An Apology (And all-else) · 3:10pm Aug 7th, 2021
February.
The significance of that month is that as of August, it has been six months since I've published anything. I apologise sincerely for that. I've never had the most consistent upload schedule but there was never this long of a wait between stories. What's the reason for this? Well, to be frank, I lost all confidence in my ability to write. Anything I put down looks atrocious to my eyes. And even when I think it looks good in the moment, I come back to it the next day and I find myself sneering. I don't know what specifically caused this to occur, unfortunately. I have had a few theories, however:
1. Inability to shut off my inner editor. This has always been a problem but it has never been so crippling as to stop me from writing before. Even as I write this blog, everything I'm putting down looks like the wrong word choice or incorrect style.
2. Someone who I was rather fond of telling me that my writing style was bad. This could've had an effect on me, possibly drove my inner editor into overdrive, but for it to leave me unable to write seems far too debilitating for something that seems so inconsequential. It did contribute to my trying far too hard to 'show' rather than 'tell', which led to rather plain, uninteresting prose, that looked ugly. I have since attempted to rectify this to varying degrees of success, but it tends to lead to the spiral of 'good and then bad' as I stated above.
3. Nothing I write is my own anymore. All but two of my stories from Sunkissed and Snowy onward have been commissions. Whilst dipping my toe into paid stories led to a few personal favourites of mine - The B Word, Side Effects, Mother-Daughter Bonding - I felt my inspiration waning the further along I went with commissions. Even though commissioners liked what I showed them of what I had written of their commissions, I didn't. That's why, if you were paying attention to my page, that commissions were disappearing off the list yet none were actually being published here. It's because I refunded the payment and canceled it. I was simply not liking anything I wrote for them, even if they felt the opposite. A theory I've had on this is that being paid for my stories rather than doing them for free like I used to have led to me raising my personal standards so high that they cripple me.
4. I've simply become bad. This is the simplest explanation of what has happened. When I compare something like Mother-Daughter Bonding to the unfinished Learning to Love - which I don't feel capable of finishing considering my quality decline - I note a marked decline in my ability to write prose, dialogue, and description. I've seen comparisons of artists getting worse with time, so the same must apply to writers as well. I see no colour in my words like I used to, and whilst this is the simplest answer, I am left frustrated with no answer as to how this happened.
So, how do I intend to fix these problems? Well, I'm not entirely sure. 3 is the easiest. I simply have to refund all commissions (280 usd) and simply not take another on, and write something wholly original. I don't imagine some people will be pleased by that but it might be necessary. And once I feel assured of my writing again, I'll commit to doing them. Not as commissions, mind you, but as free requests. Money inflates the standards far too high for me, and I much prefer the lax attitude requests allow me to have. 1 is difficult. I'd need more than two hands to count the number of times I've made progress on a story, perceived everything within it to be awful, and started again. I used to write five thousand words a day once, now I'm lucky if I can get more than a hundred. I'm hoping this will be fixed if I veer from commissions to my own work. Any suggestions from anyone deciding to read this would be helpful as well.
And that's my post, really. I reconsidered posting this at all since just writing all this out was cathartic enough and it looked like a self-pitying load of tripe, but I'd also hate to leave you all in the dark concerning where I'm at. I do have three originals I'm trying my best to get through, a dozen words at a time. However, if I don't get anything out before October, consider this account dead.
Ciao for now.
Oh my :( I do hope you find some inspiration to write something, maybe stretch out to try some g5 stuff when it airs (if you're still in the fandom).
Regardless of where your path takes you though, I wish you all the luck
No need for an apology. Find your inspiration and take it from there :)