What I've Been Up To: Is It True He's Mad?

[paulamcg]

After Some Hopes (for hp_bunintheoven) I barely managed to write anything at all for more than a full month. I did start a Cho/Luna fic in late March, but I gave up the idea to offer it as a treat at Femmefest, and kept adding words to it excruciatingly slowly, with no motivation.

Most of my free time i.e. fiction time was spent on reading a whole (also literary) novel in Modern Greek (a language I studied decades ago, also taught, and translated from back then), and commenting on only a bit of fanfic. Two weeks ago I took part in the Punctuation Mini-Workshop at HP Fanfic Writers' Guild on Discord and managed to work on a Marauders-era scene as an exercise. But post-Azkaban Sirius seems to be the only character who truly resonates with me nowadays...

And my writing has truly diminished – turned into half drabbles! Since the 9th of May I've succeeded in writing fic daily – thanks to the challenge of crafting 50-word pieces based on prompts at Microfic May 2022.

Yes, that is a Tumblr event. A couple of months ago, when seeking motivation, I resorted to that platform, which I had failed to comprehend before. At first I almost exclusively reblogged, and I still have very few followers. But a couple of likes are enough to make the sharing of microfics rewarding. Besides, I post my 50-word pieces on AO3, too, and I've got a DW friend as my lovely loyal reader over there.

Above all, I can't help being happy that those prompt-based pieces are also 50-word chapters that form a Sirius-pov PoA-era story. Amusingly enough, this is the first ever chaptered fic I'm posting on AO3 – my second ever chaptered story! Before this little thing I haven't posted anything as a WiP ever since I finished my very first (and extensive) fic in 2010.

This is the new, humble chaptered fic:

Is It True He's Mad? (here on AO3)

Summary: As if someone had lit a fire ... and the Dementors couldn't destroy it.

So far it's 15 chapters and only 750 words, rated G, and gen (Wolfstar only subtly).

Comments

[senmut]

And now you are followed on tumblr! HAHAHAHA!

(no need to follow back; I rarely see much HP to reblog and interest you in turn. It's a very eclectic experience over there for me)

[paulamcg]

Yay! Thank you for following! (I'll be glad to take a look at your blog every now and then in any case if you don't mind. <3)

[bluedreaming]

I still don't get Tumblr, alas, but it's great that you're finding motivation and inspiration! Drabble communities here on DW are what keep me writing these days.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for commenting both here and on AO3! I haven't been sure Tumblr can continue to help me stay motivated. I'm happy to see a lot of interaction between fanfic writers over there, but I still feel I must give up hopes for attention to my writing (beyond those few likes at Microfic May). And I still find it strange that there are no dates on Tumblr posts :)

I've tried only one drabble community on DW: Neville100, which inspired me in autumn 2020. I don't write about Draco or next-gen kids or (much about) Harry, and I doubt there's much interest in HP on multi-fandom communities. You write in several fandoms, don't you? But not in HP?

[bluedreaming]

I'm really not much help with Tumblr, sadly! However, there are dates on Tumblr posts, but it's a little tricky to find them. If you're looking at your Tumblr dashboard on desktop, if you hover over the top right corner of a post, you'll see the date/time it was posted. But if it's a reblog, you have to click into the original poster's post to see that date. Confusing!

I actually write mostly in HP these days (though I overall write much less than I used to), but it's mostly Draco/Harry or a bit of femslash. So I post on draco100, dracoharry100, and harry100 which likely then aren't your cup of tea. However, liquidluckdrabble is general HP, and while it's technically multifandom, you could try dove_drabbles as it has a fair bit of HP. I think it's only on Tumblr (and Ao3), but there's also wolfstarwritingchallenges. In many ways my fannish motivation comes more from podfic these days, so I guess I'll really lucky to have that community.

Oh, and write every day! It's currently hosted on ljm's journal, here's the May intro post. (Though I'm personally having a bit of an off month, with lots of podfic deadlines this month.)

[paulamcg]

And you say that you don't get Tumblr! I'd never have found the dates, and someone who assumed that my first posts, too, had been made this spring, not two years earlier, only agreed with me that it was strange that the platform didn't use dates. (It must be true that dates are not really used or considered very important, I guess.)

You really are so much help! :) And I'm glad to hear that you are interested in HP and write – and podfic – HP fic. Thank you for all those community recs!

I have nothing against Harry/Draco. I've just never started writing Draco (with the exception of one scene in an early chapter of my first, long fic). I haven't focused much on Harry's generation in general. Luna and Cho have become important characters for me, and I've written Ginny with Luna, and Neville – with Harry. Of course, even without contradicting what I've written before (which I never want to do), I could include a relationship with Draco in my Harry's life.

But Drarry must be such a huge sub-fandom (and at least as much inhabited by writers and readers newer and younger than me as Wolfstar is) that I'm sure it would be very had for me to find a place in it. This has discouraged me also from reading much Drarry.

[bluedreaming]

I can understand some of the tech aspects of Tumblr; it's more the community and how to interact/converse/connect with people that just escapes me, alas! (I do agree that Tumblr does not seem to value dates, or linearity in any way.)

I'm glad I was a little helpful. In responding to your comment, I realized that while I'm in a lot of HP spaces, and write at least two HP drabbles a week, and get updates on all kinds of fannish creation events, that's probably not very obvious from my online presence 😂

That makes total sense! Drarry is quite frankly enormous, if judging from the number of events (it reminds me of my EXO-writing days, which I think is similar to what BTS is now, when I catch glimpses of it in my peripheral vision). I think participating in it mostly via podfic allows me a level of separation, since podfic gets little response anyway, and that works well for me personally at this point. If you do happen to be interested, I think participating in drarrymicrofic (at least from what I've heard) is a way into a reasonably active community.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for still replying!

Having been active on LJ (after a small forum and Fiction Alley) before an eight-year hiatus, I felt it would be easier both in the tech and in the interacting/connecting aspects to stick to journals instead of learning how tumblr functions. Since 2020 I've enjoyed some HP fests on journals and taken part on Snowflake and Sunshine, but this past spring I've felt there's little chance for me to find a place in interaction related to HP fic (that would include my fic, too :D) here – or on AO3, which is not a space for community. Microfic May kept me feeling all right about my barely visible role in fandom all through the month, and perhaps I could try to share tiny pieces at a similar Wolfstar event and even at the Drarry event you suggest.

I admit that I've found your online presence confusing. When clicking from your comment on that micro chapter by me on AO3, I first found no works, and then a list of pseuds – and now I've finally spotted HP higher on a list of fandoms than I first looked :)

[eldritcher_fic]

Oh, you must share what the novel is! It must be truly be engrossing if you spent your fic time on it.

I hope you have been well. I haven't written anything in quite a while, but I have new (tiny and barely noticeable) muscles from cycling a great deal. Congratulations on your half-drabbles. That's quite more than anything I have managed in a while. You should be proud of the new WiP.

[paulamcg]

I'm so glad to see you on DW again! I've missed you and remembered that you said you might be around in summer. It sounds like your cycling has been both enjoyable and fruitful.

I, too, have cycled again – after finally having my bicycle fixed a couple of months ago – but only to work and back. And thank you, I've been as well as I can be while the multi-chemical sensitivity makes me often feel that the air around me is not what I want to breathe.

The novel was I megáli prásini (1987) by Evgenía Fakínou. When I suffered from having lost my motivation to write (my hope for a chance to really share my writing), it occurred to me to find out if I had not forgotten all my Greek. I chose this book because I remembered something about one scene I'd liked. I'd bought the book in 1992 and probably read it back then. It was rewarding to relearn to read somehow effortlessly (and to notice afterwards that the language in this book was more demanding than in a new fantasy novel I'd got from a friend because it was written by a Greek colleague of his). It's probably not one of the greatest works of Greek literature, but I found it engrossing (as you guessed)... also because – to my surprise – it was about a vagrant woman who started painting pictures. I realise that I may have unconsciously based something about my portrayal of Remus on her story.

Thank you for what you say about my half-drabbles. The twenty-seventh 50-word chapter completed the story only yesterday. (What now?)