Confessions of A Closeted Fanfic Writer: February Edition
Real Life Vs. Fic Life
By: Pemberly Rose
Last month we talked about how difficult it is to get through a blockage when you’re trying to write anything, from FF to orig fic to just a homework assignment (if you’re a college person like me), now how do we balance our fic lives with the ones that surround us. Now I know we all would rather our fic lives be our real lives (though not all the time). The real struggle for us as writers and individuals is finding that elusive balance between what’s our RL and our FL (fic life).
Thankfully my real life does not resemble “The Ultimate Adventure Games” I read about.
All of us in the FF world, regardless of fandom, have one major thing in common. We all have roles, and titles to deal with outside of the fic world… student, daughter, sister, mother, wife, girlfriend for many of us while, son, brother, father, husband or boyfriend for some. I know there is a large amount of moms within the Twilight, BDB and Hunger Games fandoms whose works I happen to read quite a bit of. There are also a large amount of students, like myself. We’re single, mainly, but we also tend to have a substantial course load to take up our time. Personally as a pre-med student I don’t know how I find the time to sleep let alone write.
But the biggest thing for me about my life in the fanfic closet is time management. I would love to sit on my big ole derriere all day and just write to my heart’s content. No worries about school, family or financial obligations. Just me, my iTunes playlist, my laptop and an internet connection would be all I’d need. Unfortunately I live in the real world, as do we all where there are classes, deadlines, volunteer work and familial obligations to boot.
This semester is really just getting underway for me. I’m in three classes, though it feels like five thanks to two labs as well. It seems there is no end to the mountain of studying I have to do each week.
If anyone happens to read my fics you’d know it’s been a little while since I’ve had the chance to update. Which as another topic entirely, annoys me greatly as writer.
Yeah, my readers are probably sick of this message….
So how am I going to balance my fic life with the demands of real life?
Enter in my dear friend TwilightCakes (same name on twitter, cakes4547 here on MVF). She’s a real life writer like myself, though fortunate to have found a job with it, with the demands of writing in real life for her job. She also writes Love this Pain (yay for Seth Clearwater love!) and several other awesome fanfics for you Twilight wolf lovers out there.
Now how does she balance it all out and consistently keep her WIP stories updated? Late one night she and I were discussing this via Twitter. She told me that she just sits down and tries to crank out something everyday. Not necessarily a chapter a day, but just anything from 1 word to a chapter or maybe even more. She told me “Sometimes you’ll hit a stride and before you know it, you’ve got a 1,000 words, and other days it’s a struggle to hit 100.”
The most important thing she told me was to just write. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or not, just get it out of your head. She also said it’s easier to tweak bad writing on a better day than it is to start with nothing.
Sounds pretty darn solid to me. So I decided to run a little experiment. I write everyday now. It may not be 1,000 words, or even 10 words but it’s still writing something. The hardest part is usually the only time I can write is at the end of the day, just before bedtime. At that time of the day I’m thinking about the classes I have the following day, what’s due for them, if I got it all done and am prepared for class. This, regrettably is not the best mindset to write in, so I get all the school stuff squared away first. Backpack packed, papers all together and ready to go. For the mom writers out there, this time of night is usually just after the kids have been put to bed and the hubs is nearly passing out during Sportscenter.
I’ve begun to see it, though, as a stress reliever. A way to unwind from a hectic day of biology, chemistry and pre-calculus lectures, homework, intense lab classes and the mountain of reading we’re given. But late at night I get to run off to La Push and the greater Washington area on a daily basis now, instead of maybe once a week, if that. The world of Quileute shapeshifters and vampires is so much more rewarding when I know I’ve also accomplished what I needed to that day.
So a huge thanks to TwilightCakes for helping me see the light through the hectic life storm my RL has become. Maybe now I’ll actually get an update out more regularly than before. Or maybe just an update period.
What do you think? How do you handle being wonder woman/superman in your RL and still have time for the world of FF? Let me know in the comments! =)
See you all next month!
I’m glad I could help. Write write write, even if it sucks. I hope my (attempt) at advice helps others as well. And in the meantime….just keep writing ; )
If only there was a switch inside my body that automatically flipped when it was time to write. Obviously it can never be that easy, but I think TwilightCakes gives sound advice. A friend of mine even told me to write for 15 minutes before bed. It doesn’t have to be much, but at least you’ll have written something.
Now, if I could just do THAT. *lol*
First let me say, thank you for writing this. RL can be such demanding harlot and it is sometimes hard to do the things we love. I am a mother, wife, and full-time slag to a corporation. All of these things come first the majority of the time before my writing. Last night, for example, I had all intent an purpose to finish my story. However, my 2 year old son wanted to snuggle with mommy all evening.
Fic Life is my mistress, my late night lover when all in the house falls asleep. LOL! She is my lunchtime quickie in between meetings. So even though I was putting my son to sleep, I wrote on my iPhone, one-handed while my son pulled my hair as he drifted to sleep. Yeah dedication. So as the lovely and oh so talented TwilightCakes said, just write! All of our time is precious. Whether you have to do it old school with pen and paper, post it notes under your keyboard at work, or clicking away on your cell…just write.