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avawatsonOriginally posted to the TPP squee mailing list. This is the long rambly thing I wrote that convinced me I should keep my inanity off of email lists and should just bury myself in livejournal again. It's basically longform nightblogging. I'm basically longform nightblogging.
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About six weeks ago, I signed up with the springlock exchange. Never participated in an exchange before, but man, I did most of it right. I signed up early and had something like 5 weeks of prep time. Which I used! Kind of. I mean, I did in fact storyboard the hell out of a story. (Exhibit A from 4 weeks ago) I originally was gonna attempt to do it with art and not fic. I'm no reapersun, but I've never embarked on that sort of multipanel storytelling before, so it was hard.
But I scrapped it after rereading the prompt and realizing my exchange person probably wanted more fluff than that. And my thing was quite hurt/comfort. Original prompt, for the record: (optionally humorous) fluff? My heart hurts for Pining!Sherlock right now, so maybe something comfort-related?
And then I was lost. Prompt asks for fluff and humor, but I absolutely didn't know how to separate comfort from angst.Really didn't know how to art that at all, so I decided to try fic. And my god...I'm not sure if it was easier or not. These last few days were absolute hair-pulling, twitter-meltdown madness. (I apologize to everyone who was there for it.) I didn't have writer's block, so the words would come...it's just that I'd have to sit and rewrite them because they were too angsty. Fluff isn't my forte or default setting. By the time deadline rolled around, the 29th, the 30th, I had such issues with what I wrote. (Excerpt of what I wrote my last minute beta is screencapped here as exhibit B)
But I got it in under the deadline. Somehow. Barely. I even drew a companion piece while my beta was writing me back, and for something with zero reference and done in under three hours, I'm pretty proud of it (the art bit).
And comments started coming in. Some of them solicited -- through twitter, me melting down, asking what people thought of my terrible five thousand words of brain splat. Some nice ones from my beta actually. And then I posted to ao3, and I've had some of the nicest comments I've ever had on my fics -- and I realized...I don't get comments on fluff (because I don't write it). I get comments on porn (because I write it).
So it's super nice to get superlative comments on porn, and a couple recent ones I have just wanted to up and marry, but...fluff comments are different. I'm feeling weirdly touched and I don't even know how to handle it.
So...god, maybe it's inversely proportional to how low I was feeling in the leadup to forcing that fic out the door, but I feel weirdly good now. My person who I wrote it for has apparently enjoyed it at least, and I'm just...really glad. Blood from stone, this fic.
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About six weeks ago, I signed up with the springlock exchange. Never participated in an exchange before, but man, I did most of it right. I signed up early and had something like 5 weeks of prep time. Which I used! Kind of. I mean, I did in fact storyboard the hell out of a story. (Exhibit A from 4 weeks ago) I originally was gonna attempt to do it with art and not fic. I'm no reapersun, but I've never embarked on that sort of multipanel storytelling before, so it was hard.
But I scrapped it after rereading the prompt and realizing my exchange person probably wanted more fluff than that. And my thing was quite hurt/comfort. Original prompt, for the record: (optionally humorous) fluff? My heart hurts for Pining!Sherlock right now, so maybe something comfort-related?
And then I was lost. Prompt asks for fluff and humor, but I absolutely didn't know how to separate comfort from angst.Really didn't know how to art that at all, so I decided to try fic. And my god...I'm not sure if it was easier or not. These last few days were absolute hair-pulling, twitter-meltdown madness. (I apologize to everyone who was there for it.) I didn't have writer's block, so the words would come...it's just that I'd have to sit and rewrite them because they were too angsty. Fluff isn't my forte or default setting. By the time deadline rolled around, the 29th, the 30th, I had such issues with what I wrote. (Excerpt of what I wrote my last minute beta is screencapped here as exhibit B)
But I got it in under the deadline. Somehow. Barely. I even drew a companion piece while my beta was writing me back, and for something with zero reference and done in under three hours, I'm pretty proud of it (the art bit).
And then I published the fic on ao3 and waited for the stress to die down. Which it did...slowly. I was wound up over this fic. Maybe it was the deadline?
And comments started coming in. Some of them solicited -- through twitter, me melting down, asking what people thought of my terrible five thousand words of brain splat. Some nice ones from my beta actually. And then I posted to ao3, and I've had some of the nicest comments I've ever had on my fics -- and I realized...I don't get comments on fluff (because I don't write it). I get comments on porn (because I write it).
So it's super nice to get superlative comments on porn, and a couple recent ones I have just wanted to up and marry, but...fluff comments are different. I'm feeling weirdly touched and I don't even know how to handle it.
So...god, maybe it's inversely proportional to how low I was feeling in the leadup to forcing that fic out the door, but I feel weirdly good now. My person who I wrote it for has apparently enjoyed it at least, and I'm just...really glad. Blood from stone, this fic.