To write or not to write?
So, it's once again time for the popslash Secret Santa project, don we now our gay apparel. I started reading popslash early last year, and I remember how impressed I was with the collection of stories from last Christmas. It's a neat project, and one of the nicest things I've seen in fandom. 130 people promising to write stories for other people, and almost everybody delivering - that's kinda cool.
Sign-up is open until tomorrow, and I keep wondering if maybe this is the way for me to get a fanfic actually finished. Give myself a hard deadline, with others counting on me, and some starting parameters. It's open to newbie writers, and they're actually setting up a mentoring system so that people like me can get help from more experienced writers if they hit a snag.
I've got a number of different story fragments, in three different fandoms (X-Files, QAF-UK, Smallville) sitting around on pieces of paper (at least I think I still have the Mulder/Krycek story around somewhere), but I never manage to finish anything. Would this get me to finish?
The pluses: hard deadline, starting parameters, available hand-holding if/when I get stuck.
The minuses: if I can't finish, I'll be screwing up a great project, and probably end up on popslash's blacklist forever :-). At the very least, if I do ever get some practise in and some writing completed so that I feel more confident in a year or so, they'll never let me sign up again. Even if I do finish, what if it sucks?
Ugh. I don't know what to do. I wish I had a little more confidence in my abilities as a writer. I mean, I angst over journal entries. Would I be able to actually put a story out there?
Sign-up is open until tomorrow, and I keep wondering if maybe this is the way for me to get a fanfic actually finished. Give myself a hard deadline, with others counting on me, and some starting parameters. It's open to newbie writers, and they're actually setting up a mentoring system so that people like me can get help from more experienced writers if they hit a snag.
I've got a number of different story fragments, in three different fandoms (X-Files, QAF-UK, Smallville) sitting around on pieces of paper (at least I think I still have the Mulder/Krycek story around somewhere), but I never manage to finish anything. Would this get me to finish?
The pluses: hard deadline, starting parameters, available hand-holding if/when I get stuck.
The minuses: if I can't finish, I'll be screwing up a great project, and probably end up on popslash's blacklist forever :-). At the very least, if I do ever get some practise in and some writing completed so that I feel more confident in a year or so, they'll never let me sign up again. Even if I do finish, what if it sucks?
Ugh. I don't know what to do. I wish I had a little more confidence in my abilities as a writer. I mean, I angst over journal entries. Would I be able to actually put a story out there?
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So, maybe I'll actually start writing this year, and by the time next year's version comes along, I'll have enough confidence to sign up. There's always challenges out there, especially in popslash it seems, and they can supply the parameters and the deadline without the extra pressure that's part of this project.