"Dusk-Lit Waltz" and my thoughts on the commission process. · 12:29am Apr 25th, 2013
Hello, followers. This blog post is kind of long and unrelated to Evening Flames; I'll preface this by saying, "Chapter 3 is on track for this Friday."
Anyway, on to the main reason I'm writing this: These past few days, I've been putting on the finishing touches (with thanks to the help of some of my pre-readers) for a commissioned story, which someone suggested I call Dusk-Lit Waltz, to which I concurred. A brief preview is below, and some more reflections of mine are after the break.
It All Began in the Mojave Desert...
I should start with the history of this commission project: Las Pegasus Unicon. After that whole thing crashed and imploded under its own weight like Icarus ODing on Ex-Lax, someone set up a charity auction system where—among other things—authors could offer up story commissions and take up to a 25% cut. I decided to throw caution into the wind and try it out; after all, 25% of something is more than I'm currently making from the rest of my writing efforts, and I've been strapped for cash since... forever, really, one way or another.
So I posted up my ad on the forum: bidding starts at $35 for 15k words, hoping that it would reach around $70 and hit the sweet "$5 per 1k words" mark that I think is fair for someone new to the market. I didn't really take into consideration the 75% cut the charity was getting; that was... well, charity on my end.
I lucked out and got two bids, and the winner paid me up front (which I appreciated), we had a small dialogue about what he wanted in a story—which was basically, make sense of this image.
Burning Ring of Fire
It was at that moment that it sunk in what I had signed up for with my "anything goes" rule. Now, I'll come right out and say that any and all difficulties I faced during this commission process were brought upon myself. I posted the ad, and I created the terms for my own commission. It's hardly fair for me to offer conditions for selling my time, then blame someone for operating within those very conditions I offered.
However, whether intentionally or accidentally, I'd been given a pretty bad story idea for my situation.
Let me explain: I've spent the better part of the last two years writing a romantic fanfiction involving Gilda. I've planned out that world fairly extensively between six cities, four races, and (mostly) accounting for three seasons' worth of canon—in case I ever want to go outside of the main city everything takes place in. I take pride in my work, meaning I pay attention to detail and realism.
So for me, "writing Gilda shipping" is less of "Hey, dweeb, I kinda like you" and more of creating a world that explains why Gilda's a bitch and giving her things to do that involve romance. It's worked out reasonably well so far for me, or at least, I've only accrued 3 legitimate "downvotes" out of over a thousand views. But being asked to create a completely different relationship for a character I've been working on for an extended amount of time, in a manner that requires I uproot and start over in a completely fresh world... it obviously meant that it would create certain challenges for me.
I accepted the challenge, and so began my month-long process of writing the story.
Dear Princess Celestia, Today I Learned...
Without getting too much into the details, I got the whole rough draft written in about a month. There was some writer's block, helping friends move, and an electrical fire along the way (no one was hurt), but with the help of some talented feedback-givers, I was able to complete the rough draft at... a slower pace than I would have liked, but at an average of 500 words per day (which I can live with).
So, what all did I learn from this experience?
Well, first and foremost, I learned the limitations that come from investing too much time in a given story universe. That isn't to say that it's necessarily a problem, especially given the results with my main story itself, but that it leads to creative issues if I'm asked to write something that contradicts my universe. For example, I'm sure that Stephanie Meyer would have difficulty writing about non sparkling, not-so-good-looking vampires fighting werewolves—or at least, she'd be tempted to fall back on her default creative universe.
Next, I learned the difficulty of writing multiple things at once. I posted here about my various writing projects, which is really something I've kind of done before but never to the extent that I tried to do here. This was a purely clerical thing on my end, but it's still something I learned.
But finally, I learned about the methods of going through a commission process, and three things I should have done better:
1) Agreeing to a word-count before getting the idea was pitched was a no-no. It sort of pigeonholed me into the one idea that would possibly work to reach 15k words, which led to a lot of frustrating moments when I lamented that, "Gah, this scene isn't long enough to cover the word count," when the scene in question was of adequate length to pull its own weight.
2) Taking money before the idea was pitched was also a bad thing to do. Now, to be fair to me, that was mostly how the Las Pegasus Unicon Relief League Auctions were set up, but still, it created a situation where I got hit with an idea that I more or less had to do, simply because of the situation I put myself into (again, this is a list of my mistakes; I'm not placing blame on anything other than my inexperience here).
3) Doing this in an "auction style" pricing format was... a necessary evil, given the circumstances, but probably not something I would ever do again. It makes the price far too random (or confusing, if I were to say "bid of X gets Y words") to both customers and myself.
If I Could Do It All Over...
So, all this learning... What does it mean? I'm fully aware that "not a damn thing" is pretty high on the list of things that it means, as putting this information forward would require me to write a second, or third, or fourth commissioned fic.
That being said, will I do commissions in the future?
Yes.
Although, I'd definitely say that's a conditional "yes." I've already declined a request from someone who wanted a price estimate for an "epic-length" story—I don't have enough free time to be able to pull that off competently. I'd also shy away from ideas that disturb me or give me cognitive dissonance based on my own story (which is basically a way of saying, "No Gilda stuff").
So, in closing (and I offer you praise and thanks if you've endured my rambling up to this point): I wrote a story. I got paid to do it. It was mostly awesome, and I hope I'll be able to do it in the future.
Have a good rest of Wednesday night / Thursday morning.
All other thoughts were drown out by this. Not only did someone else make Gilda a princess, but Nicknack? The Sombra bit just adds to the "What the Frell?" of the whole thing.
I can certainly understand how weird that must be. We'll see how well you did separating the two universes, but I'm certainly looking forward to this story no matter how muddled it is with Evening Flame's universe.
"Too invested into your universe"... *suddenly self-aware*...
I can definitively relate to having difficulty writing anything that may conflict with the universe one has weaved.
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I should probably reiterate, it's not really a problem until it limits your flexibility to write in a situation where you want to write flexibly. Meaning, "I'll write your ideas for money," but you limit some of the ideas (and possible jobs) you're able to do.
So, you fleshed out this universe that you made so much, that when you had to do something that clashes with it, you couldn't. Interesting. Writer's block and possibility of comissions aside, I can't stop giggling like a madman when I see that preview picture. I definitely have to read this.
Nicknack is the Stephanie Meyer of Gilda fanfiction. You heard it here, folks!
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Hey now, all I did was write a story about a teenage girl who lives near the ocean and angsts because of her relationship with an immortal, sparkly guy and...
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw681_130820030645.gif
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I never realized Iron was an alicorn. :V
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Sombra, not Iron
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... V:
Dammit, this is what happens when I don't check FimFiction. I miss great stuff like this.