Having Submitted Stories, Wondering What To Write Next, and Posting Old Work

[paulamcg]

Yesterday I submitted my second fic to the AO3 collection of Remus Lupin Fest, after I’d submitted the first one eight days earlier. And on Sunday, a day before the deadline, I submitted my Salt and Pepper Fest fic to hp_goldenage. Once again – no, thrice again – I’ve enjoyed liseuse’s wonderful beta services. Two of these stories I’d started in late December.

Now suddenly I don’t know what to write. I’ve got no fic started and no fests even planned. I’m considering some three-sentence-challenge prompts, and I guess I should just write – anything.

On the last few days I’ve been posting fifteen-year-old and ten-year-old stories on AO3, since I’ve finally got everything I wrote in 2019 posted. I post the pre-hiatus work (which has all been on my Livejournal all the time) in the order that the events take place in my Marauders’ lives.

I’m surprised at how short those early stories are. Only now do I realise how much more fluently I’ve learnt to write – or how much I’ve learnt to babble. Well, I used to babble in the chaptered fic I completed just before the hiatus.

I also can’t help paying attention to how much more hits those stories get which are tagged for a pairing – like seven or ten times more than gen fic. I’ve realised before that a fic tagged both as Remus/Sirius and James/Lily gets more hits than others, which is natural, but nothing by me gets very many hits, and the hit count hardly matters much.

In any case I’m happy about any kudos and an occasional comment. Still, kudos is often from people who have no works or bookmarks, or who have some of that only in other fandoms. I wonder if that kind of readers are the majority also for those writers who get more kudos and comments, or if there’s something unusually strange about my fic to attract those readers.

Comments

[walgesang]

Having finished my hp kinkfest I was so tempted to sign up for another fest but I too feel like I just want to write some fic from ideas that have been rattling about. My fic on AO3 feels so damn ancient to me, I need some new stuff!

I'm not sure if this is the case but I think the kudos of people with no works might be coming via a rec from Tumblr? Someone with a better idea of how Tumblr works (as I don't), might know better than me.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for commenting! It’s good to know I’m not alone, listening to the rattle of ideas. I thought your AO3 fic can’t be ancient – but you’re right about at least some of them: you’ve really got fic even from 2003, the year when the two of us entered HP fandom. It’s high time I get to read some of those stories!

I doubt the kudos I get can be due to any rec (on Tumblr or anywhere). I’ve found the platform confusing, and although I’m participating in Remus Lupin Fest, I’ve done nothing there besides finding the prompts and rules, and I’m glad the submitting was to AO3.

[delphi]

Congrats on all the posting!

Myself, I've got a long list of stories I've been meaning to finish...but I also sometimes find it helpful to just sit with not knowing what to write for a while and to see what kind of ideas start to bubble up.

It's totally normal on AO3 to get kudos from people who have no works or bookmarks. I've never audited, but I suspect they make up a significant number of my own kudos-leavers. I believe a lot of people sign up for AO3 accounts so they can leave named comments, but also predominantly so they can use the subscribe function (and therefore get email notifications when a story updates or their favourite authors post something new) and also read archive-locked stories.

[paulamcg]

Thank you! It’s reassuring that you don’t find this kind of state of no commitments too bad – even though you’ve got unfinished fic to go back to.

It’s also good to hear that the feedback I get is normal! I’m sure I don’t know most of the functions on AO3. Perhaps someone among my kudos-leavers has even subscribed to me, which would be flattering. I guess I’ve been a bit disappointed when I’ve hoped to read my kudos-leavers’ fic in turn. In the good old Livejournal days, when we posted our fic in communities, I usually saw at least what else my commenters had liked if not their own fic in the same community. Anonymous comments were rare, and it’s also been a new thing for me that almost all kudos comes from guests.

[delphi]

Ah, that's a good point about liking to click back to someone's account and read their work in turn. Mostly being into rare pairings, it's always been unusual for me to find something hugely relevant to my interests when I follow someone home to their own fic page or journal, but when I do, it's such a wonderful feeling!

The only time I get a little weirded out by guests on AO3 is when I've written fic for exceedingly small fandoms and know that my story is on the first page of Google results if you search for that fandom or character. Some of those stories have an unusual number of hits with no kudos or comments, and it makes me a bit embarrassed to think that people who aren't on the fic-writing side of fandom at all might be clicking on them.

[paulamcg]

Thank you so much for still commenting! I haven’t been able to imagine before how different the contacts with readers are when you write rare pairings and in a small fandom.

Having returned to fic writing a year ago, after an eight-year hiatus, I’m always looking for more interaction, and that’s why I’ve hoped I could find something relevant when checking out those who give me any feedback. But as my fandom is huge and my characters and pairings are popular, I suppose I get kudos and hits, too, mainly from random few guests who happen to search for them at the briefest moment when a fic by me is on the first page, right?

Instead, I’ve found it satisfying and mind-opening to have conversations on DW with people who are interested in anything about HP among a wide range of other things.

[delphi]

I've been really glad to see DW becoming more active lately! While conversations occasionally start up on AO3, in my experience it really is more of an archive than a social media platform (largely by design), and it's nice to have a space to chat and get to know people better.

[paulamcg]

I’m happy and even proud to have some of that activity on my journal posts, too. However, I still feel it’s a pity that our fanfic is away in an archive and not discussed here like on Livejournal in the good old days.

[delphi]

Well, there's no saying we can't bring back fic communities as a thing on Dreamwidth! They're hard to get off the ground, but I think there's still an appetite for them. Part of the issue might be, though, that while Harry Potter is still a very popular fandom, it's no longer an active one and there's a little less appetite for dedicated spaces of discussion and fic.

[paulamcg]

Thank you again!

I remember there was some interest in feedback events or rec communities expressed in Snowflake posts, and most of the people I talked to were at least somehow active in HP. It seems that HP is still a huge fandom, but a lot of fans are active perhaps elsewhere and in different ways (just posting their own work and not commenting, if reading any, or something else).

But now I’m starting to get wild ideas. I don’t crave for a big community. Perhaps if there are ten or just five people who still write (also) HP fic and would like reciprocal reading and commenting, they could form a Minerva’s… no… All Owls’ Fic Club. A DW community where a member could post a (not too long, perhaps shorter than 6000-word, or 3000-word?) HP fic once a month, and there would be one or two fics every week for everyone to review and discuss in comments. The reviews could be copied and posted on AO3, too, if that’s where the writer preferred to collect all feedback. That would be closer to the interaction on my first fandom home, a small forum, where we read any genres and about any characters, than those LJ communities which were dedicated to particular characters or pairings.

[delphi]

That sounds lovely. :) I wouldn't be able to meet that kind of writing schedule myself (between writing in other fandoms and working on some longer HP fic), but as a bystander I would be very happy to reap the benefits of there being more HP fic on DW.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for such a positive response – even though you think you wouldn’t post fic for that kind of a club! I honestly came up with this concept only when starting to reply to your previous comment, while I didn’t expect it to necessarily suit you. Of course, some people could post and comment more seldom, and they could also post older work, anything that they’d still like to have feedback on, and if it’s a small, closed community, why not also snippets of longer WiPs so as to get concrit or ideas. Perhaps I’ll make a post about this soon. Thanks again for this inspiring chat!

[tellshannon815]

I get quite a few kudos from guest accounts. I have noticed what you mean about getting more when it's a popular pairing as opposed to gen.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for your comment! The whole phenomenon of kudos is new to me, and it’s good to hear how others experience it – and to get some response to my DW posts! In my case it’s rather that I get a relatively big part of my few kudos from guests, and even fewer kudos and hits when the fic is gen.