hi, question for you, have you ever experienced prolonged writer’s block before? do you happen to have any advice for getting a writing flow going again, that you’d be willing to share?
bc i don’t want to get too heavy in your asks, but between chronic illness/fatigue and longterm autistic burnout i haven’t been able to write a single word in several years now, and GOD am i tired of it. it’s like all the stories and words are stuck inside me and i can see it all in my head but the faucet is jammed and i just can’t get it OUT! i have been slowly feeling like the creative embers are maybe starting to spark again but it’s so hard not to get impatient with myself because it never seems to actually transfer to paper (or word document or notes app). any ideas or tips?
no pressure to answer this if you don’t want to of course, regardless i really enjoy your writing and i’m so glad that i can at least engage with fandom through other authors even when i can’t write my own stories! 💛
Oh god, yeah, I DEFINITELY have experienced that, hahasob. I have gone through at LEAST a year or two without, like, putting down a single word or even drawing anything, just total creative block/not there-ness. Like I feel u on that one, bud.
Good news: now if I write less than 2k in a day I think "oh that's kinda low, huh", so like . . . definitely "didn't write jack shit for [ INSERT TIME PERIOD HERE ]" has yet to sink me, and therefore fuck if it's gonna sink ANY of us. We persevere!!
So like, in my experience actually helpful writing advice is just SO wildly "you just gotta try shit 'til something works"-based that I'mma just give you a list made up of a bunch of, like, assorted tips and tricks that I use on myself to make my brain put words down when it's being stubborn about it, though different ones work at different times and obvi YMMV here anyway because for obvious reasons these are all approaches that I have tailored to my own needs, hah, and some of them are a bit facetious and some are also a bit heavy, but absolutely and unironically I reguarly use them all and they have all repeatedly worked for me.
Also, they're all gonna be goin' behind a cut because WOW there's actually a lot more of them than I realized I had, hahaha. The psychiatrist who recently used me as a case study told me I was very self-aware, so take from that what you will, friend.
Get up and do a chore/take a shower/eat a snack/literally just walk through a friggin' doorway, more often than not it'll at least make your brain reorient enough for you to realize you were just beating your head against a wall and need to do [ INSERT DAMAGE CONTROL/HARM REDUCTION BEHAVIOR HERE ].
Track your progress. Write to-do lists and cross shit off 'em. Keep track of your word count when you write; put it in a spreadsheet or a notebook or on a graph on your bulletin board.
Get a NEW way to track your progress. I currently use, like, three different "to-do list" apps to varying degrees in varying ways, not counting just my basic calendar app ( for the record: Finch, Structured, and just a generic notes app, but mostly Finch and Structured and seriously I CANNOT recommend Finch enough, go get yourself a bird buddy immediately. do you want a friend code, I will GIVE you a friend code, I think it gives you a bonus mini-pet or something if you use it. ), and also set myself MANY a phone alarm to remind myself of things that I need to do in case I space out or get distracted by somebody/something/the specific phase of the moon.
Did you take your meds? Take your fucking MEDS, self, good LORD.
Leave the house even if for literally, like, thirty seconds to just stand in some actual natural light. Or leave the house to go eat at a cafe or library or fast food place and just put yourself in a new environment for literally any length of time whatsoever.
Switch pens. Switch notebooks. Get a NEW notebook. Use your laptop instead. Use your PHONE instead. Get a nicer notebook. Get a shittier notebook. Use the scratch paper at work. Use the Procreate app on your friggin' iPad if you gotta, whatever, you do what you want!!
Don't write!!
Seriously just don't, go watch an actual scripted TV show or movie or read a book or a comic or some fic. Feed your brain something you didn't have to make up yourself.
Come up with a convoluted way to trick yourself into being accountable to someone else. Join a writing group. Make a Tumblr post about how you're gonna go write now. Ask Tumblr for their opinion on what you should write now. Ask Tumblr to spin this random wheel spinner game you generated and tell you what answer they got, and then write THAT.
HAVE you had a snack? Did you eat breakfast? Did you eat lunch? Did you remember to move around the house at any point whatsoever during the day? Maybe like, do that. Like, at least the snack part. Maybe a stretch or something wouldn't hurt either though.
Meal prep is so fucking useful and saves you SO much annoying time and also, like, makes you eat actual veggies and fruit and shit, genuinely actually works, the gym bros were not wrong, go figure. Also then you don't have to think about what you're gonna eat all the time and then cook it and then clean up and then--yeah anyway meal prep, god bless it. Once a week I make a batch of pasta salad and roast a pan of good-when-roasted veggies with like, garlic and salt and pepper and some olive oil and add bacon after, and then I portion it all into tupperware and in the morning I add spinach or crack an egg into that day's share of veggies for breakfast and maybe make some toast, and just grab one of the pasta salads whenever I want something lunch-like. It saves SO much time and distraction when you are hurting for free time/focus. So, SO much.
Unfortunately the gym bros were also correct about exercise, if that's doable for you. Exercise does in fact make you feel better and more energized and less depressed, fuck those guys for being right about that shit. Assuming you have enough iron in your blood to actually, like, do it, which admittedly I frequently do not, but the point stands.
Dude why are you even trying to write, you're so tired, go to bed and get up early, you write SO much better in the mornings anyway.
Hey, I know that's how you USED to write, but like, is that actually how you write right now? Is that actually even what works for you anymore? Actually maybe outlines COULD be helpful or maybe you don't need all those worldbuilding notes all at once; maybe your inner architect needs to let the building decay and go back to nature or maybe your inner gardener has developed a taste for trellises, metaphorically speaking and all.
Please eat something. Also please DRINK something. Like ideally water but we'll go for anything that involves a liquid, seriously.
Hey did you know actually if you ONLY eat instant ramen and microwave pizza you'll probably get scurvy and die instead of, like, writing your magnum opus? Like probably?? Put a fucking egg in that ramen, man! Slice up a scallion in that bitch!! EAT AN ACTUAL WHOLE FRUIT or at least, like, buy a smoothie with actual fruit involved somewhere in it on occasional. The whole fruit, unfortunately, is better. I like apples. Apples take a REAL long time to rot if I forget they exist for a couple weeks or whatever. But like, mango smoothies are also the shit, can't turn down a mango smoothie or a good strawberry-banana. Hey did you know the grocery store just, like, will let you just buy one single apple and they don't give a fuck? You're free! The cashier won't remember you in five minutes!! Buy your one single apple and work your way up to maybe two apples next time!! Also now I want an apple!!!!
Don't write. Don't write THAT. Write the other thing. No, the OTHER other thing. No, not THAT other other thing.
The rules are made up and the points don't matter.
Fuck it, we ball.
[ INSERT FULL-THROTTLE STIMMING BEHAVIOR HERE ]
Only God can judge me and I'm still technically agnostic.
God, that's the weirdest fucking idea you've ever had, literally NO ONE but you would read it. So you should write 180k of it and also make it even weirder and yes it will absolutely be the one fic that just about everyone in MCU fandom who knows you exist knows you for, don't even worry about it, this isn't based on a true story at all.
Actually you could probably storyboard this scene to figure out wtf is happening here. Or like just draw literally anything related to this story, a bit of that might work some kinks out of the whole process.
Did you get that snack yet?
Hey go pet your dog, she's very soft and wants attention and also her OWN snack. Pet your dog and eat an apple and idk watch some anime or a weird niche documentary or an even more niche reality show, have you seen Deep-Fried Dynasty yet, it's on Hulu and was surprisingly engrossing.
Why are you even following the rules, we've been over this, they are made up and the points do NOT matter, and also you're not even getting graded for this anyway.
Yeah okay that thing you wrote sucked, but it turns out that Dean Koontz somehow has a writing career and also Twilight happened to all of us, so actually even the suckiest thing you ever write is gonna be better than the perfect ideal of the scene in your head, because the suckiest thing you ever write is something OTHER people can READ. And again: Dean Koontz has a career. Colleen HOOVER has a career. And fucking good for them, they're killing it, they are fucking WRITING!! Who gives a damn anyway, fix it in editing if you're that worried about it, they call it a rough draft for a reason.
Hey if that thing doesn't work you can just, like, delete it. Or rewrite it. Or stick it in your back pocket and do something else for a while. The sunk-cost fallacy is bullshit and you don't have to listen to it.
Maybe drink some more caffeine, that'll calm you down. [ DISCLAIMER: THIS PIECE OF ADVICE TAILORED TO A PERSON WITH MORE ADHD THAN LITERALLY NINETY-FIVE PERCENT OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH ADHD; THAT PERCENTAGE IS ON THE ACTUAL LEGITIMATE DIAGNOSTIC PAPERWORK ]
Seriously you can just write anything you want, nobody can stop you. Only God can judge me and I'm still technically agnostic enough that that's like, thirty-seventy odds at BEST.
God that idea is so niche and weird and niche, better tone it the fuck down to--oh wait no mass appeal means you're writing popcorn and literally no one will remember it in five minutes anyway, stop reflexively censoring yourself for some imaginary audience that will just chew straight through your one-size-fits-all story for The Content(tm) and then immediately move onto the next one without even bothering to hit "kudos" or remember anything about it later. I have written shit so weird that people still remember how weird I was TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, man, and that is why literally anyone will EVER remember that you exist or wanna read your stuff or follow you to a new fandom where they don't even know the source material, fuck it, they'll wiki some shit. And also who cares anyway, it's YOUR stuff and YOU wanna read it. Your agnostically-possible god did not make you this weird and niche for no reason, don't pussy out now!!
Actually you can just write in the bath/on the bus/while waiting for your roommate to finish up with the guy running this estate sale. You've got your phone, right? Fuck it, pack a notebook. Pack an extra notebook. Pack a smaller notebook. Pack a BIGGER notebook.
It's not stupid if it works. You don't have to do what literally ANYONE else is doing, you just have to do what works.
You can literally just skip to the good part and write that, actually. Nobody's gonna throw you in writer-jail. What are we, cops?? Actually do you even need this lead-up here or do you just need to write this one specific blorbo gettin' laid REAL enthusiastically kinkily and/or maybe having a nervous breakdown sobfest over their perception of their personal self-worth and everything else is kinda just window dressing??
I mentioned the snack thing, right? Also sugar rushes are fake but sugar CRASHES are real so maybe be a little careful on that one, maybe buy some trail mix/jerky/smoked salmon, smoked salmon is SO good, smoked salmon is just objectively delicious.
Go talk somebody's ear off about what you're trying to write about. Bonus points if you can find somebody who matches your freak enough that you write, uhhhhh /checks smudged writing on wrist/ a 60k Overwatch fic in two weeks and also like 280k of Witcher fic in less than a year specifically because they're just a real good cheerleader. Wow. Wow that was a lot more Witcher fic than I was aware I had written. THE POINT IS LOOK FOR A WRITING BUDDY, WRITING BUDDIES ARE THE SHIT.
If the writing buddy doesn't work out though the first time I won NaNoWriMo I did it directly out of spite because someone said they didn't think I actually would. So like, spite is always an option, you can always keep that one on tap if you gotta.
Stephen King did not write "On Writing" because he didn't want you to write. Francesca Lia Block did not introduce you to the weirdest and gayest shit teenage!you had ever read so you'd grow up and be a fucking NORMIE about this shit. SIR TERRY PRATCHETT DID NOT WRITE LIKE SIXTEEN OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME BECAUSE HE DID NOT WANT YOU TO WRITE WHAT YOU WERE ACTUALLY FRICKIN' INTO.
Clean your room. No, better than that. Okay fuck it just set a ten-minute timer and do what you can in that time, we work with the spoons we've got.
Random number generator. Random color generator. Random "hey followers here's a very oblique poll, don't even worry about what it's about, just click a button please and thank you".
Did you know the internet will just GIVE you free graphs/trackers/bullet journal page designs and you can just print 'em out and do whatever the heck you want with 'em?? Yes my new little "color in the squares every day you do the thing" tracker IS just six daily writing tasks and two daily "just go pick some stuff up in this specific room" tasks and that is MY BUSINESS, MS. SIR AND MR. MADAM AND MX. [ INSERT BUZZER SOUND ]. And also, like, has done much better at getting me to do chores than anything else has in a minute, go fig.
You can actually just do whatever you want forever.
Literally, like just forever.
Fuck, how many times HAVE you done this? You'll never get better for good, it'll always go bad again, you'll always get sick again, you'll always get SAD again, you'll always fucking forget how to even DO this again and have to start all over.
Well yes, obviously, because you'll always have done it again. So do it again. One more time.
How did you spread your Ko-fi/ comms? I've had a Ko-fi of my own set up for a little over a month now but I'm struggling to get any commissioners. Do you have any tips?
disclaimer: This is what worked for specifically me and my specific situation/style/etc and I don't know your specific audience or how you typically interact with them, so take or leave what I say in terms of what seems like useful or helpful information to your own situation. I do have some more specific advice for you in the back half, just I'm gonna be starting out with the "this worked for me" stuff.
Anyway actual answer/info behind the cut, hah. God, this is so long and only mostly organized, I apologize, I just get INTO it sometimes when I get asked this kind of thing.
First and foremost, for clarity's purpose and all: I have been on the internet for literally twenty-five years and am WELL established in fandom, as well as someone who has been reasonably popular and/or well-known in multiple fandoms on multiple sites at multiple times. There are literally people following me who were reading my stuff ten or fifteen or even the full twenty-five years ago. Given your profile says you're in your twenties I may have LITERALLY been online longer than you have been alive, haha.
So like, I've been at this a minute and have a LOT of experience in engaging and maintaining an active audience because that's a thing I value having and therefore do my best to encourage; it just works best for my process. So if you're feeling a little vexed with the response you're getting, know that this is all coming from a much-experienced Old(tm) who has had issues getting commissions and attention several times themselves and just currently has a decent chunk of followers and a very communicative "yes and" writing style and is, as a writer, WILDLY prolific. Like. WILDLY prolific. Genuinely, I am not trying to brag or talk myself up here or anything, I just straight-up feel like I haven't written at all if I don't break 2k in a day ( and even 2k feels kinda low to me at this point ), and I write EVERY day.
Literally. Literally every day. Like I missed two days after I got COVID and solo-drove four hours and needed to sleep for a week to recover, and I missed one day at the beginning of this month because I was real burned out from writing 32k more than usual last month and just needed to veg for a day. That's it, that is it all. Those are literally the only days that I have not written in like, the past SEVERAL months. Like, the high end of "several", to be clear. Occasionally I have a lighter day and only write a few hundred words, but typically I do somewhere in the range of 2.5-3.5k, and on my more productive days I can break 5 or 6k easy. That is the kind of person that you have asked for advice here, haha. 😅 So like . . . I'm low-key a freak, productivity-wise. Like I am the living embodiment of that one interview where George R.R. Martin is staring at Stephen King with visible fear in his eyes as the dude describes how many billions of pages he writes a day like it's no big.
tl;dr: I write SO. SO. MUCH. So much, and ALSO I have a backlog of something like two million words on AO3 and definitely hundreds of thousands more words under my tags list on here on top of that. People get a LOT of content when they get into me, I am MADE of content. I have built up a lot of momentum over time, that's just what's worked for me personally.
Also I'm cheap, ngl. I'm just--I'm very affordable, Ko-fi-wise. So I am sure that helps, considering!
ANYWAY. Some of this advice is not going to sound relevant to Ko-fi, but it is relevant to how I personally use Ko-fi, so yeah, here we go:
Always remember: everyone on the internet has social anxiety. Yes, even the people who don't actually have social anxiety. Just go into everything assuming most people you meet on here are gonna be shy or nervous or just feel awkward striking up a conversation with you out of the blue, especially if they've never really spoken to you before. It doesn't matter if they don't actually have social anxiety, thinking that way just puts you in a mindframe to be mindful when you're talking to them and being mindful in your communication makes people more comfortable with things like messaging you with questions and the prospect of going through the commission process with you.
Generally just assume the best of people's intentions whenever possible, and when their intentions are clearly not the best, just move on and don't engage. It is a lose-lose situation; you are not gonna convince them of anything and you're just gonna look like a dick to people who don't have the context and leave a sour taste in their mouths. Which, long story short, people are just way more likely to enjoy your stuff and WAY more likely to commission you if you're putting your best foot forward whenever possible. I definitely try not to get too negative on here myself; like I'm not doing any toxic positivity or anything, just I am here to vent some feelings and make some friends and enjoy the process, and I wanna cultivate a setup where other people can benefit from that too.
Link. Link link link. How easy is it to find your Ko-fi link? Make it easier than that. Keep it in your pinned post and on the front page of your actual blog and in your back pocket and stapled to your sleeve. When you post a commission, link your commission info in the description. When you talk about your art in general, link your commission info in the body of the text--like for example, "I'm trying to use my Ko-fi more" or "I finished up my last commission, I have some slots open again". ( used my own Ko-fi links for reference here, obviously, hah, but specifically linking to your main page OR just straight to your actual commissions page are both useful options. linking your main page introduces you as a person more effectively, while linking straight to your commissions page removes a step for people and makes it easier for them to find the info they're looking for. )
Communicate! Remind people that your Ko-fi/your commissions exist every now and then. Like, definitely not daily or weekly, but depending on how often you update your blog in general, maybe once every month or couple of months give people a heads up if you've got commission slots open/available. That way they're not awkwardly peering at the pinned post you put up months ago wondering if you're still actively open or just forgot it was in your pinned, and also it gives a heads up to people who might've been thinking about or meaning to commission you that you're available for work.
Post consistently in general; not just about commissions or Ko-fi, obviously, just like making yourself available and open to people and hanging out WITH people. Answer as many asks as you have the spoons to. Talk about stuff you like and stuff you're excited by and into. Like obviously not everyone can do this but I personally post a lot on here and I definitely UPDATE a lot on here; generally speaking if someone swings by my blog once or twice a week, there's gonna be at least a few hundred to a few thousand words of new stuff for them to read ( or SEVERAL thousand, even ). Or to look at, when I'm feeling arty.
Answers asks and make personal posts. Like I'm not saying trauma-dump on your followers or use Tumblr like a diary, definitely, but it's a good idea to give people a bit of an idea about yourself in terms of things like talking about your dog being cute or if you're going to be out of town on vacation or how your process works or just new or different things that you're trying out/experimenting with/interested in. Bluntly put, you want people to remember you are a person who wants to hang out with them and not just a Content Generator to be "liked" and then scrolled on past, and you want to engage with them and try to talk to them when they talk to you and generally be, like, approachable. In my case I just do my best to assume the best of every interaction and try to notice who's regularly popping up in my notifs and remember what I can about them. This does not always work for me because my memory is swiss cheese, but I do what I can there because I very much appreciate people engaging with my stuff ( and also my me, haha ) and I think communicating that kind of thing to people usually makes them feel good, and in turn you feel better about what you're doing and how people are responding to your work, and then you're more motivated TO work and maybe they catch some mistakes for you or have good ideas that vastly, VASTLY improve what you had in mind. The circle of fandom! The life cycle of a WIP!!
Which leads us into: you need to be doing things that are very recognizably You(tm) and cannot just be picked up for free just any random anywhere. Which like, that can be an issue with fanart, obviously, because the internet is FULL of free fanart, so what you probably want is to be looking to court people who are looking for art of their fics/AUs or their own original characters. Like your style is very distinctive for sure, that's definitely a good thing, so leaning into your personal interpretations of characters is a good idea, and it does look like you're doing that with the stuff of yours I've seen. I would just say lean into your own designs and own little quirks of styling and stuff you really love to draw and go hard on all of it. Once you really feel it out, the stuff you are REALLY vibing with is the stuff that is gonna resonate with people the most significantly in the long run, in my experience. Even if it doesn't always get the same level of response as less niche stuff does, it'll very likely get a more DEVOTED response, and people who'll come back for more of it. I did not write so dang much of Darcy Lewis in my MCU days because her fans were uninvested in seeing new content for her, put it that way.
Also, I AM in fact cheap; I have a few different price options on my Ko-fi and two-thirds of them are five bucks or under. The nature of how I personally do Ko-fi means I'm adding words to already-established stories, though, so people are coming in invested and more willing to donate so they can find out what happens next. Which, like, is obviously not something that works with art commissions, unless you're doing something like "when I hit this donation goal I will draw the next page of this comic script I have written in thanks for hitting the goal". But honestly, sometimes doing a limited amount of projects and getting people interested/invested in said projects is more cost-effective in terms of your time and energy and less overwhelming than doing a million different things all at once. Plus it gets your audience more story to chew on in the long run and I have NEVER met anyone who complained about a fuller narrative happening to them.
Mind, I don't actually know if you're the comic-making type, comics are just the first example I thought of, but also you do have to make sure you're giving people enough content to be invested in to begin with. Sticking with the comic example, people aren't gonna donate to see more of a comic if they don't know they LIKE your comics, so doing some shorter ones and posting a nice selection of those first and THEN doing a donation goal is more respectful of your audience because you're clearly actively interested in them and want to make things you can share with them, not just, like, collect their Ko-fi donos, and at the same time it's also just better advertisement for you. Ethical marketing, basically; there's plenty of content you shared freely, and you're also posting the things that get crowdfunded for everyone to see and not paywalling anything, and ideally building some community and making some friends along the way. Which, like, obviously substitute whatever works for you for "comic" here; I personally just find having overarching narratives/stories/settings helps people get invested and enjoy themselves more with your stuff, and also be likelier to REMEMBER your stuff. Come up with an AU, do some little comics or illustrations in it or some design work for it. Just make a thing that is very specifically YOU and what you like.
On that note: get niche. Get weird. You REALLY don't wanna be making stuff that is not as You(tm) as possible and can just be picked up anywhere. You wanna make the kind of stuff where people go "I wanna see more like this, fuck, who else is even MAKING this, alright OP please do me a solid and have more of this on your blog--fuck YEAH you do, look at all this, okay I live here now". In fandom terms: yes, everyone loves Timkon, Timkon'll get likes, it'll probably even get comments, but if you really want to find the diehards who are gonna lock in and ENGAGE, you wanna make sure you also do the niche shit that you're telling yourself everyone else is gonna think is too weird or just not be interested in. Shut up, imposter syndrome, people LOVE weird! People WANT weird, this is fandom, we're a largely queer subculture that's reclaiming our modern mythologies from capitalism, we're not here for the normie shit! We'd be rereading canon again if we just wanted the normie shit!
Seriously, being openly weird and leaning into said weird is a VERY definite reason that people recognize and remember my writing as opposed to, like, just consuming it and moving on without even noticing there was an author involved. If people vibe real hard with the themes you get really into working with or really like the unique parts of your style/voice or appreciate the way you handle certain subjects/characters/weird niche shit, they're a lot likelier to remember you and either come back or just stick around from the start. Like attracts like and your "like" will be delighted to have found you, and you will get to enjoy the benefits of BEING found by your fellow niche weirdos and all be thriving together! Everyone wins!
Also, I have some more specifically tailored practical advice/critique that is based off my immediate reactions to what I saw when I clicked over to your blog/Ko-fi, which definitely take with a grain of salt because I am giving it without being familiar with your process/situation/audience and from a different position. I'm just trying to be less general and offer some stuff that might be more specifically useful to you. So like, please feel free to hit me up in DMs or asks if you wanna talk about any of this in more detail or get some clarification on anything I'm saying here, this is just what I've got from my initial impressions and off the dome.
Also-also, again, this is all based on what's worked for me personally, so I'm sure there's some stuff that might not be applicable to or just not vibe with you because of that. So like please don't take this as me trying to smack down what you've been doing so far or anything, I'm just trying to be thorough in building on it and also, like, my graphic design experience definitely slipped into some of this, hah.
So to start I took a quick look at your blog to see how easy it was to find your Ko-fi and then a quick peek at your Ko-fi itself to see how it was set up. I found your Ko-fi immediately, which was good! Having it in both your bio and your pinned is definitely the right idea. I did have to expand your bio to find the link that was listed in there, which not everyone will do while scrolling past, but that's just like, nitpicking on my part since you do have the pinned post directly beneath it. I just am very much "make literally everything as easy as possible for everyone ever in every possible way".
It'd probably be helpful to mention that you're open for commissions in the "about" on your Ko-fi's front page so people don't have to scroll too far or click any links to find that out/have that confirmed. You may also wanna either slim down the descriptions in your commissions listings or break them up into paragraphs; you wanna do your best to avoid big solid blocks of text because people are likelier to only skim those and therefore less likely to absorb the information.
Skimming is also bad because it means people are less likely to notice that something you're describing appeals to them, and are way MORE likely to end up confused. "Confused" ups the chances that they just decide they don't wanna bother you by asking for clarification, given they might feel stressed by asking or pressured to buy or just like they're bothering you.
Avoiding text blocks is also just gonna make your descriptions wayyyyy easier to read for people who are dyslexic or have vision problems or possibly didn't learn English as their first language ( depending on their fluency for that last one, obviously, but you never know so yeah ). Basically you wanna make the commission process as quick and effortless and A-to-B as possible for people; your goal is "how can I make this process as close to one-click shopping for people?" Your goal is to become the Occam's Razor of commissions.
Your promo sheet on Tumblr I'd say could be an issue in the sense that it's a little difficult to read; you want people to not have to think about it to clock it as what it is. I only immediately knew it was a commissions sheet because I went in looking for one, and you want people to INSTANTLY know it is a commissions sheet. Like, before they even process anything about it, they should have the instinctive recognition of "this is a commissions sheet" and be primed to read a commissions sheet.
The main issue I see is that the sheet's layout is pretty dense and lacks visual flow in its composition; the prices are scattered and the font on the header is hard to read at a glance; my reflexive assumption from the moment it took to recognize it as text and the overall layout of the graphic was that it was a border, not a header. And like, I figured it out like half a second later, yeah, but that first couple of seconds can disorient or confuse people or just make them just scroll by without stopping to read, because it's not a tall image and the image is ALWAYS your best chance to catch somebody's eye, especially when deliberately going for art commissions.
The first thing I actually read off the sheet was "X no NSFW GORE", which I was initially unclear on the meaning of and had to reread to realize what you meant, but either way is not the first thing you want me to read; it should definitely be on the sheet and very visible, but not positioned to be the first thing someone's eye goes to. It belongs off to the side in a lower corner or just over on the right-hand side. Right now it's too high and too emphasized in comparison to the actual header, which is very much what you WANT people reading first.
There's almost no negative space on the sheet and some of the example art you've included is shrunk down so small that it's REALLY hard to read unless you've seen the larger pieces before, so I think considering doing two or three complementing slides so you can spread out your offerings/pricing and make your examples bigger would really be helpful there. I think it's a really good idea to include multiple pieces as examples, it shows your range and makes it clear what people are gonna be getting for their money; that's definitely the way to go imo. You just also wanna be sure that people can see the details and get the full vibe of your art and the work you put into it. Like, I REALLY love that pic of Match you have down at the bottom, full disclosure I realize we have like never spoken but it is literally my phone background and has been since the day I first saw it ( my lock screen being the complementing Kon pic, natch ), but you can't see any of the cool little details I know are in it with it shrunk down that small. I wanna see his eyes and the detail in his hair and the phone cord wrapped around his throat and the heart freckles, I LOVE those dang heart freckles! And like, those are also interesting little quirks and creative things that will make people think, "oh, I like how that looks, if I commission this person I'll get a cool pose or creative styling or fun details out of it!", so they are definitely the kind of thing you should make sure to show off when you are showing off your work.
I personally tend to go for vertical posts over horizontal ones, given Tumblr is meant to be scrolled and it's more important that people's eyes get caught by something in the scrolling process than that your graphic expands across the screen in the best fit; a lot of people won't even click on the image to expand it anyway. You do want to make sure it'll stay readable if they DO click, of course, so I'd personally recommend stacking two or three horizontally-composed sheets on top of each other to make the POST'S composition vertical. Scrolling down is how people traverse this site; you want to lean into presentations that read well when they're being scrolled down.
The accompanying text below the actual sheet is also not as neatly balanced/formatted as it could be, so it looks less . . . hm, less INTENTIONAL, maybe? Less thought-out than it could be, at least. It makes it harder to read at first glance and doesn't give off a professional vibe. Using bullet points or indents or headers can help with that kind of thing and just make it easier for the eye to follow along and for people to read/focus on what you're saying. ESPECIALLY when you're doing promos/price lists you want to have the most stripped-down and functional version of the text you can manage. You wanna get your point across as clear and succinct as you can and make sure there's negative space around your text so the words can be read quickly and the text itself can breathe, visually-speaking. Negative space is your friend.
Yes I realize talking about the VISUALS of text is a little weird but listen man, you're an artist, you get what I'm saying here. You wanna make the actual first-glance look of your text aesthetically appealing and easy to follow through at the pace and in the order you want it followed. Which like, takes some practice, obviously, but again, I have been here for twenty-five years, haha. Just this is a very visual site and very scroll-oriented, so you wanna do your best to be eye-catching! That's why I frequently post my finished fics with a little accompanying image, just to make sure they stick out to people in the tags.
uhhhhh okay this was a lot, lol, sorry for dumping a ton of info all at once there, but hopefully some of it will be helpful to you! Even if some of it probably sounds weird and way too concerned with curb appeal, haha. Sometimes you just gotta put in some grind and build your momentum, sometimes it's really just that; in the meantime, just try to be approachable and enjoy yourself! If you build it, they will come.
I kind of want to try your method of posting wips a snippet at a time while writing them, but on the other hand I am nervous about it. Can you give me some advice?
I've been trying to nail down the mixed feelings, and this is what I've got so far:
for:
it will get eyes on my fics faster, and I can show off what I've written sooner, instead of needing to finish a whole chapter
it will encourage engagement both in reacting to specific posts and in asking for more
it will be more chances for people to be intrigued and want to read the whole fic
against:
what if I do it and nobody cares?
til now I've been releasing fics a chapter at a time and it would feel weird to change that. inertia and all
what do I do if/when I change something I've written and already posted a snippet of?
it feels weird to post them on my writing blog, which currently only holds finished chapters (and fanart), but if I post them on my main, I feel like they'll get lost and/or I'll miss reactions in my busy activity channel. Where should I post it to? Should I make yet another sideblog?
in direct response to your listed mixed feelings, in my personal experience of writing this way:
for:
it will get eyes on my fics faster, and I can show off what I've written sooner, instead of needing to finish a whole chapter: yes it will, and it feels great! and personally it also helps me keep momentum and helps soften the sting if I drop a fic/chapter later and people don't have much to say about it. I KNOW it's good, other people already told me they liked it!! no, I'm not gonna throw out the whole story because of one mediocre reception, SHUT UP IMPOSTER SYNDROME AND GET BACK IN THE WRITING TRENCHES.
it will encourage engagement both in reacting to specific posts and in asking for more: yes it does, and WAY more people consistently (and more gratifyingly!) engage with me since I've made a habit of posting this way, especially when they're especially interested in a specific WIP over my other ones, and a lot of people just seem to be more engaged and invested in my writing in general. or at least more willing to tell me that they are, if nothing else, haha.
it will be more chances for people to be intrigued and want to read the whole fic: yes it will, and if you post larger scenes and tag them, then more people are likelier to find you/your writing than would if you only post one chapter in the tags however often you update those. also, if you have a fic-specific WIP tag that you link to, it's very easy for people who are just discovering the WIP to go back and catch up all at once ( or for people who aren't into it to blacklist, if that's a concern, as opposed to them feeling like they have to unfollow/block you ).
against:
what if I do it and nobody cares? good news: they probably won't care! at least to start. that's just kinda how it is, to start. I get a lot of engagement because I am REAL prolific and do my best to be responsive, plus I've been updating this blog and in this specific fandom pretty consistently for over a year, and also have also been in online fandom spaces on and off for, like, legit twenty-five years at this point. so I am just very used to being in these spaces, and I also have readers who've followed me for a decade+ or even since I was an actual literal TEENAGER in at least a couple cases, so like, they're already kinda invested in my writing, haha. there are people following this blog who not only read my Inu-Yasha Miroku/Sesshoumaru fanfic back in the day in the Pit of Voles but also still REMEMBER reading my Inu-Yasha Miroku/Sesshoumaru fanfic back in the day in the Pit of Voles, to say nothing of everyone who found me through AtLA or the MCU or the Witcher ( or so, so much Star Wars meta, the Star Wars meta has also definitely been a thing ). also I update my blog pretty consistently and I do writing memes that reward the people who play with me with new content and more progress in their fave WIPs, and also they're technically "voting" for what they wanna see more of, so that also adds to them feeling engaged/invested and me feeling motivated/energized, because they feel like they've affected the growth and progress of the story ( which they have ) and I feel like they're enjoying the story and genuinely appreciate it ( which they do! ). so everyone wins!
til now I've been releasing fics a chapter at a time and it would feel weird to change that. inertia and all: yeah that is the sunk-cost fallacy trying to fuck you up and you can and should tell it to fuck off. if you try it and you don't like the change, you can just stop doing it. you're free! no one can stop you!! hit the bricks, do your thing, the past is gone and it is NOT in charge of your ass! your ass is all yours!! whatever, we do what we want! I am in fact giving you explicit PERMISSION to do what you want.
what do I do if/when I change something I've written and already posted a snippet of?: then you've changed something! if it's a major change, you can repost the updated scene or mention you're making a change in a separate post or just say there's been a significant change when you post the chapter and therefore people who've already read the WIP posts might wanna reread it, but personally I change and tweak and fiddle with stuff I've already posted all the time. usually it's just bits of phrasing or formatting or adding in little details to round stuff out or correct mistakes, or to clarify things that confused people or that I forgot about, but sometimes it's adding multiple paragraphs or even additional little scenes. it's absolutely a thing I do and a thing that I consider fair play. you're literally posting "work-in-progress" excerpts, it is in the NAME that stuff might/will change or be adjusted. shit, if you feel like it, throw the whole story out and start over with a 2.0 WIP tag!! art is meant to be fucked with!!!!
it feels weird to post them on my writing blog, which currently only holds finished chapters (and fanart), but if I post them on my main, I feel like they'll get lost and/or I'll miss reactions in my busy activity channel. Where should I post it to? Should I make yet another sideblog?: the past is gone! you are free!! it's a writing blog that is for your writing and you can write whatever you want on it. the rules are made up and the points don't matter!! if you want a WIP blog too, you can totally start a WIP blog too, but you also don't have to feel obligated to bloat your sideblog collection or to have to go to all the effort of building up a brand-new following for a brand-new blog when there's already people who followed another blog of yours specifically for your writing. it's your writing blog. it's for your writing. write on it how you please!! if you're SUPER-concerned about the change, include a specific tag on all your WIP snippets that people can just blacklist if they only wanna see your full finished updates. for example I use "rintalk" so people can skip my random talky posts/asks if they wanna but also won't accidentally be filtering out anything they DO wanna see from anyone else on their dash; they can specifically avoid just mine. so like, maybe "octo WIPs" or "nb WIPs" or just whatever you're into would work for you, or just something like that.
unrelated to your for/against: posting stuff like this is not an approach that'll give everyone the same results or even WORK for everyone, obviously, but it works for me because again, I'm prolific, responsive, tend to follow my readers' interests, and have been doing this a lonnnggggg time and have built up an audience both from past fandoms and in specifically DC fandom. and also I'm super, super ADHD. definitely also because of the ADHD. there is . . . there is just so much ADHD lol.
but yeah, like, I'm pretty sure I've been updating pretty consistently for the past . . . what, year or so of DC-hyperfixation? something like that?? I've also published over 300k to AO3 in that time and GOD knows how much more word count I've put up on Tumblr, so like . . . tl;dr, I absolutely think you should give it a try and see if it works for you/if you like it, I just also wanna include the caveat that you shouldn't be discouraged if you don't get an immediate return on or big response to said try. like, I dunno what your followers are like or how much they talk to you, obvi, but I personally had to kind of . . . cultivate, basically? I had to cultivate the communication and the back-and-forth, it didn't just happen immediately. we have cultivated, all of us here, hahaha.
for actual practical excerpt-posting advice, generally speaking, the best start I've found for starting out with posting a WIP as you write it is to take, like, the starting scene of the fic/chapter up until either a narratively-interesting/satisfying end point ( or better yet, a cliffhanger ) and post that as a WIP excerpt in the relevant tags. then you're likelier to introduce the story to new people and bring them by your blog to see more, and they'll come in both primed for and LOOKING for WIP excerpts. then, you know, you can post subsequent scenes or bits in chronological order, ideally. personally when I do WIP Wednesday or anything like that, I don't tag little posts like those in the main tags, just with a WIP tag specific to their story ( which, like, obvi you know I have those, haha, I know you've been around MORE than long enough and even if you hadn't pretty sure I already mentioned them somewhere up there anyway, I'm just being thorough ), but anything that's pushing 400-500 words or longer gets fully tagged with ships/characters/fandom/etc and gets chrono/non-chrono links included in the post and then sent out into the world as my lil' story ambassador, haha. just, you know, use a cut or at least a "long post" tag if it's much longer than that, because like, Tumblr manners and all, hah.
ummmmm . . . so yeah idk how much of that was helpful for you, obviously, but if you have follow-up questions or anything, feel free to hit me up, I'm always down for those and I'll do my best to answer!
I started posting my wips on tumblr, and more fics on ao3 around a couple months ago, and I was just wondering how you kept yourself motivated to finish your older works when you have new ideas. I love everything I’ve written, but it gets hard to keep working on my oldest work when I’m so much more excited about all my newer ones. Advice pls? 😭
Thank you, glad to hear you're enjoying it! 🧡
And uhhhhh I'm not sure how helpful this advice will be to someone not the same flavor of neurodivergent as me and with a different audience, tbh, but PERSONALLY I make progress in older WIPs via:
someone asking me to write more of one for thank-you words/sentences
someone randomly dropping a really nice and really involved comment or ask about one and reminding me why I was into writing it in the first place or giving me a real good idea for it
just randomly remembering "this one gets SO much engagement, people DEFINITELY appreciate seeing this one, I should write more of it, they'll like that and I'll like the engagement and everyone wins!"
( seriously man the Billy Batson and DPxDC fans bring their A-games, like, EVERY time. but especially the Billy Batson fans, ahaha, like oh my seven gods. )
finding my niche; you will get SO much more interest/interaction if you find yourself your niche and get weird with it, people LOVE a good niche and they WILL tell you and wanna talk to you about it
someone I like having a bad day or week or five minutes and me knowing they're into a specific WIP of mine
the moon entering the correct phase and the stars aligning and being personally blessed by the sacred muses
just randomly circling back around to craving more of a certain thing
writing three sentences in the old thing, and then I am free to write whatever! I am free, I cannot be contained!! or I get into it and I write some more in the old WIP; whichever sparks joy. current fave writing trick is "write three sentences in every WIP you wanna work on today 'til one of them catches your brain enough to write more in, or just keep circling the three-sentence turns in a loop 'til you get bored".
just do whatever works, as weird or dumb or whatever you may think it is. as the poets say, "it's not stupid if it works".
As the above probably makes clear, I am personally very much a, like, RESPONSIVE writer, so I tend to stay into WIPs that other people respond strongly to much easier and much longer than ones that people are less interested in, and I'm also very much a person who is willing to just follow the muse where it goes and come back later. So like, I generally avoid putting too much of myself into "oh but I HAVE to finish the old ones before I can start a new idea!!" Because, like, why? Why would I have to do that?? The rules are made-up and the points don't matter!!!! Also I have done my best to cultivate an environment where a significant portion of my audience will regularly talk to me and tell me what they're enjoying and what they wanna see more of, and when that fails, there's always doing WIP Wednesday or running a poll.
Oh and also I take my meds. I ALWAYS take my meds, I go outside and eat my veggies regularly, and I hang out with people outside the house and even occassionally go to the gym. Plus I'm pushin' forty over here, man, so like . . . all else aside, I kinda just know how my brain works, I've been using the thing long enough to know the hacks and shit there, haha.
Like I said, not sure how much of that works for someone not-me, but in my experience the only good writing advice is the advice that works for you, and you just find that out by trying different shit 'til something DOES work, sooooo yeah, hah. Good luck and don't stress yourself out about it!
I just discovered your writing recently and it has been glorious! Thank you so much! I'm particularly a fan of your Billy raising Kon, and Billy/Damian soulmates works. I'm agog at your writing output and wanted to ask, how/when do you write so much? And secondarily, do you track your word count? How much do you actually write per week/month/year/arbitrary unit of time?
Thank you, glad to hear you're enjoying it! The Billy works do tend to come out pretty well for me, hah, just somethin' about the lil' dude I guess. 😆
also uh
also imma just put this ridiculously long response to those questions behind a cut, hahaha, save everyone some scrolling as needed.
Disclaimer one: I did NOT mean to write this much but sometimes I just get INTO answering a question, haha, sooooo either I'm sorry or you're welcome, depending on how much information you actually wanted here? And I just didn't wanna downplay or over-simplify my response and potentially make anyone reading it feel bad about not being as stupid-productive at their thing-of-choice as I am at mine, because I am this stupid-productive at my thing-of-choice for SEVERAL reasons and most of them are deliberately-cultivated or deliberately worked-with ones that I like, put a LOT of work into long-term, and the rest are just dumb luck/chance. Like man, I am pushing forty and have literally been very dedicatedly both coming up with and telling stories for longer than I could actually READ, much less write; I have had a LOT of time to learn how to do this shit and I have very autistically DEDICATED a lot of time to learning how to do this shit, hahaha.
Disclaimer two: a SIGNIFICANT chunk of the reason I write so much is a) a convenient dovetail of hyperfocus and hyperfixation, b) I have literally been writing for twenty-five years, give or take some phases of writer's block of varying lengths, c) I'm on my meds and take them religiously, and d) my actual collect-a-paycheck job is only part-time and also lets me write on the clock because there's usually a ton of downtime there. On top of that it's our off-season so we're on reduced hours right now anyway, so I frequently only work two or three days a week and almost always have time to write for at least a couple hours at my desk, and more often have basically my entire SHIFT to write, and frankly I'm probably more productive in the office than I am at home, barring the occasional REAL busy day. Generally when I'm actually locked-in on something I'm working on, an hour of writing time is gonna end up being around 1k in word count for me, and I actually get interrupted less often in the office than I do at home.
Also and VITALLY, I am very much a writer who THRIVES on feedback/communication/other people's interest and I have spent a pretty significant amount of consistent time and effort on doing my best to encourage people on here to talk to me and tell me what they're into and ask me for things on WIP Wednesdays and the writing memes that I do, and the combination of all of that interaction and the AO3 comments I get REALLY fuels me. Like I cannot TELL you how much those things fuel me, hah. Apparently I'm like . . . a decently popular writer, go figure, and I realize this is gonna sound like fake-humble shit but that is genuinely never something I really realize/remember as being a thing until someone gives me a pitying look about how oblivious I am, at which point I realize that no, yeah, most people have way more trouble getting someone to answer their random weird questions about random weird shit at random weird times and most people do NOT get triple-digit comments per chapter on multiple ongoing fics or triple-digit responses on their WIP Wednesdays no matter HOW good the narrative dick is, either metaphorically OR literally.
So like, as stated, I am very appreciation/feedback-oriented as a writer and I get a LOT of appreciation and feedback; I have been very lucky to get a responsive and chatty audience for a lot of my writing, and therefore I write a lot, lot, LOT more than I would otherwise. Legit, I would have gotten bored of/frustrated with SO many of these fics if other people weren't reminding me what I liked about them to begin with and thereby renewing my motivation for and interest in 'em. Like I know EVERYONE has said to death that fandom is a collaborative effort and you don't get fic/art unless you tell writers/artists that you LIKE their fic/art, but if you have ANY doubt of that actually being a thing, I am one of the purest examples of that particular feedback loop that I am aware of, because I write a lot because people engage a lot with my stuff, and people engage a lot with my stuff because I write a lot, so I write MORE, so they ENGAGE more, so it just goes around and around and ends up in insanely prolific amounts of word count and me saying things like "geez did I only write 50k this month, how did I even write THAT little" and genuinely MEANING it.
And like, that's an environment that I have specifically tried to cultivate on this blog, ngl, because I know it's the environment I'll write the best/most in and one that a lot of readers will find rewarding/engaging to participate in and/or follow along with, but obviously it only works because people are willing to do that engaging with me to begin with and thereby are keeping a lot of ideas and WIPs all active in my brain. I have written thousands upon thousands upon THOUSANDS of words because of, like, ONE kind comment or one or two especially invested/appreciative readers peekin' in on the regular or just legit a single friend who likes to cheerlead or that one guy in the back who always perks up when a specific WIP comes up, so like, yeah, very much I am a feedback-loop writer, and very much does the feedback-loop work for my writing process.
Also, I've actively considered myself a writer since I was like fourteen and even before that was already drawing comics/storyboards/sequential art basically from the day I STARTED drawing, and I was ALL the way a "play through storytelling" VORACIOUS reader of a kid, I KILLED every reading challenge I ever did in school/at the library and like, there were literal NARRATIVES to my playtimes, my playtimes were actually straight-up EPISODIC, haha. I legitimately read so much that strangers at the library would low-key try to shade my mom for letting me check out the multiple literal stacks of books that they thought I wasn't gonna get through by their due dates, and meanwhile we'd taken out at LEAST as many the week before and I'd already been bored for two days before we came back for this week's batch. So I am very well-read and very narrative-oriented and really, REALLY experienced at both constructing a narrative and just the actual act of writing, so at this point I intuitively/instinctively know what works to tell a story and have a pretty strong grasp of grammar and spelling, and I know what ( usually ) works to make me write.
I've also done a TON of text-based roleplay/co-writing with people in the past, which definitely has made me a faster and more responsive writer and also taught me a lot about dialogue/exchange and how to avoid weighing a narrative too heavily around one person/point of view even when they're my special fave, hah, and about the concept of unreliable narrators and also, like, just finding somebody to match your freak being WAY more engaging than writing stories that are watered-down one-size-fits-all and therefore not particularly memorable. I also had a "very into poetry" phase during a lot of my more formative years right when I first started writing prose, which I realize SEEMS off-topic, but the poetry phase definitely helped a lot, because, like, it gave me a much better sense of . . . rhythm, let's say? Pacing? So I kind of have a baked-in "beat" in my head to follow when I write, typically, and that helps me write both smoother and faster and just more effectively in general, and also makes it easier for me to get across the mood/emotion/feeling I'm going for.
I also don't edit my stuff all that much most of the time; I'm usually just checking for continuity errors and typos and occasionally adjusting the rhythm/flow of paragraph breaks or swapping out over-used words. Otherwise, though, a LOT of my fic just goes up with zero changes from the first draft, or maybe just a few added sentences to clarify some details and corrected typos. So like, that also means that I spend a whole lot less time on rewriting and editing than a lot of other writers do, which therefore means I have more time to pour into More Words. And I have ascended beyond being over-precious about my writing, FINALLY, and therefore am fine with writing things I think are junk just to get them out of my system and/or make progress in a story and then can revisit them a few days later and be like "actually this is pretty damn good, wtf were you so annoyed by, self, did you just need a snack or something, whatever, WELP we're puttin' this one up!!"
Also: ADHD and autism. It is amazing what ADHD and autism can get out of a guy, for real. Like god DAMN does the ADHD and autism one-two combo really bring it home for me personally, because I am juuuuust autistic enough to not need or want a lot of social out-of-house time and to have incredibly dedicated life-long hyperfixations and I am also so ADHD that my diagnostic paperwork specifically says I have more ADHD than a whole-ass ninety-five percent of the ADHD population and my new psych literally did not believe that anyone would prescribe me as much Adderall as makes me temporarily ALMOST "normal" until we worked our way up to it, and WOW does correctly-channeled hyperfocus really, REALLY pay off in the art of getting real good at doing something and real good at doing that something a LOT.
And eight million words of answer later, yup, I do track my word count! My memory is all over the place ( that being one of the LESS useful aspects of my personal flavor of ADHD/autism, hah ) but I like to have a rough idea of how productive I've been so I don't wither up and die of imposter syndrome. I actually keep a whole-ass yearly spreadsheet with a page dedicated to each month that I update daily with how many words I wrote in which stories, and then I add 'em all up at the end of each week and add 'em up again at the end of the month just to give myself a rough idea of how I'm doing in general.
Which, speaking of, I'm actually WILDLY underproducing this week, seriously, it's already Thursday and I've only written like 6.7k. Which, for reference, I have not written less than 22k a week in the past THREE weeks, and on average I'm usually up in the 16-18k area. Like, if I only write 10k in a week or write less than 2k in a day, that seems like not all that much to me, and I write EVERY day. Like. Every day. Literally every day. Every day EVER, or I get the friggin' itch about it and get cranky; it is legit a compulsion for me at this point in my life. I wrote when I had fucking COVID last month and only missed any days that month at all because I had to drive four hours out of town immediately after recovering from said COVID, and that was the first time I'd missed even a SINGLE day in I'm pretty sure LITERAL months, and I STILL topped out above the high end of my usual monthly word count, which is on average about 70-75k. And last year I only tracked my word count from mid-June to December, I actually wasn't keeping track at all before that, but I wrote 410k in those six-ish months.
So like . . . I did mention the ADHD and autism, yes? I mentioned those things as being things?
hi! i have a question for you, if that’s ok? i always try to leave comments on fics i read, especially on ao3 where it’s really easy to do that. in other fandoms i’ve been in, before getting into dc, fic authors often responded to my comments on their works and it was pretty easy to make friends through that and other social media and have lots of fun interactions talking about the fandom and our favorite characters etc.
however, i’ve found with this fandom it seems to be very different? almost nobody seems to respond to comments on their fics and i’ve found it very difficult to make any fandom friends, even in a casual-tumblr-mutuals kind of way. (this isn’t about you btw, you seem like the friendliest person i’ve come across on here so far which is why i’m asking you haha)
i completely understand many people are busy or some authors may find responding to comments overwhelming, but i was just wondering if this is something you or anyone else has noticed? is it a quirk of the dc fandom in particular? or am i just getting older and fandoms in general are changing haha, idk.
anyway sorry for the long ramble, feel free to ignore if i’m making no sense. i really enjoy all your stories (and your art! your art style is so cute!) and i hope you’re having a great day :]
Thank you, I'm glad you like my stuff! Especially the art, that I always feel like I'm worse at, hah. ❤️ I hope you're having a great day too. And asking me questions is always okay, no worries! I can't always get to everything in my inbox, to be honest, but I do my best to respond to as much stuff as I can. Either way, though, I never mind getting questions.
Personally I don't currently respond to most of my comments (I try to answer questions that aren't spoilers, but that's usually it these days) because it's just really easy for me to run out of spoons doing it and end up down a rabbit hole of comments instead of actually WRITING, which stresses me out because then I don't feel suitably "productive" for my imposter syndrome brain, and I also know a few people who don't respond because of anxiety or things like that, but I don't know if it's specifically a DC fandom thing or an overall trend in fandom in general? Every fandom is different, obviously, and also certain SECTIONS of those fandoms are different. Like, when I was into MCU fandom, I never really expected super-involved responses when I wrote Stucky because there was SO MUCH Stucky that it seemed like a lot of people just kinda churned through it and it all blurred together for them, but when I wrote about Darcy Lewis oh BOY did people come out of the woodwork to tell me how much they loved it in GREAT detail. Having a niche in general helps, I think, because if you're doing something that isn't super-common or interested in something that isn't super-common, people will be more excited to see it from you or hear you appreciating it from them.
I WILL say there's only a couple DC authors I can currently think of who I generally assume I'll get replies from when I comment on their fic, but I don't know if that's the specific fandom or just that I'm not reading a ton of fic right now and therefore have a smaller pool of authors I'm commenting on. Like, it's hard to tell, honestly. Also DC is a very widespread fandom and pretty old and established, but there's definitely characters and series and canons that just get ignored by huge chunks of it, so if you're into them you either have a real easy time finding people who are excited to talk to you or a real HARD time, depending on where you're looking.
Either way, I think it's really great that you try to leave comments on everything you read and a really good habit for the fandom ecosystem, I know a TON of authors who appreciate getting even, like, a single friggin' emoji or kudos, whether they respond or not. Literally any not-a-hate-comment comment is good for the ecosystem, imo, even when it's not obvious that it is. I very literally once wrote, like, eighty thousand words pretty much just because someone left a very kind comment on an old fic I'd abandoned. I did not actually RESPOND to that comment, as far as I remember; I just changed my mind about abandoning the fic and went through the long-ass process of getting my brain back into it and then the even longer-ass process of writing another 80k over the next few months/year until I got to the end. So like, I VERY much am a person who believes in the value of feeding the ecosystem, hah.
I am largely a call-and-response type of writer myself, so like, getting comments or people talking to me in my replies/asks/messages is basically like somebody is putting tokens in the fic machine and pulling a lever, and we'll all just see if I write three sentences or 80k or secretly tailor a fic towards things a frequent commenter's mentioned appreciating/being into. It's a surprise every time, with me!! And like, that's just how I work, of course, everybody's different, but I have NEVER met anybody who told me they didn't like getting comments.
When I leave comments myself, I tend to feel like more like I'm just telling the author that I think they're on the right track with the thing they're writing, one way or another, and letting them know it got a reaction or feelings or the like out of me, but I'm generally not really expecting a response from them. For actually making friends, I've found MUCH more luck in talking to people on Tumblr and Discord than on AO3. I've made friends on AO3 on and off over the years, but it's just much, MUCH easier for me to do on Tumblr and Discord. Though I kind of have a cheat code there in the sense that I'm a pretty prolific writer and so I've kinda encouraged people to get into the habit of checking my blog pretty frequently or even put alerts on for it, so generally people have a lot of opportunities to talk to me or be reminded I'm around.
I tend to notice people who show up repeatedly in my Tumblr mentions, personally, especially when they talk in the tags or comment in the replies or send me asks, and some of them I've either become friends with or just, like, secretly adopted as secret faves and sometimes sneak little extra treats of Things I Think That One Tumblr Person Would Like into my writing or pick specific WIPs to work on because I think "hey last time I wrote this [ TUMBLR FAVE ] really liked it, I should write more!" (and then I cackle in triumph/delight when they reblog it later, for that is a Victory, mwahaha), but like, it's a process? I definitely feel like making friends in fandom is generally slower than it was once upon a time, but also I'm a Fandom Old so there's been a few migrations and such over my time online too. And also Discord confuses me, hahaha. Discord is VERY confusing to me.
Ummm . . . okay I got INTO that reply, I guess, lol, but I hope that answered your question? Or at least helped answer it, if nothing else!
I'm planning an rp with a friend and we have a character who is going to have a praise kink for like how he looks, because he's been so uncomfortable with his appearance for a long time, but I'm not actually good at praise kink and am really struggling with what to even compliment or pet names other than "baby" "handsome" or "gorgeous," especially since the character doing the praising might also be in a more submissive role. You're really really good at writing sex scenes and praise kink, so i was wondering if you might have any suggestions or advice?
Hmmmmm, well, I'd say that depends on his specific appearance and why he is/was so uncomfortable with it? Like, if he has a weight problem in one direction or the other, if he has some kind of dysphoria, if he looks more femme or more masc than he wants to, if he thinks he's just not objectively attractive or has internalized racism or scars or birth defects or he's just constantly comparing himself to other people . . . like, all of those are at least SLIGHTLY different approaches, depending.
In general terms, though, I would say if I were writing that myself, at least to start I would probably praise/compliment BEHAVIORS that had a visual aspect more than just state objective facts about his looks. "You look so good when you arch your back like that", "I love that crooked smile of yours", "you blush so pretty", "I love how you shudder when I touch you there", "you're so cute when you're horny", things like that. Associating an action with the aesthetic admiration might make it easier for him to hear and accept the praise, since he might feel more like he was "earning" it and also it'd be harder to argue with in the sense of "ugh no I hate just my general features/body/etc and you're just trying to be nice to me". Like, you see yourself in the mirror all the time, of course, but you don't typically see yourself when you're performing certain candid or instinctive behaviors, so he wouldn't necessarily know WHAT it looked like when he did those things and would only have his partner's admiration to "judge" himself by.
bonus possible pet name options: sweetheart, pretty, hot stuff, honey, baby boy, pretty boy, sweetie, sugar, daddy, big guy, babe
I've recently fallen back in love with writing after about a 3 year hiatus, and I was wondering if you had any tips?
About outlining, staying in character, scene descriptions, dialogue, plotting, or literally anything else you could think of that might be useful for a noob?
Sorry for bothering you about this but you're one of my absolute favorite authors and your writing has given me a lot of motivation to keep working on my current wips and I just wanted to see if you have any advice or anything 🩵
Congratulations, that's great! I had that happen after being out of writing for a while too, recently, it's SUCH a good feeling. ❤ And it's no bother, don't sweat it.
For me, I would say the most immediately useful piece of advice I can think of for a beginner or someone getting back into the swing of things is that you don't have to write a ton all at once. Every little bit counts and it's more important to be in the habit of writing in general than it is to get a lot done every single time you open the doc. I also find that when I'm stuck on a scene or a story, sometimes switching to writing on something else helps kick my brain back into gear--like going from my netbook to a notebook or my phone or even just random scrap paper.
And most importantly, you don't have to write for some nebulously defined mass-appeal audience or even write for an audience at all; the most self-indulgent things I write are often some of the best-received ones. Like, I tend to include little touches and occasional easter eggs for friends and mutuals/followers that I specifically know Like A Thing or things like that, but when I think "is this incredibly self-indulgent and self-motivated thing too much? no. no, and in fact it is not ENOUGH".
Basically, if you genuinely care about what you're writing, I think it comes through in your prose's energy and emotion and just speaks to people more, and they're more likely to respond really strongly and really engage with what you're putting out, as opposed to just consuming it all wham-bam-thank-you-man and moving along without really remembering you or your work.
tl;dr: you can do whatever you want forever, and you SHOULD.
