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So in 2018 my big writing goal was to contain my WIPs on AO3 - they had grown completely out of hand. And over the course of the year they were slowly brought down and I was careful about how many I added. The work was going well.
And then in September I finished a project that I had poured three years of my life into. A series called The Knitter Eggsy Universe for Kingsman. 10 works and 409,000 words over three years but an in character blog for 2 of those years that had between 2-30 posts a day. It was a giant deal to me, and when it ended works exploded out of me.
All the work I had done at control went away.
And at the same time I started work again for the first time in a decade. Yes it was a relatively small job but it changed the amount of time I could put into writing.
Between that and trying Nano the writing didn't go how I was used to and I found that frustrating.
I had to remind myself, just because you've always worked a certain way, doesn't mean that you have to keep on working that way.
So I have spent the last few weeks thinking about my writing and what I want from it. And this year I want to focus on a slightly different sort of control - namely not everything has to become a 40-100k epic.
I set a personal challenge for myself a once a week prompt and the story stays under 5k.
When I do exchanges the story will stay under 5k.
Only one giant universe at a time.
Only 3-4 linear wips and 1 timestamp collection for one of those wips.
And this is a big change, writing stories more offline and then later posting to ao3. When a story is a wip on ao3 I do feel compelled to write more for it, and sometimes now I just can't and then I get frustrated. So I want to shift writing so that a story has to be at least half done before I start posting to a schedule on ao3 (eg it will then update Tuesday and Sat etc). This will help with my editing because I always rush to post and so many typos slide on through.
It seems like a lot of change from what I have always done (here are 8 50+k stories I am juggling at the same time wee), but I think my writing and my brain will be the better for it.
Time will tell.
And then in September I finished a project that I had poured three years of my life into. A series called The Knitter Eggsy Universe for Kingsman. 10 works and 409,000 words over three years but an in character blog for 2 of those years that had between 2-30 posts a day. It was a giant deal to me, and when it ended works exploded out of me.
All the work I had done at control went away.
And at the same time I started work again for the first time in a decade. Yes it was a relatively small job but it changed the amount of time I could put into writing.
Between that and trying Nano the writing didn't go how I was used to and I found that frustrating.
I had to remind myself, just because you've always worked a certain way, doesn't mean that you have to keep on working that way.
So I have spent the last few weeks thinking about my writing and what I want from it. And this year I want to focus on a slightly different sort of control - namely not everything has to become a 40-100k epic.
I set a personal challenge for myself a once a week prompt and the story stays under 5k.
When I do exchanges the story will stay under 5k.
Only one giant universe at a time.
Only 3-4 linear wips and 1 timestamp collection for one of those wips.
And this is a big change, writing stories more offline and then later posting to ao3. When a story is a wip on ao3 I do feel compelled to write more for it, and sometimes now I just can't and then I get frustrated. So I want to shift writing so that a story has to be at least half done before I start posting to a schedule on ao3 (eg it will then update Tuesday and Sat etc). This will help with my editing because I always rush to post and so many typos slide on through.
It seems like a lot of change from what I have always done (here are 8 50+k stories I am juggling at the same time wee), but I think my writing and my brain will be the better for it.
Time will tell.
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