Week Two: The Upkeep
This second week of working for myself may have been less productive overall, but I can now check off two boxes on my Writer’s Bingo card, and I’m waiting impatiently to be able to check off a third.
My major accomplishment this week was joining AO3 and publishing my novel-length fanfiction I’ve been working on since last July. The first comment on it arrived seven hours later, the reader saying they stayed up past their bedtime to finish it. That’s one for Writer’s Bingo. A few more nice comments came through, and a few days later, someone said that it’s now their “favorite fic,” so, that’s another one for Writer’s Bingo.
The idea that total strangers can read what I wrote and love it as much as I do is…a little overwhelming. Like, maybe I’m actually good at this?
The third compliment that I’m waiting for is what I wanted my beta readers to do, and they didn’t, because they’re terrible. I appreciate their attention and energy but they aren’t as emotional as I am, so while I cried at several points while writing it and again every time I read it, I did not achieve the triumph of writing something that made someone else cry. I am waiting for this like a villain, lurking in the shadows of my work’s comments section, fingers steepled, crooning and cajoling like that’s going to bring the criers to me.
Strangers liking my story may have been the most exciting and emotional writing-related thing this week, but I also restructured my current WIP in a way that I’ve been dreading all week because I knew it would be a lot of work. It is infinitely better that I clean it up now, though, while I’m only 20K words into it, because it’s one of those things that will get harder to do the longer I wait to address it. I still have some clean-up to do, but I wouldn’t have been able to make any progress with this thing hanging over my head.
It took a few days to realize that’s what I needed to do, too. I was disappointed in myself that I’d only written a couple thousand words in it, but once I realized it was because I didn’t want to face the restructuring, I had to get it taken care of. Hey, I’m learning!
And I’m sure this upcoming week will also teach me things I didn’t know I needed to learn.