#and comments

It truly brings me an immense joy to transfer the movies playing in my mind at bedtime down to the written page. I mean, the act itself—choosing the right words to convey the tone I want, shaping out the chapters, staring at a blinking cursor—even when it's miserable, I love it. (Even more, once it's finished, the satisfaction at being able to go back to that fic whenever I want—whenever I'm craving that one particular scene, that one particular kiss, that one particular storyline—is absolutely unmatched for me.)

I also am divinely fortunate to be surrounded by dear friends who are also avid writers. @jadesabre301, @eponymous-rose, @perahn, @servantofclio, basically everyone in the movie night group—they are cheerleaders and soundboards and they love the craft as much as I do, and even if I know I'm about to post something that might get two comments if I'm lucky, running a draft by the group & having Perahn recognize and call out a vocative O or a diacritical é or some other silly flourish I'd never dreamed anyone would appreciate is like hoping for a single daisy and getting a bouquet of roses.

All of that is to say: I just love the darn work, and I have people close to me who also love the work, and that does enough of the emotional heavy lifting even on the long projects that I don't have to depend on comments to feel my efforts have been appreciated.

I'm not sure that's particularly useful, but it's true.

3. I struggle with broad narrative structure.

This has been a weakness of mine all the way back to baby's first longfic (Deathsong, Bleach, 2010). Despite the detailed outlines I always draft before beginning a long project, there's always some narrative throughline I fumble without meaning to, and the only way my beta can catch it is if she gets the whole thing at once.

Honestly, I don't think there's a single >30k word fic in my corpus that doesn't have a note from Jade somewhere alerting me to the bones I've forgotten to build.

I want my stories to be good. Not just fun to read, although I do want that too; I mean structurally, from the ground up, I have a vested interest in constructing something narratively sound and coherent and strong. I really want my fics to be well written, at least to my own limits, and I know overarching theme is not one of my strengths.

Therefore, if I want my final product to be the best thing I can make, I need a second set of eyes (Jade's eyes) on the body complete to identify those weak places so I can fix them. If I'm posting as I go, then there's no chance to fix my foundational issues from Chapter 2 when she's only just recognized them in Chapter 6.

(This is also why I so deeply appreciate her editing. When I know my work is flawed, I need that correction over uncritical praise; and it makes her praise more precious when I've earned it with the fixes. And yes, there have been occasions where I didn't make every change she suggested, but I knew thanks to her comments what imperfections I would be permitting to exist, and I decided I could live with them.)

I would rather sacrifice the reward of chapter-by-chapter comments than end up with a fundamentally flawed final fic.

4. Relying on others' actions to motivate me is very unhealthy for me, and I've actively worked to avoid it in my adult life.

I don't think this needs a lot of explanation (like that'll stop me), but I have found over the years that I crave praise. I like winning awards. I like getting good comments on my student evaluations. I like being recognized for my skills and told I did a good job and having all my colleagues go, "ooh, she's so good at what she does."

In fact, I like it enough that I have to avoid it. I haven't opened my student evaluations in over a year because I get addicted to the praise and unreasonably irritated by criticism (especially if I know whatever they're complaining about isn't accurate), and I know the curriculum committee will tell me about any issues anyway. I know my work is good, I really do. I know I'm good at my job, and I know I'm a reasonably proficient writer. I cannot—and must not—depend on others to tell me so to believe it.

@eponymous-rose and I have talked at length about writing now for Veilguard. We both know this is hardly the most popular game in the franchise, and we've had long conversations about why we're choosing to write in its world anyway, which basically boils down to: we want to. We both have stories we want to tell in its flawed, imperfect, compelling world, and we've both come to terms with that likely meaning a low (or even zero) comment count on AO3.

If that comment count is the only metric of success by which I measure, what does it mean when it measures low? If I get one comment on 30k words I bled to write, have I failed? Have I written something of poor quality? Have I wasted my time, done a bad job, hastened the heat death of the universe with my electronic and digital waste?

I can't believe that. I must believe the work itself was worth doing if I've done it to the best of my ability, even if it goes unnoticed in the broader scope of fandom. I have to derive my satisfaction from knowing I have made something out of nothing & polished it as best as I know how. If I become reliant on others' reactions to inspire me to write—if I'm suddenly depending on a comment count becoming n+1 for every chapter before I can begin the next one—then I've surrendered my creative happiness and motivation to the hands of total strangers.

Understand: when I nobly claim that I refuse to write to an algorithm, what I mean is that like an addict, I have to choose over and over to remove myself from the thing that poisons me. I am too susceptible to praise. If I let the dopamine response of comment counts become integral to my writing process, then I risk becoming dependent on it. The only way I know how to prevent that for myself is to remove it from the method altogether.

That does not mean I don't value reader comments; I do, deeply. I have an entire folder of screenshots saved like golden treasures, hoarded up against the bad days. When this Big Bang fic finally comes out, I intend to advertise it to the point of annoyance. I love comments to a probably unhealthy degree. But knowing that about myself means I have to take steps to ensure those comments stay the gifts they are, rather than the payment itself.

I don't want to burn out. I don't want to stop telling stories. And for me, this is the only way I think of to do it. If I want to make something I'm really proud of, something I can go back and reread years later and still love, the writing itself must be the goal, and everything else has to come second to that. I need to know I can survive even if AO3 were to shut down forever tomorrow.