Writing Update

 Time for another one of these, mostly to record progress/date because I’m about to start working on multiple fics at the same time again, I think. >.>

Finished and Posted
After Tempest (Smokescreen and Prowl fantasy AU, prequel to Renegade): 16,600 words
Stargazing (Bluestreak/Hound plug-n-play smut, concurrent with The Ghost of the Howling Plains): 2400 words
Little Brother (G1 Sunstreaker and G2 Sideswipe, IDW fixit fic): 3200 words

Aside: Huh. It felt like I haven’t done anything lately. Maybe I need to do this more often. :) Moving on to the WIPs, now..

Long Fics
Mystery/thriller sequel to Ghost of the Howling Plains (Jazz/Prowl-centric): 16,000 words 

Short Fics
Next installment in Sparkr series (Starscream): 3900 words

All those secret rules...

I was gonna do this as a commentary on a reblog of this post, but I wanted to talk a little about some personal(ish) stuff and didn’t want it attached to the main post.

I’m gonna stick this all behind a “read more” cut to avoid cluttering up people’s feeds with my navel-gazing…

I have rules for my writing, just like the OP explained in the post I linked. But I’ve been trying to dissect whether my rules come from my subconscious, or whether they come from work.

My RL job is writing. I’m a professional writer, but… not like that. I guarantee you’ve never read anything that I’ve written (or if you have, I am very surprised). I am a technical writer, and I spend my days writing computer procedures, policy documents, communications, etc. 

I point at the Kurt Vonnegut quote in the Wikipedia article I linked for an explanation of what my work writing is like: in my work writing, I can’t sound like me. We have a corporate “voice” that sounds like everyone and no one. It’s carefully cultivated, and it’s my job to mimic the tone and sound of our corporate voice in everything that I write. 

So while it might be a little strange that I write all day at work, then come home and plop myself down again and do more writing in my free time, I find it freeing. At work I have to focus and get the sound of my writing correct, in addition to making it accurate and clear and easy to understand. It’s hard. When I come home and work on my fanfics, I feel free.

Mostly.

See, I do have writing rules, but I don’t really know whether they are ones that my subconscious feels like I have to do because of how my work brain interprets “things to do,” or whether they are just something that my anxiety has cooked up for me.

Here are a few. Some are the same as the OP of the Secret Rules post:

1. If there is a good scene coming up, I need to work up to it in chronological order. This isn’t to say that I always write chronologically; in one of my current WIPs, I left a bunch of holes that said “insert Prowl POV here” and moved on. But if there’s a scene coming up that I’m excited about, I won’t let myself write it. 
2. If I need a new throwaway character (especially in TF fics), I will spend three hours on TFWiki looking for the perfect character to use, rather than just popping out an OC and carrying on. (There are exceptions to that, but not many.)
3. If I’m writing anything regarding canon stuff (that I intend to be canon) I will research obsessively to make sure I got all of the nuances down. 
4. And my big one: I need to keep producing. Write write write. Churn it out. Get more words down so I have more “product” to post.

It’s that last one that I think comes from work, and it’s the one I’m most afraid of.

We’re not measured on output at work: that would be insane. We have some tasks that are super quick things we can whip out in an hour that might be 800 words, while getting the details and approvals for adding three words to an existing document might take months. But we are measured on productivity, and I think that’s bled over into my fanfic writing.

I haven’t been writing in the TF fandom for very long: just under a year. But I’ve already churned out (checks AO3 stats) over 250k. Is it all good? It’s probably all right. Might it have been better if I haven’t been in a self-made panic to always have something ready to post and something else that I was working on in the pipeline? 

Probably.

And even now, I look at the progress report I just posted and find myself worrying. That long fic is kinda angsty crap, although if I finish it I’m probably going to post it anyway. And the short fic is agonizing how slowly it’s coming. But I feel the need to only work on those just so I have something to post soon!

Why?! 

I need to step back and remind myself that I’m doing this for fun. And in fact, I have a whole slew of other fics that have been burbling in the back of my head that I’d like to start on, but… my brain kept telling me to work on the ones I’ve started first.

Well, fuck you, brain.

I don’t want to burn myself out. I’ve having a hell of a lot of fun finding different ways to smush giant car robots together and make them hug and kiss and have adventures together. 

So I’m going to open some new documents tonight, and get some new WIPs going… The WIPs that have been occupying my brain lately. 

I need to remind myself that I am writing for me. *nods*