i slow burned to ch 8 then my roomate told me i should just write the smutty chapter already so ummm it took me three days to write this as my litte ace sex-repulsed self have fun
spent 3 days fighting for my life writing smut after 7 chapters of emotional slow burn:
yeah so wilson rails house at 100 bpm to the rhythm of ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and then calls him ‘love’ mid-thrust. it’s fine.
and spoiler i had to ruin it by house doesn't say i love you back that night...
sometimes people are like “you wrote smut??” and i have to explain that yes i did but also no i didn’t
i wrote a slow unraveling of emotional repression that just so happened to involve thrusting
bc sex scenes aren’t just “and then they did the sex”
they’re a window into the characters—who they are, what they want, what they hide, what they’re afraid of when someone gets too close
anyway chapter 8 is live and wilson calls house “love” while railroading him like he’s giving CPR and i need to go lie down now
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
January 2025, I came back from a 4-year hiatus during which I was partly busy, partly increasingly ill, and partly paralyzed with a mental block. In the past 10 months, I'd pumped out a million + words of fanfiction; partly completed and posted, partly ongoing, and partly waiting to be posted.
But my illness has been worsening again, I recently had to withdrew from some social circles and isolate myself even further than i already am, and I lost the drive that had me pumping out up to 10k words a day since January. I started wondering if this was it; I'd had a good run, and my hyperfixation was fading.
But recently a few people came by, like ships passing in the night, to drop off some beautiful words of encouragement. Another drop of a shiny rock in my pond. And some might call it shallow, but for someone who lives with the aftermath of lifelong PTSD, external validation is the lifeline that pulls you out of that inner hell that is so easy to drown in.
Oh, I thought tonight. I remember now. This is what joy feels like.
It reminded me that I need to keep going so I can let my character finally reach that chapter where he realizes what joy feels like. How life can feel so weightless for some people. How color can be so vibrant in the world and the sky can be beautiful and he is loved even when he doesn't realize it.
(This is a convoluted way of thanking readers who are kind enough to give me encouraging words and reviews.)
Every time I come to the end of one of these chapters I'm left with the feeling it's the most boring and repetitive irredeemable garbage ever written and it is nawt a fun feeling lol normally I get a buzz from rereading my own stuff but lately I don't even want to look at it
The roller coaster does go back up when I'm in the thick of writing the next chapter and I feel good about it but then I come back down again
That moment when you are trying to hunt for a chapter of a current WIP you're working on, but can't remember what you named it, or if it is one of fifty docs that goes under the horrific name of 'Untitled' because you're an absolute moron and forget to name things.
“late night rambles” and it’s 2 hours till noon because my sleep schedule is so fucked i perceive time this way now (it was when i started writing this at least, i took a nap). sigh
anyway
im a writer that’s my skill. p much my only skill. ive based so much of my self perception on it, too. i’ll explain the process that drives me crazy
i feel happiness when people give me attention and praise
i’ll get praise vicariously through making things
“reading stories and poems is fun why dont i make them”
i work hard making things for however long and get praise for it
i get excited and do more
one of three things happens
A. i write too much. i write and write and write and can’t find someone to read. i hound my readers or potential readers hoping begging they’ll put in the effort to read what i’ve spent so much thought on time on. please show me i’m worthwhile, please show me i didn’t do it for nothing, please say it filled your heart with some kind of feeling, please say it was dogshit, ANYTHING. i can’t have the hours be meaningless, sure i liked writing it but it’s a 70 page story is it really not worth anything to anyone? or its 270 pages of (i stupidly thought) fun worldbuilding and nobody cares? or 30 pages of a WIP, or a short poem. this is why nell was so important for me. she just, read stuff, liked it, gave me long replies. made me feel smart and special and important.
B. i can’t write enough. i get a tiny little fanbase or something and they want updates. and i try to accomplish that. but then school or ennui or something takes me out of it and i go crazy and stress and i can’t touch it for weeks or even months. and the guilt and fear sets in. what if when i upload the next chapter in however long my little fanbase is fucking gone or nobody cares anymore? what then? do i just stop? but then the guilt would set in.
C. i write the “wrong things”. things nobody has interest in, that i know nobody has interest in. i don’t always know that when i start but i usually just assume somebody gives a shit and will take an interest. but oftentimes they don’t. i have seriously massive anxiety that people are interested in my smutty work solely because they hit on certain niche fetishes and such and not at all because of any story or writing value. now i know this isn’t completely true because people have really enjoyed my wholly sfw work, but none of my sfw work over 10 pages has gotten any attention at all. it is just the one piece i guess and it’s weird and wtv, but still. i was so proud of it, i spent so long on it, and NOBODY gave a shit. i had like 3-4 beta readers and ALL of them either A. ghosted me (2 of them just, forgot or decided they didn’t care, and i reminded them once then didn’t again) B. randomly got super ill (my friend with psychosis) or C. stopped talking to me (nell). I have some anxiety that the project mightve even been a factor in WHY nell lost interest in being my friend, and that just… destroyed my love for it, i haven’t touched it in many months atp.
the worst part is the lack of self-sustainability. people interact with me when i do things for them, say things to them, post things, etc. but if i disappeared or stopped talking my contact with people would end. nobody just pops in by chance, nobody checks in, nobody notices me and thinks hey there’s a kindred spirit i feel like i love this person like a brother i should talk to this person daily. and so on and so on. i keep hoping there’s some point where i’ve written enough, spoken enough, bonded closely enough that i won’t be the one driving every conversation, checking in more frequently, wanting the other person more. but i don’t think there is, not at all.
the driving conversations, always being the last to respond part is almost even worse. it genuinely drives me insane that no one i’ve ever talked to online seems to want to talk to me more than i do them. ive driven someone off for being annoying maybe twice in my entire life
why can’t i be interesting without writing, without doing? why can’t i be intrinsically valuable instead of create value? fml. What can I even fucking do? I know ABSOLUTELY FOR CERTAIN that people don’t engage with me if i don’t initiate and drive conversation because i’ve experienced it countless times. So again what the fuck am i supposed to do? just stop doing things, accept i have no value to anyone other than my family, and rot? or just live as a writing machine grinding out page after page through B/S/T hoping someone likes it so i get tiny nuggets of joy
