If I write meta about writing meta - will the universe fold in on itself?
Today I was at the house all day attempting to clean up the mess after the fire, with no electricity, etc. Fun. I pulled out one of my rescued-from-the-chaos-but-still-damp notebooks and decided to transcribe it to a clean new notebook to pass the time (aka "procrastinating, with feeling"). Instead of transcription I found myself, 2-4 hours later (I didn't look at my phone and had no idea how much time passed) with a basic but workable "outline" for the Buffy & Tara friendship metas I've been wanting to write. I've got ideas by the truckful but I've always been perplexed as to how to organize the role Tara plays in btvs and specifically Buffy's story: episode by episode seemed logical to me; it worked for my meta on "Ted" to focus that way. Except my brain doesn't work that way. For instance, when I watch or think about "Who are You", I see nearly the entirety of S6 played out in miniature. I watched the B/S handfasting in Chosen and my mind leapt backward to W/T's handfasting in Hush. My mind delights in these sorts of connections, which partly explains my love for the tv show but it makes it damn difficult to organize my thoughts. Today I was apparently lucky - time to myself (I busted ass afterwards cleaning, I promise you) and I started writing down Tara's various roles in the show. That allowed me to make those connections freely without the feeling of going "off track", as happens with a focus on a singular episode. (Although I could do an entire book of essays and fannish squee about "Who are You" alone and if I'm lucky I just might.) whether or not I'll get time with the computer again to be able to shape and post this, I have no idea. Part of what's interesting to me about this is the fact that I didn't look at any of my notes scattered across five books, I just wrote, and the ideas were all there because I know them so well. That's something I can't do with the rough drafts of fics I've written; I can't recreate them from memory. The word order is so so very specific in fiction. And it doesn't matter if it's pretty close to "finished" (ie something to pass on to a beta or just post already, damn it) or if it's very rough scribbles in a notebook as with my meta notes today. Which may be part of what makes fan fiction and non-fiction writing different experiences for me as a writer. But then again, if I had to totally reproduce a nearly-finished meta essay entirely from memory, would I be able to? Am I comparing apples with pomegranates? I wonder if anyone else had had similar experiences especially if you've written in both fiction and nonfiction?