August WIP challenge - day 1 check-in!

[littlebutfierce]

How's the fic going today? Are you writing/editing/sending to beta? Researching? Resting on your laurels? Procrastinating? Did you post something?

To start off the month, tell us about the fic(s) you'll be working on! Some of you did that a little bit yesterday, but feel free to go into more detail: What do you think will be trickiest to work on? What are you looking forward to? Scared of?

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

I've done absolutely nothing ficcish today, but my excuse is that I had to get on a bus at 5:45 AM (& I did my 750 Words before then, even!) & only got home a little before 10 PM.

I've got two WIPs for Natsume Yuujinchou that are so close to being done -- I'd really like to get them finished soon. Near the end of July I got some amazingly useful comments from my beta, who's kindly agreed to look over the first of the two fics again (after I made some suggested changes). So I'm waiting for that right now too.

... I really need to finish my K-On! help_japan fic this month as well. I feel so monofannish at the moment it's a little hard to switch gears, but I need to remember that I've got most of the first draft written, & that while I was still sucked into Natsume fandom. So I can do it! It's just... going to be challenging. But yeah. I can do it. Something like that!

Something I generally find challenging is knowing when a fic is done. Sometimes I get the itch to just POST IT ALREADY, even though maybe it needs more finessing; sometimes I get so caught up in tweaking words in tiny ways that I could, really, just end up never finalizing the fic!

[lacerta]

Writing so many words so early is very impressive.

Heh, I get that a lot too, being torn between wanting to post a fic immediately and wanting to make it as good as I can. The part where I'm done writing and have to wait for a beta to reply is probably the worst in that regard.

Would some pom-poms help? You can totally do it :)

[littlebutfierce]

Thank you!! I appreciate it. :)

I think after too much fretting/wordsmithing I lose the ability to really tell what needs to be changed & what's all right, & risk making the fic worse by changing things indiscriminately. It is a fine line to walk, between polishing & taking it too far!

[rebecca2525]

What helps me a lot is setting the fic aside for a while to get some distance. I do that a lot between editing rounds. Of course that only works if you don't have a tight deadline and if you have enough other things to distract you from wanting to post RIGHT NOW. :)

[littlebutfierce]

I really really hate doing things at the last minute -- I think I finished my Yuletide fic two weeks early, to give you an idea -- so luckily I don't tend to have to post in a hurry. But it is absolutely hard to stop myself wanting to post IMMEDIATELY!!!!1 sometimes -- it helps that sometimes I finish fics (or think I finish them) late at night, so sometimes I'm just too tired to go faff w/HTML & proofing it one last time.

(... then sometimes I lie in bed & think about the fic when I'm trying to sleep, eek!)

Distance from a fic is a beautiful thing!