purlturtle asked: 

🪄 and 🤲 for the fic writer’s asks please!

what is your post-writing/sharing aftercare? How do you take care of yourself or celebrate yourself when you’ve finished a fic?

I’m not so good at any of this 😂 I’m much better at moving the goal posts. Like I’ll say “finish X” but then once I have there’s another story, another task etc. I never feel like I have done enough, or done it quickly enough, or done it well enough. And that’s just doing the task. Sharing the thing… so much anxiety.

Obviously I make what I make because I personally like it, so I’m the target audience. I can’t say I always enjoy the process because it is often a struggle, a crisis of confidence as I never feel good enough, but I want it to exist. I also hope that it brings somebody joy. For all that I don’t share my work for the attention I am only human and after I post I desperately want some kind of recognition. Screaming into the void is lonely. I worked hard. I want somebody to see that, I guess I just want someone to care. Which is needy probably and not very healthy because it depends on other people.

So to summarise I don’t really deal with this very well at all.

what do YOU get out of writing?

A poison nightmare?

Sorry that’s a little snarky and also more than a little negative. I can’t do so many things. I am a depressed, anxious mess. Writing is simultaneously my hope for a future, and so much pain and fear. I am terrified I can’t do it and I will never be good enough, I will never get to where I need to be. I have lots of ideas and I want to see them realised. I would like to share them with the world. But are they actually any good? Even if the ideas are, will my skill ever be at a level where I can do them justice?

I once said that if I couldn’t write, then I was less than nothing because writing was the only thing I had left. It was my one chance to make a future for myself. But honestly as time goes by the hope gets chipped away and I have no faith left.

Obviously this is written with original work in mind because all of this mess in my head ^^ is why I quit fanfic. I was using fanfic as a crutch. Telling myself that so long as I was doing something, that was better than nothing, but really I was avoiding. Hiding. Not to say that fanfic didn’t bring me joy because of course it did. But it took a hell of a lot of time and effort and as short on spoons as I am, I knew I wasn’t spending them wisely.

Writing is hope, it is dreams, it is life. So what do I get out of writing? Mostly fear, so so much fear, with a side order of self-hate. I want it too much and everytime I fail, it gets harder to conjure up the self-faith to persist and try again.

#not the answer you wanted I am sure but I am always honest