Do I continue?

[lobelia321]

Hm. It's been three days since I posted my teaser fragment from my HP fic which is normally long enough to collect a representative amount of fb. But only one person commented. Don't worry; this is not a feedback solicitation -- I've locked the post now. It is rather a sort of musing and self-questioning: What am I doing wrong? Should I continue this fic? Well, I will continue anyway, because it's become part of me now but will I be motivated to write and finish if nobody will read? It's all very well to say we write for ourselves (and I do! I have reams of stuff I never posted, reams) but to get virtual zero fb is a bit, well, sad.

However, perhaps I simply picked the wrong fragment to use as a teaser? Perhaps people are put off by a Header that reads 'rape, chan, NC-17, Dudley'? This is, of course, only a part of the whole fic and those who know me will also know that I am mooshball number one and mainly write romance, romance, romance -- but inevitably the final Header will still need to include the words 'rape, chan, NC-17, Dudley' because those things will still be occurring somewhere in there. Although 'fluff, moosh, love, lifesaving' will also be appearing.

Possibly I made a mistake in using a Dudley-centred fragment? The fic has many, many Draco-scenes, and much Draco/Harry, and perhaps I should have used one of those?

Or perhaps my writing simply doesn't entice anybody in? How can I sell the story in my head (which I love and adore, make no mistake) to others so that they may also come to love and adore?

Or does it simply not work posting teasers for huge fic? Does one just need to put up and shut up and beaver away in isolation (or go for WIP, except I'm not doing that for this particular fic) and then finally post the whole shebang and hope that people will be enticed by the prospect of a long read?

Or are people just not reading as much? I know that I've heard from others that the fb well seems to have dried up sometime around mid-2003. For lotrps, anyway. Although the fragment was not lotrps. But then again my Friends may all be leftover lotrippers who read no HP on principle (as was I until last September).

I know some of you have also given in and posted fragments of larger fics before posting the whole thing? Any thoughts on this? Perhaps you got more fb and it was thus more helpful?

Comments

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I very much take your point about not wanting to read unfinished WIPs (made in your comment below). I think I will be more cautious with posting fragments in future; I hadn't thought this one through at all and just pressed that 'post comment' button in impulse, as I tend to do.

No, you have not been horribly inattentive: I haven't posted fic for months, perhaps even a year. Certainly I've posted nothing since I started on the HP fic. It's a new lonely business of writing, after the constant drip of fb when posting regularly.

You say that I already know I write evocatively, precisely etc. but I don't! I am beset by horrible self-doubts all the time over whether I can communicate what I want to say. Sometimes I am pleased by a bit I have written (which is why I ended up choosing the rape fragment because it seemed to me to be the most cohesive bit of all the HP bits I've written so far) but then I do want to please more people than just me; I want to communicate what's in my head into others' heads. I worry more about prose style now than I ever did before, perhaps because it's such a long fic and because I went so badly wrong in my previous, aborted long Karl/Dom fic.

And I absolutely take your point about the not knowing how it will work. This is the burden of the fragment, I am now realising. They simply cannot do the kind of work a short fic or the entire long fic can do.

Btw, this is not at all mainstream for this fandom. It is very, very rare. And the crossover-characters are from Lindsay Anderson's film If... (where they do the whipping though not the buggery); Galloping Foxley is from Roald Dahl, based on his own boyhood memories (again, sans the buggery though who knows?). I just got a little kick out of finding crossover bullies rather than just making them up myself. I don't know why I'm so coy about revealing these things.

Thanks so much for commenting. Thoughts from you are always appreciated.

(And I have been horribly inattentive to your piratish doings myself...)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

You say that I already know I write evocatively, precisely etc. but I don't!

Well, be told! You do; your precision (and the wonderfully surreal notions which you convey so precisely) is what I have always admired most about your writing. Which is not to say that there are not other admirable aspects (your ability to make me believe the most unlikely pairings; + orcs; + olives; + spatial stuff).

for what it's worth, I did not think you went 'badly wrong' in the K/D epic; but then I only saw edited excerpts, which made it more of a tease than anything. I don't think I saw enough to own up to a proper opinion, but I'm not clear why you thought it was badly wrong.

Re WIPs; I tend to post the happy feel-good bits rather than the more harrowing bits, if I post anything at all. (Have posted nearly all the sex scenes out of piratey!WIP as birthday gifts, feedback snippets etc; no one will care when I finally finish it!) I had 25,000 words of Viggo/Sean/Miranda thing, and stopped writing it (and ultimately Lotrips) because of adverse comments. Now I wish I'd either posted it in instalments to a wider audience (positive feedback would've kept me writing, negative feedback from more than one person might've been constructive) or not shown any of it to anyone until I'd finished. I don't really know the answer -- but part of the reason we're here, surely, is because of the feedback and community and all that. It has to be something that can be used for betterment of writing.

Am intrigued as to your sources (unrecognised by me) of bullies. Also intrigued as to why you've borrowed them.

Am also rambling. Sorry!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you again (though I guess I myself don't tend to find my own notions surreal but there we are, *g* -- well, I guess, Dom's puppy was a bit surreal, and the arthropods -- but apart from that!! All very real. *g*)

The K/D epic felt badly wrong to two betas which doesn't mean it was, I suppose, but it then also felt badly wrong to me so I couldn't bring myself to post. I liked some of the individual parts a lot but I think that was one of my main downfalls with that fic: I fell in love with the prose too much and couldn't kill my darlings, as they say. I didn't have an overall plot. But I did learn from that fic that for a long fic you *need* a plot; it's not enough to have beautiful words: you need the scaffolding to hang them on, and the art I truly admire is when to know to use a doggone ordinary word at just the right moment.

Sources for the bullies (so glad you asked!): Three of them are from Lindsay Anderson's film If..., and Galloping Foxley is from Roald Dahl, based on his boyhood memories.

Reason for doing x-over rather than origchar!bullies: I just really liked that. I remembered seeing them and I base my bullying scene on scenes from films and books and memoirs so I found it fun to use some of those fictional characters. They seemed more fully-fledged, jumping into the fic fully-formed and real. I could have made up some posh names but I loved using these existing ones and hiding them in here.