I wrote all this when I was failing to write a story today afk and couldn’t post it under a cut till just now when I got home. Long personalish whining
Anyway tumblr okay what’ll happen if I just don’t finish this fic. Because someone won it from me in a charity auction well over a year ago now, and I’ve tried so. fucking. hard. to write and finish it. I’ve been trying intermittently but quite repeatedly that whole time.
But I hate it I hate it I hate it - and this isn’t a case, anymore, where I like the outlines or idea of a story but hate my unsatisfactory execution. I dislike the premise; I dislike the ship; (I did like them, somewhat, when I started, or I’d never have offered in the first place). But, now, I look at each next point in my draft/sketch/outline and feel, I don’t want to write that. I don’t want to read it, I don’t want to imagine it, it’s a struggle to try to make myself in every regard.
I’m crying here for... absolution, I guess.
I’ve been working on how to have a good time writing, how to make it enjoyable and not a chore. (And also something that comes less completely on its own schedule, and more on mine.) I want to be - maybe it sounds dumb, but - allowed! To keep trying to enjoy the process. To work on the stories that I want to work on.
And not with the constant uneasy compromise in the back of my mind, that, well, I’ll get back into the groove of writing. I’ll just give myself a few days or weeks more for that, and then I’ll get back to this auction obligation fic and fucking finish it up.
I’m writing almost just about as well as I ever write, right now. If there’s a groove... I’m in it, to stay or not, doesn’t matter. But I still can’t write that fucking fic.
And, I suppose, if I can’t, I can’t. I don’t have to spend who knows how many more - months, probably, given how things go - throwing myself against the wall of ‘but I don’t wanna’ with every paragraph, every sentence.
(I’d thought for ages - well, I have a draft, it’s almost done. ... it’s a sketch and outline more than a draft. Nowhere near almost done. As I see when actually trying to write from it, and having forced my way through maybe ten percent of it - or at least somewhere between five and ten, I think.)
I just want someone to tell me this is okay.
And, well, what do now. (Besides: freedom to write what I want to, guilt free, because fuck this guilt!) I suppose that I ought to write to the person this DOA fic is for. Though they never responded to any but my first message asking for the prompt, nor acknowledged any of the written and posted chapters of the fic.
(... which, certainly, was not helpful in in terms of it not being finished, even back when I only hated it for the ordinary reasons of ~writing is hard.~ Back when I liked at least the idea of what I was trying to do with it.)
So. Yes, I struggled so hard and so long mostly because the idea of writing a message to someone I don’t know is so unreasonably terrifying that only now has the impossibility of writing the fic itself finally eclipsed it definitely in my mind.
(And they probably won’t answer, anyway! They haven’t before! Which makes it both better and worse... and if I can’t say, ‘well, alright, I’ll do it then’ if they tell me that giving up’s not okay... is there even a reason to ask? Well that’s part of why I’m posting all this.)
(I was thinking - maybe - since the reason I feel so very obligated isn’t only that there’s no default mechanism afaik, though there seems to be for every fandom exchange, but also that money was involved, though paid not to me - of offering to send back a refund possibly-with-extra? And/or matching-or-exceeding donation to the charity they bought the fic for... tumblr, what would you think.)
I just - anyway, I want this portion of my life and my brain and my writing spirit back. And having made the decision after having written all this, I felt/feel so much better about giving up, which proves to me it’s the right thing to do.....
I’m sorry this is so very long and repetitive. <3.