oops

[cimorene]

I have THE WORST idea for a This Old House-based angsty gay romance but I keep thinking of new details and silently chortling to myself as I keep watching.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

well, as long as you are chortling you are on the right track!

[cimorene]

The danger is if I manage to feel like writing but waste the effort on writing some horrible melodramatic purple romance about characters nobody recognizes instead of finishing WIPs or writing something for an active fandom where my energy output can get some social engagement to continue providing more motivation for when my crazy glee starts to run dry.

[princessofgeeks]

You know, I never subscribed to that idea that I have to ration my writing. (When I was writing, I mean.) If I didn't write something I was excited about in favor of trying to push myself to write something I felt I "should" write, it never worked out well. The enthusiasm for one project never was transferable to another project.

(Of course this doesn't apply to when I was writing for the newspaper and had to meet my deadline regardless. Just ficion.)

[cimorene]

That makes perfect sense, but I have a strong compulsion about it and I hate the unfinished stuff lying around! So the more it looks like they're going to be hard to finish, the more trouble I have working on other stuff. I find that once I've left off working on something to start something else, it's far too easy to lose the spark for the first one - in fact it seems like almost every time I've done it the story's ended up unfinished forever, or for a really long time with a lot of struggling to make it work in between, and I really fear that.

All of it is a moot point when I've had writer's block for 4 years like now, though. It's more like I get ideas or spend a while thinking about a specific WIP, but not enough for the motivation to overcome the inertia in the first place. So it's more like the multiple ideas are just fighting it out for first place in my rack of imaginary writing at this point.

[princessofgeeks]

I wish you all the best. I'm not writing either and it's hard to put my finger on why. I've recently been meeting with a friend and writing a little bit once a week outdoors. Just exercises so far. Trying to be gentle with myself and ask again what my motivations are, what I love about it.

I have identified that I love it when the characters take over and surprise me with the things they say. So that's one thing.

[cimorene]

yeah, writing exercises might help. I've had some luck in the past with using kinkmeme prompts to get started too, which are... kind of writing exercises. In a way. And I update Dreamwidth here a lot more than I did then, which I thought would help, but hasn't as far as I can tell.

On the other hand, there's an issue where all the fandoms I've been active in in the past are now pretty much dried up. I think having an active fandom really helps me, but I haven't found one I definitely wanted to join in with and had any sort of ideas for.

[princessofgeeks]

Yeah, I'm right with you there about not having a new fanfic fandom.

[viggorlijah]

Where are you watching episodes?

[cimorene]

Their official website has a few recent seasons for free and there are some on YouTube as well, but we had to buy a subscription for the old ones.

[cimorene]

And as Wax pointed out, you also need a VPN for that. If anybody has ripped them all somewhere for pirates, which is maybe doubtful, the pirates are luckier than the subscribers because the very old seasons are ripped with old commercials embedded and the same commercial over and over is starting to drive me a bit nuts.

There is quite a lot of screentime for free on the website, though - the several most recent seasons in their entirety anyway.

[viggorlijah]

Thank you - their youtube channel has a lot and I knitted my way to my border with four episodes this evening. It is very soothing, especially alternated with Grand Designs! I'm torrenting a highlights set, and there are a couple of seasons floating about in the pirates next.