Come Back When You're Bigger and Better

[ghoulmouse]

It's like, hard for me to post off-hand prompt fills or drabbles or what-have-you, even though I used to do it all the time. It just feels so...LAME, you know? Especially drabbles, it's like...this is such a nothingburger of a post, why am I insisting people look at this.

I backed off AO3 in favor of reviving my DW posting in hopes that it would help me break the stalemate I've currently got going with all my thousands of WIPs by encouraging me to write more casually. That is proving way more of a hurdle than I expected.

Look, if I'm going to post it, it's gotta be Perfect. Especially if it's some small fandom or rarepair, like as though the responsibility falls solely on me to produce the Definitive Work in this area, which is a lot of very stupid pressure to put oneself under.

But, I knocked out a couple drabbles and I think it actually helped me make some progress on this summoner Edward AU longfic that has been rattling around in my brain for...I think literally a decade, but abruptly resurfaced due to FFXIV kindly adding a dungeon called "Fell Court of Troia" featuring Scarmiglione. I actually posted a version of part of this...probably over a decade ago at this point. It's gotten significantly more insane in the intervening time, to the extent that I almost HAVE to write it because without the context of the whole AU, talking about any individual idea or plot point or whatever makes me sound like a crazy person.

I literally never let go of ideas, apparently.

I've been so out of the loop on...everything because that cosplay and con rush consumed my life. I'm playing the Crooked Man, though, and really enjoying it. I could honestly play RPGMaker games for the rest of eternity, idk.

Comments

[kalloway]

I sometimes feel that way. Here I am, writing the first fic for tiny fandom or pairing, and it's 238 words for some doofy prompt? Really? That's what everyone is going to see? But then again, those 238 words may make someone else happy or at least strive to create 239 better words that I can then enjoy and that's good too.

I've had good luck this month writing short original things for #AuGhost over on the Fediverse and it's been been, well, I'm gonna say good again because it's been good. (Most folks are doing art, as these things tend to go, but someone is doing TTRPG stuff and whatnot, so my little Winesburg/Spoon River-inspired ghosts don't feel entirely out of place.)

Anyway, hobby stuff have fun do whatever no rules. (She tells herself far too often when having a very similar argh.)

[ghoulmouse]

It took me WAY too long to figure out "AuGhost" lol. That sounds really cool, there isn't really a good place for short original stuff at the moment, I feel like.

[kalloway]

It's the first time I've seen AuGhost, tbh. I'm used to Swordtember and Knightober and even KaiJune, but the ghosts are new, I think!

Since I couldn't post original stuff to AO3, I'm absolutely going to post it to Squidge and everywhere else.

Fedi is filled with writing prompts and people posting little fills, but I'm not really sure if there's any dedicated place for random writing longer than a tweet/toot/etc. I know there have been various attempts but I don't think any of them have survived.

(Also, ghosts, if you're curious/interested.)

[speperteristico]

I feel the "gotta post the perfect thing for this rare fandom/pair" thing hard and even outside rarepairs/rarefandoms I always get the feeling that if I'm bothering to post somewhere then I should make it worth the while and then end up... not posting :/

But also, as someone who loves to read drabbles and ficlets on the shorter side, I'm always hoping for people to post more of their short snippets!

[ghoulmouse]

Oh god feeling like you're the ambassador for a rarepair because you're the only one posting is awful. I'm trying super hard to get over that right now lol

[lassarina]

As someone who hangs out with Merfilly who is arguably the drabble queen of fandom writ large, short fic can be exactly right. I think sometimes people make things longer than they need to be because they're worried it's too short, but I think if you're getting the point conveyed, it's the right length.

[deadfinch]

felt. when i was younger i could bang out 20k+ and post in a weekend because i don't think i'd developed the concept of insecurity yet, but now i can never seem to finish anything.

i came to DW with the hopes that carving out a new fannish identity would let me relax my shoulders a little, and it's... not exactly working, but i still like it here? in part because yeah, i can't get over my stigma of sharing smaller things. they feel incomplete to me regardless of how self-contained they are or how little artistic gain there'd be from trying to further elaborate the idea.

i tried a flash exchange for the first time last month, that actually helped. i didn't end up much liking what i wrote, but the threat of the social shame i'd feel if i defaulted was so great that it made me actually post the damn thing, and that felt like a huge success. so there's that strategy.

[ghoulmouse]

Yeahhhhhhhhh, I was hoping I would relax a bit but it seems like the problem is in my own head. I suppose it doesn't hurt to have a better environment to eventually hopefully relax IN, though, so we'll see how this goes.

I have always wanted to try a flash exchange but I do not have a lot of exchange-popular fandoms unfortunately.