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

[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!