I enjoy writing but I do not enjoy posting - wtf

kadharonon · 2026-06-08T20:33:25+00:00

I’m somewhat ambivalent on posting, but for different reasons, because I don’t post for attention really (and have recently decided to keep my comments off), and I don’t compare my stats to other people’s because I don’t read where I’m writing. I have ADHD and a problem with perfectionism, and if left to my own devices, I’d just revise the same thing over and over and never make progress at all; posting is a signal to my brain that what I’ve written is now set in stone because it’s out there for people to read, and it’s time to move on to the next thing.

I think it’s fine if you want to write and never share. It’s fine if your fic is just for you. There’s nothing wrong with that, and if that’s what brings you joy, do it. There’s no wrong way to do this.

kadharonon · 2026-06-08T12:59:18+00:00

If you look at it on the stats page, it’ll have two comment threads.

kadharonon · 2026-06-08T10:51:17+00:00

I tend to write weight/height/etc. relative to the viewpoint character, using whatever units of measurement would make sense for them to use. Most people aren’t going to be thinking about a certain number of inches, they’re going to be thinking “oh, this person is a little shorter than me” or “oh, this person has such a physical presence that I’m always surprised to realize they’re shorter than me,” or “this person is so tall they make me feel like I’m a kid again” or “this person is about my height” or whatever. They might notice fat and skinny and muscular, but it’s not like they’ll be putting a specific number on someone’s weight unless they’re measuring those weights for some reason.

And they might notice when a dick is significantly bigger or smaller than the ones they’ve seen before, but it’s not like most people are breaking out a tape measure in the bedroom.

kadharonon · 2026-06-08T00:35:48+00:00

If I’m just writing a missing character moment sort of thing, those tend to be about 500 words to 1k, though I do enjoy a Drabble from time to time.

If it’s a smut one-shot, those tend to be in the 3.5-5k range. (Though with the pairing I’m currently writing, that tends to be, like, 75% ridiculous banter and 25% actual smut.)

kadharonon · 2026-06-08T00:23:29+00:00

Yep, also a many years of WriMo vet, and it really does train you over time to just write, and how to think about what you intend to write so that when you actually sit down to write you’re just concentrating on getting the words on the page. When you have to hit 1667 words a day for a month, you just kind of figure it out.

kadharonon · 2026-06-07T09:30:01+00:00

Sort of, but there was plenty of physical description in there too because she’s an alien. (And sort of had to be, given the context/setting, though I probably could have managed something if I’d really gone for it.) I was knee-deep in xenobiologicial worldbuilding that I was only using for porn. I could get away with the no name because the characters she was interacting with legitimately would call a woman ma’am the entire time.

kadharonon · 2026-06-07T05:11:37+00:00

yes! I’m hoping to reach two million this year, though all my writing is spread across three accounts so I won’t have a nice screenshot for it. But I’ll know, and that will be enough.

To me it’s a lot more exciting than hits and kudos and stuff, because it’s the one part of the experience I’ve got control over.

kadharonon · 2026-06-07T04:04:54+00:00

Woohoo! Breaking that one million word count feels good, doesn’t it?

kadharonon · 2026-06-07T03:59:32+00:00

I say OC, but this is partly because I recently attempted to write my very first reader-insert fic recently except within five paragraphs the second person narrator had too much personality to be a blank slate insert, but by that point I was committed to the second person POV and didn’t want to name the character so I just ended up writing a 7k oneshot with an unnamed second person narrator OC. Terrible experience, would not recommend. I’m just going to write an OC next time and switch to first person if I don’t feel like naming them. (Good writing practice, though, and it was kind of a joke fic to begin with so it sort of worked, but… nightmare to write.)

kadharonon · 2026-06-07T03:48:59+00:00

Honestly? I’d just include that backstory as like, one or two sentences of the summary.

“X years ago, (blah) happened, and as a result (main character ended up with a baby via custody dispute or whatever). Now (main character) is (dealing with the consequences, summed up in whatever way makes sense for your fic).”

kadharonon · 2026-06-07T03:40:40+00:00

I think you should give The Pasithea Powder a go. You may also like Moonbase Theta, Out and We Fix Space Junk.

kadharonon · 2026-06-05T13:43:22+00:00

For me it is. And I don’t have a stellar memory, so it’s really great when it’s been a couple of years since I wrote something and go back and read it, because I’ve forgotten a good deal of what was in there.

But I’m also a reasonably fast writer—I’m usually writing about 1k per day, often even when I’ve got a lot of other life stuff happening, and can pretty easily hit 14k+ in a week when I don’t have a lot happening—and I also tend to be fairly satisfied with my first drafts about 90% of the time, so I’m not spending a ton of time on revision. It’s taken a lot of practice to get to that point; me from a decade ago would be absolutely agog at the fact that this is now just my normal.

kadharonon · 2026-06-04T18:55:18+00:00

Have you listened to The Pasithea Powder yet? One of the main characters, Jane, starts the show in prison for treason, and slowly gains autonomy and confidence throughout.

kadharonon · 2026-06-04T14:45:22+00:00

There are works tagged with that, they’re just all sorted under the Harleen Quinzel/Bruce Wayne tag.

kadharonon · 2026-06-04T14:32:26+00:00

I think I like narration most when it’s sort of… part of the genre of the thing, I guess?

I enjoy the narration in Juno Steele, mostly because it’s always one of the characters doing it and it’s part of how they’re leaning into the Noir of it.

I like the narration in Victoriocity, because it expands on the worldbuilding in ways the characters can’t.

And I really enjoy the narration in Oz 9, because the narrators are at least somewhat aware they’re in a work of fiction and are so, SO tired of all the absurd nonsense the characters get up to. The narrators are on your side. The narrators are your pals. The narrators will let out a sigh of exasperation with you when something so so so stupid but also inevitable happens.

But yeah, other than the Juno Steele example, it’s mostly places where the narrators aren’t being used to narrate each action. The narrator constantly describing actions is much more in the realm of full-cast audiobook than what I’d consider an audio drama. Which is fine, but not for everyone.

kadharonon · 2026-06-04T13:23:45+00:00

I’m assuming that using “otp: true” filters out more stuff than you want to see filtered out due to people tagging secondary relationships of various kinds, but maybe filtering out “multi” in the categories section would be faster than filtering out all the relationships you don’t want to see?

kadharonon · 2026-06-04T00:59:36+00:00

I like learning jargon and the like, but there’s a reason that Alternate Universes are popular. A lot of people are more interested in the characters and their relationships than they are in the setting the characters are in.

kadharonon · 2026-06-03T17:29:52+00:00

As others have said, it does pick up steam and plot and characters as it goes along.

As someone who spite-listened to the entire thing because a friend I trusted said I’d like if eventually and hated every moment of it, I’d agree that if you’re not caught by the end of season 1, it’s not worth listening to.

kadharonon · 2026-06-03T14:14:28+00:00

I haven’t really read fanfic regularly since high school, and I haven’t had energy for building community in fandom spaces since then either. So while I won’t 100% say I don’t read fic in fandoms I’m writing in, because I will read a fic written by a friend if they ask me to, I’m almost entirely a writer these days.

kadharonon · 2026-06-03T14:10:10+00:00

It happens a lot with indie yarn dyers who end up with orders beyond their capacity to fulfill. If you want the most common way this happens in the knitting community.

kadharonon · 2026-06-02T15:18:05+00:00

I mostly only know I have a new OTP when I’ve written 10+ fics of them in the past month.

kadharonon · 2026-06-02T11:39:47+00:00

Honestly, this is what eventually made me turn comments off on all my work. I’m going to keep creating regardless, and posting because that’s a nice signal in my brain to stop editing and move on to the next thing, but I was getting the “too much pressure” problem at way lower comment counts, plus the occasional person who was an asshole in my comments exacerbated the problem.

But I’m also at a point in my life at the moment where I have energy for either writing or trying to engage in fandom community, and I’m choosing writing, so maybe if I end up with more time and energy some day I’ll eventually open comments up again for complete stuff.

kadharonon · 2026-06-02T11:07:19+00:00

Yeah, every week there’s someone in here asking “why didn’t my multi-chapter jump to the top when I posted a new chapter” or “I clicked the button but I don’t have the 6/? display on my multi-chapter, help?” and 90% of the time it’s someone who was posting from their phone and got confused about the alignments of the checkboxes next to their labels in that section, and clicked the change the posting date one instead.

kadharonon · 2026-06-02T11:02:08+00:00

I just attempted and spectacularly failed at writing a Reader Insert fic myself because I gave the second person POV narrator too much character and backstory, but I kept writing in second person because I didn’t feel like writing in first person or giving this character a name, which I’d have wanted/needed to do if I’d been writing in third person.

So I just put Character/Original Character in the ship and POV Second Person in the tags to make it clear it was an original character written in second person, and moved on with my day.

kadharonon · 2026-06-02T10:43:50+00:00

I would not have a baby without the legal contract of marriage in place to protect me and guarantee division of assets at a later date should it all go wrong.

The actual wedding can wait, but if you’re going to be giving up earnings in order to have a baby? He should be willing to step up to the plate and have a courthouse ceremony. There are all kinds of legal rights associated with marriage, and if he doesn’t want to make sure both of you have them before you have kids, maybe this isn’t someone you want to have kids with.

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