. I can always come up with something that would be interesting and fun to write.

But with the amount of various fandoms I can juggle around within one year, I'm realizing it's gotten to a point that this isn't always necessarily a good thing. It's not that working on writing something that could very possibly never be finished or seen by anyone else is by any means a complete waste of time. But with how few things actually end up finished and posted out of everything I'm always writing, maybe it's time to think about trying to prioritize some plot bunnies over others more instead of just going with every impulse and new idea. Even if it could be pretty painful sometimes when I'm entertaining a new idea of something I'd like to do to think, But do I really need to write Skins fic, even if I like the show and really want to right now, though not as much as I like other things, and even if there are definitely some good ideas in this thing I've barely started? I could come up with something I would like to write for just about any fandom, just as the number of ideas you could come up with for writing anything is limitless, but I think I need to start being more realistic about setting goals for how much I can ever actually find the time to write. When I want to start doing something new, I need to consider whether I can easily imagine the possibility of this never even ending up finished and ask myself from the beginning if it's really worth putting a lot of work and time into another stillborn baby as opposed to something I'm more seriously devoted to getting done some day.

This sounds like a really simple goal that only really affects my hobby, but I'm hoping if I'm serious and more self-disciplined about committing to only putting the most work into my more viable writing, this will actually mean a huge change for me. As angsty as this is going to sound, words really cannot describe the conflict and sadness I've often felt through the past seven years or so of my life just because I can never seem to have as much time as I'd like to write if I also want to have any kind of a life away from my computer. Trying to spend less time writing fic while actually completing more fics overall is such a logical step to take that it seems ridiculous this never occurred to me before. And ideally this should turn into the beginning of a gradual transition to working more on original stuff than fanfic instead of the other way around, which is how it's been for a long time. I feel no need to ever completely give up fanfic unless I simply get to a point where I want to, but I desperately need to get back in touch with doing original work because there are times when it seems like I hardly remember how to write in my own worlds anymore and the very idea of finally working seriously on any of my novels has become so intimidating, and that's really sad.

Comments

[trascendenza]

Though it can make me feel kind of left out at times being more of a wanderer than a permanent fixture,
I can really relate with that. It's weird, I feel like my fannishness is almost like a scale; BBM I stayed in the longest since it was my first, then my second fandom, Superman Returns, I stayed in the second longest, etc. down the line. And now I just sort of flit around to whatever holds my interest, but it's pretty rare for the really creative period to last beyond a few months.

I know exactly what you mean about being able to write something for anything. I actually just got to the point where instead of thinking about my plot bunnies, I'd just sit down and pound them out the second I thought about them (which works for me, b/c they're usually ficlet ideas rather than longer ones). Generally I know that if I don't finish a fic within a day or two it'll just end up in my discard WIP pile, which I eventually post and say "here, remix this or use it for inspiration or whatever, I'm done with it!" That's helped me feel a lot less guilty about unfinished snippets, knowing that they still have some purpose.

Which has resulted in me writing a lot of one-off stuff for fandoms I'll probably never touch again; like when I watched Women's Murder Club, I wrote some WMC ficlets, and literally one time halfway through a Middleman episode I paused it to write a ficlet, but I'm pretty sure it's not a show I'll become "fannish" about, per se.

The way I differentiate in my head is that there's an inspired period and then there's a period of, "well, if I get matched for it during a challenge or whatever, I wouldn't mind writing that fandom" period, which is where most of my fandoms go to live after I'm over the obsessive phase.

to spend less time writing fic while actually completing more fics overall is such a logical step to take that it seems ridiculous this never occurred to me before.
Hahaha, right? It's so logical! And I think that having a higher ratio of completed fics is in general a confidence booster, and the more you finish the more you will feel capable of finishing, like a positive integration cycle. I have faith in you, I think you can do it. ♥

[flowrs4ophelia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the encouragement. :D It would definitely be nice if I could limit myself to short and concise fics a lot of the time like you're able to do. It does make me feel a lot more accomplished and confident whenever I can just get anything finished to share, even if it's just a drabble. (Plus as much as we all say we don't write for the comments and that's mostly true for me, it can make me feel a little more encouraged to keep working when I get them.)