Rediscovering what I already knew

[wneleh]

I haven't been that happy with the reception of my recent Rhett&Link fics, so I decided to write a slash Man From U.N.C.L.E. movieverse story. It's not quite something that could just have easily been written as gen - I think where things are headed is obvious from the beginning - but it's not that far of a departure from what I usually write

Comments

[wneleh]

I think part of my annoyance is in how little time I spent on this story. I mean, some version of it has been in my head since the early 1980s (definitely not slash then!) but the actual construction of this story took about three days, days that I mostly spent working and doing soccer coaching and admin.

My other top kudos-getters are, after Antidote (currently at 922 hits, 92 kudos):

Found, a gen Edge of Tomorrow fic I wrote for Yuletide, at 867 hits and 85 kudos. I also have very little emotional attachment to this fic - my approach to Yuletide is to list movies I'd like to see, and then watch the one I'm matched with and try to write to my recipient's prompt. I'm surprised by how well this story has done, but I do feel good about it, because it was written to make someone else happy and I think it worked.

Lift, a gen Sleepy Hollow fic I wrote back when I thought the show was wonderful - I really like this fic, though it literally took me three hours. 1,444 hits, 74 kudos.

Integration by Parts, a slash SGA fic I wrote for McShep Match. This is one of my favorites, and I put a lot of time into it. 1,068 hits, 72 kudos.

In Which I Get Clint and Natasha Into a Really Big Bed, vaguely het Avengers (before I knew Clint was married - I might revisit now and do a more gen take). Not that hard to write, but I'm really fond of it. 2,895 hits, 67 kudos.

So even more than writing relationship fic, the key seems to be to write in a hot fandom not many adults are playing in. Though the SGA fic was definitely helped by being McShep. Funny, because it could have been my type of gen by changing about 10 lines and very little meaning.

The MFU fic is two-for.

[kerravonsen]

I think part of my annoyance is in how little time I spent on this story. I mean, some version of it has been in my head since the early 1980s (definitely not slash then!) but the actual construction of this story took about three days, days that I mostly spent working and doing soccer coaching and admin.

Hmmm. Time isn't necessarily a measure of worth, though. Sometimes a story takes less time because it wants to be written. And consider, if you've had the story bubbling away in your backbrain for decades, then your subconscious could have been smoothing out the problems all that while. And sometimes story ideas pop up out of the blue and have to be written very quickly. I remember one story I thought of in the shower one Saturday morning, and spent the rest of the day writing, and it was one I was very pleased with, because it was a fun idea.

A story takes as long as it does.