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It's been almost two months since my last LJ post, which is pretty unusual, since I'm usually pretty active on LJ, if only posting about random things.
So what happened during the last month and a half?
Well...depressed moods and continual teetering on the brink of emotional collapse. Here's a record of what happened on my Wordpress blog:
Basically, it happened because I started posting fanfiction on AO3 and didn't get that much of a response, even though I'm ridiculously proud of my work.
I started not feeling so great.
I thought these feelings would pass given enough time, but that hasn't been the case, and several stressors combined have made me feel even worse.
I've tried to reflect and be rational about what happened, but it's still an ongoing, uphill struggle.
So, in a nutshell: the last month and a half have kind of been a blur. I started slacking off severely at work—not out of laziness, but because I'm chronically exhausted and can't muster up the energy or interest anymore. I've had on and off sleep problems, and while I'm generally not a good sleeper, I definitely tend to experience insomnia when I'm extremely stressed or depressed. I have days when I stare into space and think about the things I need to do and feel a combination of zero ability to get it done and crippling anxiety at the same time. I've had a lot less interest in food and eating recently—which is kind of another thing that I associate with my experiences of depression.
I've babbled quite a bit about my recent writing of fanfiction on this LJ, though mostly in vague terms, and unlike 99% of the other projects I've talked about in the past, I actually finished everything I mentioned, so, I might as well talk about them.
The Hunger Games/Captain America fanfiction, which reached a substantial 14,000 words long, got very little attention. I've made my peace with this, because I realized I was probably too ambitious with this piece. It was a combination crossover fic/criticism of THG/social commentary, which was probably alienating to THG fans and confusing to non-THG fans. (Plus, it wasn't slash, it was actually a little anti-romance, so, you know.)
The other things I've written, though, have made me a bit more upset.
"Not a good man": A Bucky Barnes character study; this is my (somewhat annoyed) reaction to the "woobification" of Bucky that happened in the fandom post-CA:TWS and probably the best writing I've produced on a technical/descriptive/poetic level.
"Look into my eyes and tell me if I'm real": The "monstrous 20,000-word fic that consumed my life" that I've referred to several times before. Over 20,000 words (if you count all the stuff that I had to delete/rewrite) and basically a three-month all-consuming obsession has been a substantial chunk of time, effort, and emotion to invest in this fic; I can honestly write a commentary on this fic that would be as long as a goddamn thesis, explaining why I wrote everything the way I did—every scene, every sentence, every word choice, every freaking punctuation placement. I will never not be proud of this, even though I've come to accept that probably no one will care about this fanfic as much as I do.
Honestly, it hurts. As I said earlier, I thought the pain would lessen over time, but it hasn't, and I don't think I will. School is starting soon in a few weeks, so I guess at this point what would be best for my mental health would be to cut my ties with AO3 almost completely. Which, you know, is really pathetic and anti-promotion and anti-engaging-with-fandom, but I'm not sure what else I can do.
I never planned that writing fanfiction would become a longterm thing for me—partly because my lifelong focus has been original fiction, and partly because there is only so much I can do with the same set of characters before I get bored. So getting more exposure by continuing to write fanfic is kind of out of the question for me. (Not that I've already lost interest in Captain America fanfic, but after writing so much in a relatively short period of time, I've hit a dry spell, and I don't know whether I'll find inspiration again before Cap 3 comes out.) But I'm still proud of what I wrote and I wish I had proof that I'm not delusional.
So what happened during the last month and a half?
Well...depressed moods and continual teetering on the brink of emotional collapse. Here's a record of what happened on my Wordpress blog:
Basically, it happened because I started posting fanfiction on AO3 and didn't get that much of a response, even though I'm ridiculously proud of my work.
I started not feeling so great.
I thought these feelings would pass given enough time, but that hasn't been the case, and several stressors combined have made me feel even worse.
I've tried to reflect and be rational about what happened, but it's still an ongoing, uphill struggle.
So, in a nutshell: the last month and a half have kind of been a blur. I started slacking off severely at work—not out of laziness, but because I'm chronically exhausted and can't muster up the energy or interest anymore. I've had on and off sleep problems, and while I'm generally not a good sleeper, I definitely tend to experience insomnia when I'm extremely stressed or depressed. I have days when I stare into space and think about the things I need to do and feel a combination of zero ability to get it done and crippling anxiety at the same time. I've had a lot less interest in food and eating recently—which is kind of another thing that I associate with my experiences of depression.
I've babbled quite a bit about my recent writing of fanfiction on this LJ, though mostly in vague terms, and unlike 99% of the other projects I've talked about in the past, I actually finished everything I mentioned, so, I might as well talk about them.
The Hunger Games/Captain America fanfiction, which reached a substantial 14,000 words long, got very little attention. I've made my peace with this, because I realized I was probably too ambitious with this piece. It was a combination crossover fic/criticism of THG/social commentary, which was probably alienating to THG fans and confusing to non-THG fans. (Plus, it wasn't slash, it was actually a little anti-romance, so, you know.)
The other things I've written, though, have made me a bit more upset.
"Not a good man": A Bucky Barnes character study; this is my (somewhat annoyed) reaction to the "woobification" of Bucky that happened in the fandom post-CA:TWS and probably the best writing I've produced on a technical/descriptive/poetic level.
"Look into my eyes and tell me if I'm real": The "monstrous 20,000-word fic that consumed my life" that I've referred to several times before. Over 20,000 words (if you count all the stuff that I had to delete/rewrite) and basically a three-month all-consuming obsession has been a substantial chunk of time, effort, and emotion to invest in this fic; I can honestly write a commentary on this fic that would be as long as a goddamn thesis, explaining why I wrote everything the way I did—every scene, every sentence, every word choice, every freaking punctuation placement. I will never not be proud of this, even though I've come to accept that probably no one will care about this fanfic as much as I do.
Honestly, it hurts. As I said earlier, I thought the pain would lessen over time, but it hasn't, and I don't think I will. School is starting soon in a few weeks, so I guess at this point what would be best for my mental health would be to cut my ties with AO3 almost completely. Which, you know, is really pathetic and anti-promotion and anti-engaging-with-fandom, but I'm not sure what else I can do.
I never planned that writing fanfiction would become a longterm thing for me—partly because my lifelong focus has been original fiction, and partly because there is only so much I can do with the same set of characters before I get bored. So getting more exposure by continuing to write fanfic is kind of out of the question for me. (Not that I've already lost interest in Captain America fanfic, but after writing so much in a relatively short period of time, I've hit a dry spell, and I don't know whether I'll find inspiration again before Cap 3 comes out.) But I'm still proud of what I wrote and I wish I had proof that I'm not delusional.
