I am acknowledging your feelings! We could do word wars, if that would help. Or, I don't know. I can bake cookies and mail them only if you reach your weekly word count.
HOW CAN I HELP?
Also, don't give up! It will feel awesome when it's done. Someday.
(Also, you know how much I want the Segs/Brownie fic, so of course my first thought was SHE COULD USE THAT FIC TO WRITE MORE)
Awww, ♥ Thanks for the support! I might start putting concrete book three word count goals in both sets of my weekly check-ins. Maybe that will help.
(Ha! Eventually, maybe. I have sternly told my brain that I cannot work on that until it comes up with a structure for it. Also, I have to finish editing Danny goes to college and Post-Switzerland Tyler Seguin before I can make anything else a primary, word counted project.)
This is really interesting, and I really appreciated hearing your thoughts about this. You're so right that there's a totally different reward in writing fic than their is in writing original stuff. I know I don't really understand why writing one makes me feel different than the other. I don't have anything helpful to say, but I hear you, and agree that is a complicated space.
Reading this is making me realize I don't know when you stopped having a writers group. (I assume you've stopped since I haven't heard about it in ages and ages). I wonder if having a RL group of people to talk about this stuff would make you feel heard? Or would it just make you feel guilty?
What if you just gave yourself permission to abandon it for a set period of time (maybe 3 or 6 months)? You might feel differently about it if it weren't a millstone constantly hanging around your neck. Is that too advice-y?
I would feel worse about not remembering that, except that I think I just don't experience the passage of time in the same way anymore. I was cleaning my spare room today and kept coming up with documents from work, etc., thinking--oh, I should save that, it's pretty recent--and looking at the date and it was 2010 (or 2008, or in one case 2006). So my justification is that it seemed like just a couple months ago to me. :-) Early senility.
I'm going to say give it up, or at least take a break from it, if it's not making you happy or out-and-out annoying you. Your happiness is more important than making money and making money in writing is a crapshoot anyway. Maybe if you just work on the stuff you like for a while you'll get your inspiration back for your original stuff. Or maybe you won't and you'll just work at your day job and keep your writing just for fun. There's no wrong choice.
(Or maybe I'm just projecting b/c I feel the same way about my own original work a lot - it's like, well, I make decent money at my day job and I don't have 10,000 tumblr assholes waiting to call for my death if I say anything they don't like, so is there really a reason to try to become a Rich, Famous Author instead of just writing id porn for my own amusement? IDK, I still say do whatever you think is going to make you happiest in the long term.)
Part of why I think it would be good for me to try to sell book two is that then I would be able to actually know how much money original writing (it's all erotica, which probably isn't going to become mainstream famous) could make, which would be a deciding factor in whether or not it's worth it. (That is kind of how I've been thinking about it, although I'm pretty sure you make a lot more money in your day job than I do in mine, so the amount I could make off of writing that would make it worth it for me might be a lot less than the amount that would make it worth it for you.)
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HOW CAN I HELP?
Also, don't give up! It will feel awesome when it's done. Someday.
(Also, you know how much I want the Segs/Brownie fic, so of course my first thought was SHE COULD USE THAT FIC TO WRITE MORE)
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(Ha! Eventually, maybe. I have sternly told my brain that I cannot work on that until it comes up with a structure for it. Also, I have to finish editing Danny goes to college and Post-Switzerland Tyler Seguin before I can make anything else a primary, word counted project.)
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What if you just gave yourself permission to abandon it for a set period of time (maybe 3 or 6 months)? You might feel differently about it if it weren't a millstone constantly hanging around your neck. Is that too advice-y?
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(Or maybe I'm just projecting b/c I feel the same way about my own original work a lot - it's like, well, I make decent money at my day job and I don't have 10,000 tumblr assholes waiting to call for my death if I say anything they don't like, so is there really a reason to try to become a Rich, Famous Author instead of just writing id porn for my own amusement? IDK, I still say do whatever you think is going to make you happiest in the long term.)
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