vampthenewblack: (Default)

If it's not psychic fuckery causing me to get kind of kripked, or just being jossed because I'm writing last season while this season is airing, both of which make me freeze up bad enough, it's my not-writer's-block.

I've abandoned WiP fic in a previous fandom. I don't feel too bad about it now (except for this fic, but that's more about my own attachment than any letting people down feelings), because I'm done with writing in that fandom, it's of the past.

A current fandom, though? Ouch. Okay, I pretty much abandoned Ruined because of the aforementioned psychic fuckery and my absolute horror at having written an ending with so many parallels to canon, but the ending is sitting on my hard drive. With a season's worth of distance, I'm thinking I might just post it, with a disclaimer swearing that I hadn't seen or heard anything about 3b while I was writing it, just to call it done.

Somewhere Quiet is my current WiP. I've let things distract me (both fandom and RL), unfortunately, which disrupts the momentum, and leaves space for second guessing. Is the boss fight dire enough? Do I retcon the already posted chapters for a canon detail that didn't exist when I wrote them? Do I trash the final few scenes again because even this third version just doesn't feel right?

I do get distracted ridiculously easy. I have this rule, one fic at a time, but I've been lax about sticking to it lately. Inflection Point is another WiP, and despite it's status as my stress-free happy place, so is Wake Up Dead. And I've just signed up for Teen Wolf Holidays, NaNoWriMo is looming, and Remix is on the horizon.

I'd like to get Somewhere Quiet at least out of the way before NaNo, which, considering there's just this one chapter left to post, shouldn't really be too hard. But I've been kind of panicking, because I knew that what I had written (it was technically done just a few days ago, now, not so much), wasn't right.

But the lovely [personal profile] thraceadams gave me a bit of a pep talk, and I shoved it away in a folder, determined to take a step back and concentrate on other things for a while.

Less than 24 hours later, I was fishing it out again. That disconnect, the letting go, gave me just enough distance to realise that I probably did have to trash most of what I had of the final chapter. Right now I'm concentrating on the first scene of the final chapter (it's with [personal profile] venis_envy right now), making sure the resolution to the casefic part of the fic is right, and then I'll worry about the shippy parts, which, honestly, is what I find hardest right now.

I have gone through and retconned that canon detail (Parrish has a first name now, and even though the fic is firmly within post-3b/pre-S4 canon, it felt weird to call him anything other than Jordan).

So, yeah. I have direction. At least a little bit. WiP's can be a problem for me, though. If I'm writing them when I'm particularly prone to distraction (like now), they tend to stack up. And while I've got WiP's in my past that haven't ended in laggy failure, it's a big risk to start posting before the whole fic is done.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes the simple fact that it is a WiP is what drives me to complete the thing, but that has to happen when I'm not prone to this constant second guessing.

vampthenewblack: (Default)

Some say writer's block is a myth. I do kind of agree with them. It's not some mystical fog that comes down over our keyboards out of the blue. There's always a cause behind those moments, hours, days, months where every time we sit down to write nothing (or nothing good) comes out.

I think I've been doing this long enough now that I can recognise at least some of the causes behind my own personal blockages.

Right now I'm wading through thick mud in an attempt to finish the final chapter of Something Quiet. The story is basically finished, has been for close to a week, at least as far as the casefic part goes. I'm having trouble wrapping up the 'ship aspect, though.

It always takes a bit longer to get final chapters done as I make sure I'm wrapping up all the bits and bobs, but this is ridiculous. I've gotten maybe 800 words out in the last week of sitting down to write every day.

This generally happens when I'm trying to force the story in the wrong direction. In this case, I'm trying to make these two shag when they're really not ready for it. Or I'm trying to make them do it the wrong way. Or something. Pretty much it means that I'm going to have to trash the last weeks work and [personal profile] venis_envy is going to have my guts for garters.

The last two fics I've written—flash fic to a prompt I managed to complete and which is posted here, and a failed attempt at another square on my SoK bingo—I've had to rip back to a point and start over, as well, so I've got a pattern. Real Life has been busy, my writing routine broke, and I'm not back in the swing yet. I keep trying, and end up forcing it, so the stuff that's coming out is often shite.

So until I get my mojo back, I think I'm just going to have to stay aware of this pattern, and accept that more often than not I'm going to have to tear it apart and start over.

Which I'm totally going to do. Tomorrow.

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