Rereading EVERYTHING you've written for them and desperately hoping inspiration has hit for you to release something new
Funny story (but also some hard truths at the end): I read a book the other day that was malex TO A T. It's Wild Card by DJ Jamison (it's also available on kindle unlimited, for anyone interested, I highly recommend her writing). I love Jamison's work for the record, but one of the guys worked at a junkyard and lived out of a trailer and had a bad childhood with foster homes, and the other guy was a deputy, but he was a protector, very kind and noble and loving.
And it pissed me off so much 😂 because when I say malex to a T, I mean MALEX TO A T. I imagined Tyler and Vlamis the whole time reading it, and it angered me because the guy that worked at the junkyard was Michael Guerin. He smirked and scoffed at everything the deputy said and purposefully acted indifferent to him and like all their hookups would be meaningless to keep him at arm's length because he was scared of getting close to anybody, and when the deputy walked away from him because he didn't like being dismissed, he was instantly the bad guy and the poor mechanic was the innocent victim who gets abandoned again.
It made me SO MAD that I started writing a malex fic just about Michael's jealousy. He sees Alex and Forrest together at the Crashdown and it pains him because Alex has been keeping distance between them because he's sick of his crap, to be frank.
I did lose steam somewhat a page later because I'm prioritizing my original work. And honestly, there's just not as much reception as there used to be. To me, and I know this is going to sound harsh but it's the truth, spending time on a fic only for it to get 15-20 notes (at most?) is just not really worth it? Not when I can use that time to work on my books.
My whole point of writing fics in the first place wasn't just to comfort myself and get a lot of practice in (though that was a big part), but it was also to gain readers for my original books. When I posted links to some of my original works and almost nobody was really reading? It didn't feel great, and more and more, I had to wonder what point there was to writing fics anymore, especially since the show was over. It's time out of my day I'm using only to go on mostly ignored, and I could be using that time on my original work.
I'm so glad you're rereading my works, that means a lot, and I will often go back and read some of the angstier stuff when I remember how much Michael Guerin mistreated Alex 😂, but now it's gotten to a point where if I write malex, it will be because I've got such a craving to do it, and because of my focus on my work, I just don't have that craving as often. I also just feel guilty working on fics when my original work is what matters. I'm sure at some point I'll get the desire to finish that fic I started, but for now, I just don't really see the point.
I think after I finish this book I might get back to writing fic, just because I'll need to practice writing every day in between preparing projects, so hopefully I'll be inspired then.
