scribblemyname | (no subject)

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I’m one fanwork away from a bingo and futurefic is driving me crazy.

I know you promised to keep working on it after the break you needed for your move. I thought that was enough to where I wouldn't do what I usually do, but it wasn't.

With me, writing is like an express train. It goes full steam until it reaches it's destination. It may slow down at times and it may switch tracks, but if it stops, it stops hard, explodes in a wreck that is rarely able to be cleared. It's ugly. There are fatalities.

After something like that, I have to take a step back and deal with the damage. I have to accept the loss. When I shelve something, I know I may never come back to it and even if I do, it will never be the same. I don't find my way back in easily, and that is why most of my sequels fail.

You did also say that you were unhappy with the directions both stories were going, and you wanted that to change. So... I put them on the shelf. I said goodbye. I forced myself to cut the emotional tether because I could not handle leaving them in that state of "maybe someday." Mentally, I can't handle that. It was too much, the up-yo of thinking it would get worked on and then having days and weeks and months would go by with nothing. I told myself patience first, and then I had to stop believing in it at all because I couldn't let myself try and hope for it. It was too hard when it didn't happen.

I finally cut it off during this last hiatus, accepted the death, and I am really not sure I can go back again. I'd need to know we were making steady progress again before I'd allow myself to touch it. I really love Alik and the story, but I can't do the starts and stops without some sometimes severe mental fallout, and that is why I'm almost more willing to let them die than start this all over again.

You still seem very busy and I'd rather not resume unless you really have the time for it.

I don't think we would have realized how many conflicts we had in our varied processes without trying to write first, and back when we started, we really did think we were on the same page.

I'm not asking you to mentally resurrect it now either. I'm just telling you that when I do send you something, you're under no obligation to do a thing about it. If you like it, great. If you don't, well, that's life.

The trouble is, knowing me, I'll want to. I'll want to go just a full steam as I did before. We both know that doesn't work. I take the story in directions you don't like and you have so many other commitments that make my excessive output overwhelming and unwanted. That's why I'm saying we need to be at a place where our time committed to the project is equal or as close to it as it can be or it will just fall apart again.

I am not sure why the site logged me out earlier. I didn't realize it had, so that anonymous reply, that was me. Must have been the internet on my phone at work being crappy.

I should add that I know that the demands on your time are greater than the ones on mine, and I understand that. I'm not trying to tell you that you have to do as much for the stories as I do because I know I'm faster and rather insane, but I really have come to resent the time you spend on fanfiction, and though I told myself I'd be patient and that it was a part of your process, I do not want to compete with that to do this story, and I don't like the way I feel about it. I'm not sure how to remedy that because I can't ask you to give up a part of your process. I just don't feel like I can compete with everything else... and I don't want to. I'd rather let the stories go than be a naggy clingy cowriter, but I feel that's all I am anymore.

Well, I wasn't really going to address any of the earlier comment, but I'll hit them up 2-fer.

1. The one-shots I posted for Trope Bingo took an hour a piece. Frankly, I don't spend a lot of time on fanfic, and sometimes I feel guilty about that. Poetry and one-shots don't TAKE a lot of time. Novels and original fiction do/does. Just the way I'm wired. Sorry.

2. I specifically went on total break so I didn't have to worry about the process. It wasn't about the difference of our speed. It was that I needed to finish something before I sent it to you and you kept changing it while I was working on it which made it pretty hard to work on. So while we worked out a method to deal with that, I finally was too stressed to work on it. I think it's fair to say that I didn't say I wouldn't write anything, just that we probably needed to step back on our collaboration and make sure we were still on the same page. We weren't. I haven't gotten enough headspace quite yet to hold a whole novel, so I haven't gone back and reread our letters/meta/work to figure out where we left off. Belibeve it or not, we're still wrapping up the move and my taxes were extended but they're not done. Also, I waited until the last minute pretty much to write my three fiction one-shots, create one photoset, and a fanmix. The photoset really didn't take an hour.

3. I knew the comment was you. I didn't notice it was anonymous.

4. I appreciate your patience. I understand your resentment. I've had a friend's book since just before I read the last book of yours I got to and haven't had the headspace to read a whole novel for a while now.

I already know the stuff in canon, so fandom stuff doesn't require headspace, or at least not nearly the same amount. I'm struggling at work still trying to comprehend instructions I read and tests I'm running, so you're sadly not the only person neglected right now, but you're the only one I specifically cleared it with first.

5. No matter what, you and your friendship still matter to me. I'm not expecting you to drag your hopes back out and have them dashed. I'm just telling you that sometime in the next month or two (provided this proofreading project that came in - paid, so yes, I'm taking it - doesn't drag out due to my concentration issues) you might get a finished draft of something. You may ignore it if you so please. You may alter the mess out of it if you so please. I don't really care.

I have learned that my definitions of success aren't other people's. I can't afford to take theirs on, so I don't. I also know we left off on the shelf and on good footing with a re-evaluate to be done after I was done moving, which sadly I'm not due to helping the general household in addition to dealing with my own stuff. Plus poor sleep.

I have never understood why I could fanfic pretty well when I'm at my lowest ebb and once I feel better, fanfic falls away pretty fast. I can only tell you that if I'm heavily involved in fandom, it's actually not a good sign for my general well-being, and I don't care. It's how I get through the low times, just like regular writing used to work for you.

I know that fanfiction is your coping mechanism, and I guess I should have called it that instead of your process. I know that you need it, and I wasn't really trying to say that you should or had to give it up. I just found myself feeling like what we were doing with the collaboration was not as important as these fanfiction challenges you signed up for, and it was bothering me, even though I tried not to let it because it wasn't really anything I had a right to be concerned about. I didn't understand that it was the process, the editing that was the issue. It really did feel at times like everything else was more important than the collaboration and that some of the stuff you were signing up for were might have been ways of avoiding it. I figured I was being unreasonable, but I couldn't seem to stop because I was frustrated with the lack of progress, feeling stymied, and insecure.

Frankly, I still am insecure about it.

I understand the move not being complete. The one I helped my friend with is far from done right now, too.

I have felt before, and still kind of do, that I would rather you not tell me you're working on anything or say that it might be coming. I do get my hopes up, and then things stall out and I get down. It's just easier not to know or expect anything.

I think you still have too much going on to where we should do anything with the stories. I'd rather wait until you were better/clear than add any stress. That's why I said we should wait until you had more time.

And... It bothers me to have you say that you don't care if I do something to the story or not. Why bother if you don't care? Don't do it if you don't care. Do something you care about.

I didn't mention anything until I asked if you had any prompts, solely because it sounded the day before like you might have had some quotes or song lyrics and that stuff really works well for me. That's why I didn't mention anything until I also knew for sure my brain is gearing up to do it, whether I know what I'm doing yet or not. I can feel it coming on, which is weird, but it's kind of like the gearing up that happened before I threw together a poetry book, which to help you feel better was pretty much all written already, just not compiled.

As for caring, I don't think you'll ever really understand why I write fiction. I CARE about writing it and about writing something you'll love. I DON'T care about whether you're up to participating at any level. I can't. I can't control how people react, and I HAVE to write, so I can't hang my hat on whether anyone else loves what I do on the fiction front. I write and I cling to the ones who turn out to be kindred spirits.

We're just simply not at all the same about why we write or how we motivate ourselves, so when I say things like I don't care, what I'm saying is there's no pressure or expectations on you. Do what you want, but this is something I need or want to do and I want to do it for you, so it'll happen even though you say you'd be worried if you had to be involved. You don't have to be involved. I won't mind. I love you anyway. My love for writing and the process of gifting someone else with fiction is my own and separate from my love for you. I don't care what you do is my way of saying it doesn't matter to me what you do; it won't change that I care and we're friends and separately again that I'll keep on writing.

I'm what I am, which is a rather quirky oddball of a writer who communicates best between the lines and not so well in these sorts of conversations, but I mean that. You don't need to feel any pressure. I'm just saying you'll get a gift since I let it out of the bag by asking for help and I expect you to do with it exactly and only what pleases you.

I don't think that I have any quotes or lyrics that fit the fic we were discussing, though I do have a few things that I've been wanting to either pass along or use myself if I could get past my own writing issues.

I did misunderstand that. I guess I feel that when I'm doing something for someone I want to include them in it, and if it is a collaborative effort, I figure it's important to include the other person.

I have a similar need to write, but I did acquire an unpleasant feeling of needing to share the writing. I haven't been proud of that, and I'm working on changing it. It used to be enough just to write, and I want that back.

I really didn't understand the "I don't care" in that sense. It sounded like you were doing it for the wrong reasons, and I really didn't want that.

I wasn't trying to be difficult about it, and I know I didn't explain myself very well with a lot of that, but I was trying to make it easier and also clear some of the air with stuff I hadn't felt brave enough to voice some of that, especially since some of it was stuff I didn't have a right to be upset over.

I get that. I have things between me and my sister where it's just a case of incompatibility in certain things and we clash, then forgive each other because there's not much else to be done. I knew you resented the time it took away and I also knew it wasn't personal and that you intellectually understood, so I apologized and didn't let it go anywhere.

I also hardly ever explain my reasons. My sister often doesn't want me to do things for the wrong reasons, and I have gotten pretty stubborn about ignoring that because she's usually totally off-base when guessing what my reasoning/thinking process/intentions are. I work around people's assumptions. There's enough grief in my life correcting my sister's about me and I'm working on ignoring hers too (that's just a wee harder though). So that to say, it stands to reason you wouldn't have a thorough picture of why I'm doing something. I'm training myself out of giving long drawn-out explanations, but without those, there a lot of potential inferences I don't always head off at the pass.

And while I'd love to say I stopped posting about what else I was doing so it wouldn't bother you, it wouldn't be true. I've stopped posting anything because 1) half the time I'm not doing anything and 2) the other half, I'm too busy doing real life stuff to take time to talk about what I'm doing instead of just doing it. This move has been traumatic in terms of life activities upheaval. So I cannot promise no posts that won't mention me catching up on ALL the fronts I've gotten behind on (which are many and varied), but I do try to be sensitive in the way I talk about it. My approach to life is pick a priority or two for the day, and the rest is icing. Icing rarely happens. I'm always pleased when it does, but I don't make much effort to prioritize icing.

I understand. It is very much like that with me and my sisters (in fact, if I didn't ignore all the behavior they have that I disagree with, well... I wouldn't be able to talk to any of them, *sigh*)

I'm not proud of the way I reacted to the situation. I just have a very hard time stopping my train, and when you had to stop, I really wasn't ready to, so everything else that was "in the way" was frustrating. I am one of those people that tends to "slow boil" and then everything that was bothering me, however insignificant, can come up at once and seem so much worse than it is because it's combined, and I try very hard not to let myself give into that, but I do sometimes. And I was trying to forestall more of that behavior from myself by asking to wait until there was more time because I didn't want to start down that path again.

I used to try and explain all my issues up front when I met people, so that they would know why I was the mess that I was. I found, though, that they didn't understand even when I did that, and so I stopped explaining and only opened up to a few people after that. It's hard to find the right balance of what to tell and what not to tell, and I think it's harder on the internet because there's only text boxes to do it in, no facial expressions or voice inflections and because we only know what each person we interact with is willing/able to share so we don't know enough. It can lead to plenty of misunderstandings. My friend and I actually had to agree not to text/chat for certain conversations because we both got upset by them because it was just text.

I didn't mean to suggest that you shouldn't post about your days and what you're doing. In fact, it was kind of worrisome that you didn't. I know I overreacted to the reading ones in the past (that is a whole other part of my insanity) and again, not proud of that, but when I said I didn't want to know that you were working on stuff, it was only regarding the stuff we were doing together. It was me not wanting to get my hopes up about that story again, not wanting to restart the train. I don't think you should have to censor your posts for me, and I don't want you to. I'm sorry that wasn't clearer. I just found that when you'd say "I might have some of this in a few days," I'd try not to get excited, fail, and get frustrated again when the few days passed and there wasn't anything. I haven't been able to fix that, which was why I said I thought I'd do better if I didn't know it was coming at all.

You are free to post what you want about your activities. Really.

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