man, who even knows

[neveralarch]

So this is a post about writing.

I was going to make a whiny post about writing block yesterday morning, because I was totally stuck. In the last week or two I've started two Avengers fics, one Who fic, and replotted and tried to restart a fic I've had in the works for about a year. And I was getting nowhere! I was finally making myself write in a notebook (a last resort, because it focuses me better, but I use internet references so often that I usually have to rewrite anything I have in a notebook), but it felt like pulling teeth. And then yesterday evening I sat down and wrote 1500 words of a new Avengers fic and I've done it again today (1500 words a day is about my normal pace when I'm actually going). So instead of making the complaining post about writers block, this is the complaining post where I complain about... not having anything to complain about.

Bluh.

I know what changed between the morning and the evening. I just finally reached critical mass on number of bad fics read about Bruce Banner - reading good fic just makes me happy and content and totally unmotivated, but reading bad fic (or fic where I disagree on characterization/plot/assumptions etc, I guess, because at this level fic quality is often super subjective) makes me want to write and get my ideas out there. I function best off of prompts, and bad fic is like a prompt from myself.

But that still leaves me stuck on the other stories, and it leaves me feeling very tethered to fandom. Apparently I need a lot of other people's ideas to kickstart my writing, and while that's kind of cool - taking part in a creative dialogue or a community is usually cool - it's also annoying when I want to write something and just can't get it moving. Like, apparently I need a lot of bad Eight/Roberts!Master fic to get anywhere on this one story, and there is precious little Eight/Roberts!Master around, and most of it is totally brilliant. And I don't want to read bad fic anyway, this kind of thing is born of my periodic character obsessions and checking and rechecking the stories posted on the AO3 and Teaspoon and LJ communities. It's not really something I can direct.

So, I am writing and I am pleased with this, but- idk. A friend of mine asked me a little while ago why I wasn't doing more with fiction writing, like short stories or novels. And the main answer, for me, was that I just don't understand how writing works. Either it's flowing, or it's not, and while I get a lot of ideas I can't control which ones I actually can write. I can force it, if I need to (I've done it before for deadlines or exchange fics), but it never feels the same. I can have a writing hobby, where I know it's not a big deal if I drop one idea or get stuck on another, but I couldn't peg my career or any actual aspirations on it. And then it becomes about trusting myself or the level of seriousness I devote to my hobbies, and then it's less of a writing problem and more of a general me problem, but whatever.

I feel like I need a conclusion, but I don't have one. Have a question instead: how do you write? How is this a thing that happens? (Maybe that's a bit existential, but it's the one I'm really interested in - how do things make it from the mind to the page, as that is AWESOME and BIZARRE, but how does it work?)

Comments

[evilawyer]

If it helps, I could write some really bad Eight/Roberts!Master fic to get you rolling. It's the only kind of Eight/Roberts!Master fic I could write, so it would work out happily for all.

I don't know if your final questions are rhetorical or not, but I'm in a mood so I'll answer: I don't know. I write real life non-fiction stuff a great deal and have for many years, some it quite impassioned, but the fanfic is only a "few" years old by comparison, and only in a tiny handful of fandoms at that. I have come to realize, narrow output that I produce, that I write fanfic when (1) something about the canon characters and people's reaction to them piss me off and (2) when somebody else has said something that triggers a thought that I want to build on (I did one Sherlock fic because of astute comments shinodabear was making about Jim Moriarty). Maybe it's the nature of fanfic to arise out of interaction (be that active interaction or passive lurking) between fans expressing their thoughts and opinions regarding the canon characters, storylines, etc. It doesn't flow unless some other fan primes the pump somehow. Just my two cents.

[neveralarch]

Haha, I appreciate the offer but I'm not sure if that would make my writing feel any less forced. Of course, if you want to write Eight/Roberts!Master fic, I am happy to provide an excuse!

My questions are totally non-rhetorical! And your process sounds very similar to mine. I guess fanwork arises from an interaction with the canon in the first place, so it makes sense for further discussion and agreement/disagreement to further the flow or whatever. (Although I tend to shape my non-fiction writing by discussion and bouncing off other people's work too, so maybe I'm just a reactive writer in general.)

[evilawyer]

The urge to write really bad fanfic does, in fact, come upon me at times, so I'll definitely keep the possibility of some Eight/Roberts!Master open.

I was actually going to say another thing but didn't, and that is that original fiction writing, lacking the pre-made world and potential for fan interaction (whether direct or indirect) is is so completely in a different ballpark that I don't think it's a logical expectation that writing fanfic leads to or can be interchanged with writing original fiction. The function of fanfic as a tool of disagreement, explanation, exposition, etc. of canon characters is missing, so there's got to be something else driving the will and ability to do it. Not that I would know what that something else is. I couldn't write original fiction to save my life.

[neveralarch]

Oh, yeah, for sure! I didn't think of it that way because the few times when I was seriously writing 'original' fiction it was actually historical fiction about real people, which oftentimes is basically fanfiction. But it would definitely be a bigger leap to completely original fiction, and I agree that you can't really use the same ideas to describe that.

[evilawyer]

I, thankfully, have been able to avoid writing original fiction since the 8th grade, which is when I discovered that it's (1) not something I like (although odd ideas occasionally jump into my mind and give rise to about one paragraph of "original" fiction every now and then) and (2) not something I can actually do with anything approaching even mediocrity. When I first stumbled across fanfiction, it didn't even occur to me to make a connection between the writing process for original and fan fiction, but there are those out there who do. That they can see writing fanfiction as a precursor to or as practice for writing original fiction mystifies me. But more power to them, I say. For me, they are and will forever be completely and totally separate manners of expression.

[sophia_sol]

How I write -- that is an interesting question, actually? In that I'm NOT ACTUALLY SURE. I think that the most straightforward answer is that the way writing is most likely to actually happen for me is to be told by someone to write a particular thing. (...or to be told to not write a particular thing, because I can be contrary like that.) It is definitely what works the best! But otoh that isn't the way all my writing works, so idek. :p

[neveralarch]

I feel like if I stare at my writing process too much, it'll change into something else. It's obviously quantum. (I once told someone that writing is just a thing that happens to me, and they said this was a unsatisfactory explanation, but it's pretty much all I've got, haha.)