(no subject)
I think Nano is probably the right time to be procrastinating by getting all your fanfiction in order. Fanfic is what I do to procrastinate, mostly, and organising it usually doesn't even get on the radar. It does make me feel almost regretful -- regret is too strong a word, but I feel kind of wistful and annoyed at the loss opportunities -- that there are stories I haven't finished, haven't indexed, haven't put up on AO3. But, you know, I have stories about other people's characters to write, for real, so organising fic doesn't even make it onto my radar. And I have a life -- beer to drink, books to read, scarves to knit! Priorities! But now. Noooooow.
At a time of the year when I'm sitting at my computer and I'm free -- obliged -- to just be writing at that time, it seems fitting to be performing these little formatting and form-entering tasks. It's a nice diversion, and you're getting something done! But that something is basically useless. Who cares! It's boring enough to force you back to the writing! More writing. It's the perfect combination! Something you really want to do that you're tempted to perversely procrastinate from, and something so dreadfully boring that you can't do it for very long.
I've just finished putting parts one and two of this epic House/Cuddy AU fic that I wrote, back in the day. I think it's more suited to being two parts of a series, so I retitled them both on AO3. I also didn't backdate them, because as far as I'm concerned, if you wrote it more than a year ago it's new again when you put it in another archive.
Oh, and holy crap, it took me a long time to get my head around formatting speech. Even while writing that fic I didn't consistently start a new line when somebody new starts to speak. I don't know why this took me so long to learn. Maybe because I'm more interested in what people can see, little details? I must be allergic to quotation marks. Even now a fair bit of my original writing has speech formatted on a new line with an em-dash.
Also: One day, one day, I will get around to finishing and posting this Sherlock Holmes story, which was the first SH fic I wrote, and is a ridiculous Priscilla, Queen of the Desert crossover. It's finished, but it's longer than one LJ entry and has a fair few mistakes. But see, this is what annoys me: a fic I like, one that's actually finished, and I was too half-arsed to do the last little bit of work. Who cares if it's fanfiction? The time I spent on it should justify spending just a little more time on it. It's like spending and extra thirty seconds plating up a nice meal.
I should also finish this fic, which is a modern Holmes AU that I started before Sherlock came out. There are parts of it that I really like, but two things stopped me from finishing: Sherlock, and the fact that it's a fic where Holmes has OCD, and I'd need to do a lot of research for that, since badly researched mental illness in fic brings me out in hives.
I think the point of this entry is... I dunno. Not finishing my fanfiction annoys me? But not enough to actually do it. And I've just spent rather a lot of time writing this entry and listening to music instead of writing. Which is perhaps why I don't finish things.
A lot of people harbour the false conception that the chronically disorganised (and ADHD-afflicted) don't care about organisation, or understand it. Although I sometimes suspect that there are things about organisation that I don't understand (like how people remember things -- srsly), but I actually care a lot about organisation. It bothers me if my desk is messy. It bothers me if my washing isn't sorted. Either it doesn't bother me enough and I feel bad about that, or it bothers me and bothers me as I simultaneously fail to get around to it because I'm doing so many other things that I forgot to do before. And that bothers me, too. I know about organisation because it doesn't come naturally to me. I've made the lists. I've downloaded the alarm apps. I've read the books. I've listened to the condescending lectures.
There are things I don't care about that I think I would were I more classically organised -- I pile books everywhere and have mugs full of overdrawn black tea on my desk, that I occasionally accidentally sip from, and I REGRET NOTHING -- but it's not always laziness. If it were laziness I think I'd care a lot less.
At a time of the year when I'm sitting at my computer and I'm free -- obliged -- to just be writing at that time, it seems fitting to be performing these little formatting and form-entering tasks. It's a nice diversion, and you're getting something done! But that something is basically useless. Who cares! It's boring enough to force you back to the writing! More writing. It's the perfect combination! Something you really want to do that you're tempted to perversely procrastinate from, and something so dreadfully boring that you can't do it for very long.
I've just finished putting parts one and two of this epic House/Cuddy AU fic that I wrote, back in the day. I think it's more suited to being two parts of a series, so I retitled them both on AO3. I also didn't backdate them, because as far as I'm concerned, if you wrote it more than a year ago it's new again when you put it in another archive.
Oh, and holy crap, it took me a long time to get my head around formatting speech. Even while writing that fic I didn't consistently start a new line when somebody new starts to speak. I don't know why this took me so long to learn. Maybe because I'm more interested in what people can see, little details? I must be allergic to quotation marks. Even now a fair bit of my original writing has speech formatted on a new line with an em-dash.
Also: One day, one day, I will get around to finishing and posting this Sherlock Holmes story, which was the first SH fic I wrote, and is a ridiculous Priscilla, Queen of the Desert crossover. It's finished, but it's longer than one LJ entry and has a fair few mistakes. But see, this is what annoys me: a fic I like, one that's actually finished, and I was too half-arsed to do the last little bit of work. Who cares if it's fanfiction? The time I spent on it should justify spending just a little more time on it. It's like spending and extra thirty seconds plating up a nice meal.
I should also finish this fic, which is a modern Holmes AU that I started before Sherlock came out. There are parts of it that I really like, but two things stopped me from finishing: Sherlock, and the fact that it's a fic where Holmes has OCD, and I'd need to do a lot of research for that, since badly researched mental illness in fic brings me out in hives.
I think the point of this entry is... I dunno. Not finishing my fanfiction annoys me? But not enough to actually do it. And I've just spent rather a lot of time writing this entry and listening to music instead of writing. Which is perhaps why I don't finish things.
A lot of people harbour the false conception that the chronically disorganised (and ADHD-afflicted) don't care about organisation, or understand it. Although I sometimes suspect that there are things about organisation that I don't understand (like how people remember things -- srsly), but I actually care a lot about organisation. It bothers me if my desk is messy. It bothers me if my washing isn't sorted. Either it doesn't bother me enough and I feel bad about that, or it bothers me and bothers me as I simultaneously fail to get around to it because I'm doing so many other things that I forgot to do before. And that bothers me, too. I know about organisation because it doesn't come naturally to me. I've made the lists. I've downloaded the alarm apps. I've read the books. I've listened to the condescending lectures.
There are things I don't care about that I think I would were I more classically organised -- I pile books everywhere and have mugs full of overdrawn black tea on my desk, that I occasionally accidentally sip from, and I REGRET NOTHING -- but it's not always laziness. If it were laziness I think I'd care a lot less.