Callie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
calliope_love) wrote2011-02-05 07:52 pm
calliope_love) wrote2011-02-05 07:52 pm
Entry tags:
State of the Callie
I realized just now that this month, on the 23rd, it will have been six months since I posted my first fanfic.
I knew it was a long time, and yet this comes as a surprise to me. I think it's because I posted The Prompt That Started It All on the meme around May last year and met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
their_kingdom that way, so it feels like ages since I stepped forward into the fandom, but it doesn't feel like I've been working for it all that long. Was August really six months ago? Really?
Regardless, it's been the single best thing that could have happened to me at the time.
I'm a few years out of college now. I've spent most of the time since living with my partner, who's been supporting me while I try to kick off my writing career, which is to say I've been learning to really write. I spent the first year of that working on one of those projects, you know — the ones all fantasy writers have. You come up with the characters when you're 15 and it's gonna be this huge epic and the cast is enormous and nobody is normal and you draw them all over your class notes and it is your baby. It takes up your entire creative life. And, in my case, almost a decade passed with nothing to show for this project but doodles because every time I started the first book in the series I had scrapped it by the third chapter. I knew what had to happen but I couldn't make it read right. And then school took over and I didn't have time, and then once I graduated I went to try again and suddenly — suddenly — it worked.
I was bloody brilliant then. Once I wrote over 4,000 words in a single day, but I was getting at least a thousand, day after day after day. Every once in a while I would go back and reread it and it wasn't half bad. It would have needed a ton of revision, but every major project and most little ones do; the point was I was finally writing the thing, after all those years of sitting on it, and it was working. I didn't scrap it, I didn't start over, I didn't think about doing that once. I got it up to over 63,000 words, and I was about two-third of the way through.
Then I got derailed when I ran out of money of my own, and had to deal with that. I was never able to jump back into my book at the same pace, and after several long talks with my partner I realized that it was still my baby — so much so that it wasn't a good project for me to really learn how to write on, because I couldn't do it justice yet. It was working, yes, but just because something works better than ever before doesn't mean it works the best it can as of yet. Not to mention it was the start of a series — I'd already spent years with just these characters and I was risking spending my entire life by focusing on them so early in my real writing career. So I shelved it yet again.
This was in 2009.
I spent most of last year in an enormous creative funk. I am stupidly ambitious as an artist and writer, you see. I spent most of college having that shot down by practical people and have had a hard time picking it back up on my own. I have a huge list of enormous projects, both writing and otherwise, that I've either got sitting or the back burner or started and never finished. Every ounce of guilt I have about myself as a person is related to the fact that I used to spend hours and hours doing nothing but working and now I can scarcely focus for more than ten minutes at a time, and although I know I need the rest I feel like shit every minute I don't spend getting something done.. My to-do list of projects always has at least thirty things on it. Some of them have been there an entire year because I never get around to starting or finishing them. I think of everything I have to do and stare at the wall, all day. There have been days this past year when not taking a nap has been my greatest achievement — several days in a row.
And then along came the fandom. I was trying to work on a short story anthology at the time and spent day after day after day tearing my hair out over the first story in it. Finally I couldn't take it anymore. I had plenty of ideas, and at the time Break and Liam were nowhere near the popular couple they are now; not to mention everyone was still stuck in "Break appears and molests Liam who goes 'WTFFFFFFFFFFF--mmokay'" mode and I wanted that to change. So I wrote a fanfic. And then I wrote another fanfic. And then I wrote another fanfic.
Six months later I am brilliant again, or at least I am on my way there. I have written almost 50,000 words of completed fic. I have ideas for several more and they will all take real work — chapter fics, theme fics, another vignette piece like That's All I've Got To Say, characters I've never worked with before. But that's not all. I'm working on a huge art project — a Break/Liam mood theme for livejournal — and I'm almost done with it. I've colored over a hundred pictures for it, and made a crapton of icons to go with it. I've created an entire alternate universe for this fandom and I think of it as just as much a baby of mine as the original writing I had to shelve. I've made an RP journal from that universe and written out his headcanon and I'm almost done customizing his icons, and soon, I'll fling him into the fray and see where we end up. I am organized in such a way that things are actually coming off my fandom-to-do-list about as fast as they go on, and I — who am one of the most antisocial people I know — have found a ton of people who are great fun to talk to and play with.
I certainly don't wake up every day raring to go. I still take a lot of naps. I think of my big new fics and go "eeeuuugh, maybe later" and I look at my huge art projects and go, "Damn, why is this so big?" But still, I am more productive now that I have been in recent memory, and it's starting to bleed over into the rest of my life and work. I have a new original writing project I am working on and I'm not afraid of it even though, quite frankly, it has no detailed plot yet. I am finishing some of the huge projects I've had sitting around for ages. My writing is phenomenally better than it was just because I'm practicing instead of staring at the wall. Even my art is getting better, because although I don't count tracing and coloring manga as real art, it is starting to help me to get my hand back in when forcing myself to draw from life and the like was failing me miserably. I am thinking of things in terms of what I can do and when I should do it instead of thinking about doing it someday. If I can continue in this vein, soon I'll be thinking in terms of what I will do. I no longer question that I am still capable of finishing what I start.
All of this I owe to the fandom. I have not been so engaged in a hobby since before I went to college, and everywhere I look of late I see personal improvement just because I am interested in things again.
If I can keep going at this pace, by the time it's been a year I'll be damn near unstoppable.
"I'm a bitch, I'm a tease,
I'm a goddess on my knees;
When you hurt, when you suffer,
I'm your angel undercover.
I've been numb — I'm revived.
Can't say I'm not alive.
You know I wouldn't want it any other way."
~Meredith Brooks, "Bitch"
I knew it was a long time, and yet this comes as a surprise to me. I think it's because I posted The Prompt That Started It All on the meme around May last year and met
their_kingdom that way, so it feels like ages since I stepped forward into the fandom, but it doesn't feel like I've been working for it all that long. Was August really six months ago? Really?Regardless, it's been the single best thing that could have happened to me at the time.
I'm a few years out of college now. I've spent most of the time since living with my partner, who's been supporting me while I try to kick off my writing career, which is to say I've been learning to really write. I spent the first year of that working on one of those projects, you know — the ones all fantasy writers have. You come up with the characters when you're 15 and it's gonna be this huge epic and the cast is enormous and nobody is normal and you draw them all over your class notes and it is your baby. It takes up your entire creative life. And, in my case, almost a decade passed with nothing to show for this project but doodles because every time I started the first book in the series I had scrapped it by the third chapter. I knew what had to happen but I couldn't make it read right. And then school took over and I didn't have time, and then once I graduated I went to try again and suddenly — suddenly — it worked.
I was bloody brilliant then. Once I wrote over 4,000 words in a single day, but I was getting at least a thousand, day after day after day. Every once in a while I would go back and reread it and it wasn't half bad. It would have needed a ton of revision, but every major project and most little ones do; the point was I was finally writing the thing, after all those years of sitting on it, and it was working. I didn't scrap it, I didn't start over, I didn't think about doing that once. I got it up to over 63,000 words, and I was about two-third of the way through.
Then I got derailed when I ran out of money of my own, and had to deal with that. I was never able to jump back into my book at the same pace, and after several long talks with my partner I realized that it was still my baby — so much so that it wasn't a good project for me to really learn how to write on, because I couldn't do it justice yet. It was working, yes, but just because something works better than ever before doesn't mean it works the best it can as of yet. Not to mention it was the start of a series — I'd already spent years with just these characters and I was risking spending my entire life by focusing on them so early in my real writing career. So I shelved it yet again.
This was in 2009.
I spent most of last year in an enormous creative funk. I am stupidly ambitious as an artist and writer, you see. I spent most of college having that shot down by practical people and have had a hard time picking it back up on my own. I have a huge list of enormous projects, both writing and otherwise, that I've either got sitting or the back burner or started and never finished. Every ounce of guilt I have about myself as a person is related to the fact that I used to spend hours and hours doing nothing but working and now I can scarcely focus for more than ten minutes at a time, and although I know I need the rest I feel like shit every minute I don't spend getting something done.. My to-do list of projects always has at least thirty things on it. Some of them have been there an entire year because I never get around to starting or finishing them. I think of everything I have to do and stare at the wall, all day. There have been days this past year when not taking a nap has been my greatest achievement — several days in a row.
And then along came the fandom. I was trying to work on a short story anthology at the time and spent day after day after day tearing my hair out over the first story in it. Finally I couldn't take it anymore. I had plenty of ideas, and at the time Break and Liam were nowhere near the popular couple they are now; not to mention everyone was still stuck in "Break appears and molests Liam who goes 'WTFFFFFFFFFFF--mmokay'" mode and I wanted that to change. So I wrote a fanfic. And then I wrote another fanfic. And then I wrote another fanfic.
Six months later I am brilliant again, or at least I am on my way there. I have written almost 50,000 words of completed fic. I have ideas for several more and they will all take real work — chapter fics, theme fics, another vignette piece like That's All I've Got To Say, characters I've never worked with before. But that's not all. I'm working on a huge art project — a Break/Liam mood theme for livejournal — and I'm almost done with it. I've colored over a hundred pictures for it, and made a crapton of icons to go with it. I've created an entire alternate universe for this fandom and I think of it as just as much a baby of mine as the original writing I had to shelve. I've made an RP journal from that universe and written out his headcanon and I'm almost done customizing his icons, and soon, I'll fling him into the fray and see where we end up. I am organized in such a way that things are actually coming off my fandom-to-do-list about as fast as they go on, and I — who am one of the most antisocial people I know — have found a ton of people who are great fun to talk to and play with.
I certainly don't wake up every day raring to go. I still take a lot of naps. I think of my big new fics and go "eeeuuugh, maybe later" and I look at my huge art projects and go, "Damn, why is this so big?" But still, I am more productive now that I have been in recent memory, and it's starting to bleed over into the rest of my life and work. I have a new original writing project I am working on and I'm not afraid of it even though, quite frankly, it has no detailed plot yet. I am finishing some of the huge projects I've had sitting around for ages. My writing is phenomenally better than it was just because I'm practicing instead of staring at the wall. Even my art is getting better, because although I don't count tracing and coloring manga as real art, it is starting to help me to get my hand back in when forcing myself to draw from life and the like was failing me miserably. I am thinking of things in terms of what I can do and when I should do it instead of thinking about doing it someday. If I can continue in this vein, soon I'll be thinking in terms of what I will do. I no longer question that I am still capable of finishing what I start.
All of this I owe to the fandom. I have not been so engaged in a hobby since before I went to college, and everywhere I look of late I see personal improvement just because I am interested in things again.
If I can keep going at this pace, by the time it's been a year I'll be damn near unstoppable.
"I'm a bitch, I'm a tease,
I'm a goddess on my knees;
When you hurt, when you suffer,
I'm your angel undercover.
I've been numb — I'm revived.
Can't say I'm not alive.
You know I wouldn't want it any other way."
~Meredith Brooks, "Bitch"