On Process, and Changing Things Up

Back when I started on the fanfic train, I had a very simple process: write, edit, post. I've mentioned before that I used to do a lot of handwritten work. Mostly that was because I grew up in the Dark Ages before everybody and their mother had a laptop. However, as a college student traveling to and from school on trains and buses four or five days a week, you know what I did have? Waiting time and lots and lots of looseleaf paper.

I'd pull sheets of paper out of the binders I used for class and write on the train or at the station. I would then do a bulk of the editing when I typed up what I'd written. My first drafts are typically very dry; the embellishments come during editing so the handwritten drafts were pretty much just guideposts. So I would write whenever I could, type it up once I got enough written to make it worth it (because this was also back in the Dark Ages when an entire family actually had to share one computer), and then give everything a once- or twice-over before posting it to ... wherever I posted things to. A couple of mailing lists, I think, and a forum community.

Then I joined up at fanfiction.net and they had this nifty little system to divide your story by chapters. So my new process became write chapter x, edit chapter x, post chapter x, write chapter y, edit chapter y, post chapter y. And so on. Which is all well and good but then once in a while I would run into a situation where, three-quarters of the way through the story, I'd get stuck.

Getting stuck now presented a new issue. Since I had been posting works as complete units before, I'd never felt pressure when I got stuck. I'd set it aside for a couple of days and brainstorm and figure a way out of it. Now, though, people were reading my stuff as I wrote it. I didn't want to leave them hanging for too long. Because there are fewer things more frustrating than being really into a story and the author either taking forever to update it or never updating it again.

I mean, I get it. Most fanfic authors are doing this as a hobby. They all have lives outside fanfic and the muse can be extremely fickle. Just because you have inspiration for something now doesn't mean you're going to have inspiration for it a week from now when the show completely screws your plot to hell or your everyday life demands more of your attention. But at the same time, I felt a responsibility to my readers to give them some kind of closure. So I would just ... write an ending. It wouldn't be the ending I really wanted to write, but it was the only ending I could write at that point in time.

After that happened two or three times, I started waiting until I had a few chapters written before I started posting a new story. That way, I would always be a couple chapters ahead of myself, so if I did get stuck, I could release a new chapter on schedule without the undue pressure on myself to get around the stumbling block omgrightnow.

And then, as it happened, I got writers' block. The real and serious writers' block where nothing comes out the way you want and you hate everything you try to write. It lasted close to two very long, very excruciating years. By the time I was ready to try another multi-chapter story, I was afraid of getting a block again, so I decided to change my process yet again. This time, I'd write the whole thing, then edit chapter x, post chapter x, edit chapter y, post chapter y.

At first, that was a really difficult change to make. A large part of the fanfic process for me, especially if I'm writing a story for a new fandom, is the feedback. I love hearing when I'm doing things correctly, obviously, but I also want people to tell me what I'm doing wrong. It helps to refine my writing, and it helps me get a better handle on the characters. "You know, I don't think Sam would really say that to Dean" is just as helpful to hear as "Oh, that was so Sam! Great job!"

Doing things this way, I still got the feedback as I was doing the edits, so I could tweak things that weren't quite working in -- or add things that were working to -- future chapters. It just made the actual drafting phase very tense because I had no idea how it would be received.

With my Once Upon a Time fic, for whatever reason, I've pretty much been throwing caution to the wind. My first story, as I chronicled here, was "Breaking Point." I don't usually write multi-chapter epics the first time out. It's easier for me to get a handle on characterization with oneshots, so I usually do a couple of those first before tackling a multi-chapter, plot-heavy story.

My latest story, "Navigation," was supposed to be a oneshot. The reader response to it was overwhelming, and pretty much everyone asked me to continue it. So I did. I completely flew by the seat of my pants, going back to the write chapter x, edit chapter x, post chapter x process.

I was terrified I wouldn't be able to find a way to tie it all together (because this was not a story I'd intended to continue, there really was no laid-out plotline to follow and I only had a vague notion of what I even wanted to do with it), but apparently what I came up with worked, because the readers seemed to love it.

*whew*

So, yeah. That was an interesting exercise. And by interesting, I mean terrifying, of course. I had a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, and the readers were fantastic and made me feel wonderful. It was maybe just a touch too on-the-spot for comfort. At least going outside my comfort zone presented a nice challenge!