We all know what procrastination is so I'll speed through real quick:
- It might not actually be laziness, you might be worried to much about it or if you work a physically intensive job it could simply be that your tired. Find the underlying reason and treat it basically.
- Sometimes there's just no solution like going fuck it and just starting it with no plan. I know this won't work for some people but my very long droughts were stopped by me just starting it and letting what happens, happens.
What I really wanna talk about is the holding yourself accountable part:
It's very easy to just not do that and it's also very easy to over do it. The most important thing here is not only consistency but also the realization that you aren't going to be consistent.
Some day, something will break your streak.
Maybe someone in your family dies whether they be human or pet, friends schedule a get together during your writing time, you're moving or something else. Life happens, missing days should be allowed in your mind. It's when it's in your control and you're not chosing between it or something important is when missing days is bad.
This is tough to actually put into practice though, in fact I've actually been procrastinating. Moving my parents and their stuff to an apartment broke my initial momentum, and my mind immediately defaulted to, 'Fuck I broke it, I should continue again but it's already broken... why don't we do something else?'.
This is when it becomes easy to sell your time for the most mediocre shit ever. When the self doubts and the easy sources of dopamine hit hard. When you have to adult yourself back to your habit by thinking something similar to, 'I know it's broken, but having this reaction and not doing it when I want achieve something in this is ridiculous and more time consuming than my actual missed day.'
Either that or you think about it so much daily that you go, 'Fuck it, we're doing it now.' like I did to get this post out lol. Just remember to go easy on yourself and that a missed day or two is part of the plan and not the ruin of it.
I'm choosing to stay here for the long term whether or not people join in with my discussions. (Though I love it, if you do.) So if I don't make a post in a while, don't worry I check this instance near daily.
But that aside, I've been meaning to make a Google doc or just a document in general of all the advice I heard and incorporated as an accessible way to share with other people. Writing well is difficult and there's no need to add searching multiple sites for good advice on-top of that.
Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EOeUwpUoklG4zqzp5VCHrT8TYWPHtf0PV2KCjK6JqY4/edit?usp=drivesdk
(If anyone doesn't want to use Google doc can you suggest an alternative and I'll copy it over to that.)
The more I make/outline fanfiction the more I've come to realize the importance of canon and the expectations of it from the readers.
Now it seems like a no duh that canon is important without it you don't have your characters, setting, themes, and what abouts. But it is, it's a bit of revelation that I may have already instinctively known but didn't fully consciously realize.
Canon is a spectrum
Fanfiction is the act of taking established characters and making them into other characters, and the established plot into another one and (trying)making it believable.
The show or book or whatever gives us the beloved characters that we wanna play around with, we wanna see them grow outside the initial conditions the original maker has set, we want to seem them struggle, succeed, be funny, or whatever and because of that, we'll be willing to give a pass on the writer if the character is close enough and their vibe is the same.
And because quality isn't usually always available why don't we give them a pass on this weird detail and some other spots and give them a pass? And then give a little more and a little more. Until you don't even have the original characters, just an interpretation on the fandom interpretation of that character. It's how shy characters become beyond socially useless and embarassing, it's how reserve characters become barely talking characters. The best advice I got was someone telling me to review the source before writing another fanfic because it's so easy to forget the original or get the wrong idea from fandoms (did you know Naomasa isn't even fully confirmed to have a lie detector quirk? I didn't until I looked it up.)
Now I'm not saying that's bad actually, I've read my fair share of fanfics that are actually just completely different characters from the source and had a great time. It's just that when you're thinking about writing or reading a fanfic you have to signpost the canoniticy (? I dunno what to call it lol) of the story so that readers don't come in expecting the source characters when it's your interpretation of the fandom's one.
I don't go in expecting a story that has tags like, "trans x characters" to be a story that will be very worried about accurately capturing the source characters. And I don't go in expecting a story that seems like it's an exploration of the source characters in a scenario to be the fandom's interpretation of those characters.
This has been running around in my head as I've been outlining an series finale Azula time travel healing story, I've been playing with the skeleton trying to get the starting as close to that Azula and then trying to get to the Azula I want to have at the end of the story. It's been challenging (also fun) as I've realize some of what I want is literally not things that would ever change in the original Azula no matter what. It's just too drastic of changes. I've settled on the confident Azula from earlier but kinder (to friends), wiser, some I have no enemies but I'll put you into the ground type beat.
But yeah, I just wanted to talk about what's been going on in my head and this place seemed like the place to talk about. If you read all this, you're a trooper. And if you have any thoughts or stuff comment, this is just something I typed in like an hour and if you have something I didn't think about I love to hear it. Certainty is the death of improvement.