Living Free

Yesterday while Mom and I were up at Grandma's old house, some books that I'd ordered came in the mail, so they were waiting for me when we got home.

Most of them were for Grandma for Christmas, but two of them were for me: The Loch by Steve Alten and The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters. Steve Alten is the one who wrote the MEG books, and The Loch is a horror book about Nessie, so I figure it'll be good. The River Has Teeth is the second Erica Waters book that I've bought, I picked up The Restless Dark MONTHS ago when Poe recommended it to me, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Still, all of Erica Waters' stuff seems right up my alley. I've got Ghost Wood Song and All That Consumes Us in my thriftbooks cart waiting for when I have money again.

I ordered Living Free: The Story Of Elsa And Her Cubs for Grandma, since she's read Born Free, but they accidentally sent me Born Free instead, so I'm kind of like... yeah. Okay then. So I emailed thriftbooks about it yesterday and I'm just waiting for them to get back to me at this point.

But really I haven't been doing as much reading as I thought I would once I got proper glasses. My brain is so focused on WRITE WRITE WRITE that I don't have the TIME to read. But I keep buying books anyway, I guess some things never change. I kept buying books even when I wasn't CAPABLE of reading. Habit, I guess, and wanting to have them around for when I COULD read again...

Today I'm probably just going to spend most of the day sleeping, though. I'm completely wiped from yesterday. My body is such a train wreck I'm really not capable of hauling heavy furniture up steep staircases anymore, and the only person willing to help me is Mom. Or, well, Lee would probably help but he's not any better off than either of us are.

But today my RIBS ache, it hurts to breathe, and my hands and wrists are killing me. My knees feel like there's gravel in them and my back feels like a pretzel. I need to just sleep, but my brain woke me up at 7am to get me writing even so. Sometimes New Brain is a DICK.

Also, I have to cook dinner tonight, so there's that. :|

EDIT: Oh, and I posted Chapter Three of Horror High today. We'll see how it goes.

Lowering My Expectations

Even knowing going in that I was a new writer to the SPN fandom so Horror High was my break-in fic, and I was writing Destiel in the reverse from most of the fandom (top!Dean and bottom!Cas, where most of the fandom writes them the other way 'round), and understanding that I had an uphill battle because of that, it's still... disappointing. The response I'm NOT getting to HH so far.

With three chapters posted (the third just posted earlier this morning), it only has 232 hits, 3 favorites, 16 kudos and 11 comments. That's barely ANYTHING. That means that of those 232 people who clicked on the fic (possibly less if anyone clicked on it more than once), 216 didn't even think enough of it to be bothered hitting the kudos button. Never mind the comments, where several of them are people replying to one rude comment telling that person not to be a dick, essentially, which I appreciate, I DO, but still.

It's all very... almost upsetting. I had so much fun writing HH and I thought it turned out really good, but apparently I'm the only one. If I had been writing the chapters and posting them as I wrote, rather than finishing the whole fic and THEN starting to post it, I probably would have dropped it by now just from sheer demotivation.

Because as much as I keep trying to say that I write for my own enjoyment, I actually thrive on feedback. That's why I did so well in the Valdemar and Hijack fandoms-- because I got TONS of feedback on my writing. I get a little rush every time I get a review or a kudos. So when I write something and it doesn't go over well, I just get... blah. Like I WANT to write Cheap Motel, Counting Scars and Storm Season, but right now I'm kind of like... what's the point? No one's going to read them anyway. (Though CM and CS are basically just smut fics so they might get a FEW likes, if people can get past the top!Dean/bottom!Cas thing.)

I really worry about my original writing because my brain works like this. Will I be able to finish TKA, for example, writing it just for myself (and maybe for Mom and Poe?) all the way through, and not seeing any feedback until I start trying to get it published. And even then, the feedback could be NEGATIVE, and how will I deal with THAT?

What if TKA DOES get published, but no one likes it and it doesn't sell well? Will I lose all my motivation to write other things?

It's so complicated, my relationship between myself and my readers. It's the reason I stopped writing fics for The Witcher, even though I enjoyed writing them so much, because I got hardly any feedback on them (with the exception of The Purple Berries et al) and I just couldn't be bothered continuing to write them if it was only for myself.

I feel like maybe I need to take my own enjoyment into consideration more. If I have fun writing something, that really SHOULD be the important thing, right? But it's hard because I don't really have much control over how my brain works in that regard. I thrive on the interaction, and I'm just not getting it right now.

Still. Maybe I'll try finishing up one of my partly-written SPN AU Witcher fics some time soon or something? I really was fond of that AU, particularly Lambert and Aiden in it. Because lets' face it, crossroads demon!Aiden was THE SHIT. (The two of them were also just an excuse to write smut, for the most part.)

P.S. I did end up starting Carousel Coffee And More. I’m only about a page into it so far, but it’s coming along nicely. I think.

P.P.S. So I looked through my The Witcher writing folder for the first time in ages, and I have four (4) SPN AU fics that I could work on; What No One Knows (Lambden), Don't You Forget About Me (Lambden), No Matter What They Say (Lambden) and Falling In Love With You (Geraskier.) I also have one called The Road So Far that is labelled as SPN AU Lambden but is completely blank aside from the title and I have no idea what I was going to do with it so. There's that. But lol you can really tell which pairing I preferred in this AU back when I was writing it originally, can't you? XD;;

Photoblogging Day #56: Chili

Making chili for dinner! :D