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I Am Not a Long-Distance Runner
Aug. 14th, 2015 07:06 pmYesterday afternoon I posted the seventh chapter in the Zelgan fic. This brings the whole mess up to 25,000 words. I'm about halfway done.
I'm posting a 4,000 word chapter every ten or eleven days, which means that I'm writing somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 words every day, no breaks and no excuses. I'm also continually editing older and more recent material as I move forward.
When I write fic, I'm used to putting down a complete story of around 1,500 words in one sitting, so this whole "writing a novel" thing is new and strange to me. It's quite difficult, to be honest.
And yet the hour I spend with the story is the best hour of every day, and I think about it all the time. It's almost like being in love.
But still, this is fanfic. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If people stop reading, then there will have been no justification for me to have written it in the first place. I feel like I have to create smaller, unrelated stories in between chapters so that people don't forget I exist. These are a lot of fun, but I'm never going to be as prolific and social as other people in the fandom. Like, I have a job. I have to write and give feedback and talk to people all day for my job, and when I get home I just want to drink and play video games and read about dinosaurs on the internet.
How am I going to keep doing this? Maybe I should take up smoking?
I'm posting a 4,000 word chapter every ten or eleven days, which means that I'm writing somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 words every day, no breaks and no excuses. I'm also continually editing older and more recent material as I move forward.
When I write fic, I'm used to putting down a complete story of around 1,500 words in one sitting, so this whole "writing a novel" thing is new and strange to me. It's quite difficult, to be honest.
And yet the hour I spend with the story is the best hour of every day, and I think about it all the time. It's almost like being in love.
But still, this is fanfic. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If people stop reading, then there will have been no justification for me to have written it in the first place. I feel like I have to create smaller, unrelated stories in between chapters so that people don't forget I exist. These are a lot of fun, but I'm never going to be as prolific and social as other people in the fandom. Like, I have a job. I have to write and give feedback and talk to people all day for my job, and when I get home I just want to drink and play video games and read about dinosaurs on the internet.
How am I going to keep doing this? Maybe I should take up smoking?
