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December Days 18 - Deadlines Passing
Dec. 19th, 2016 07:54 pm[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]
Well, this spot was going to be taken up with the showing off of a shiny, but then I realized it's not actually going to be here until much later on, and so instead, I'll talk about something else.
I made my deadlines for all my writing this year. I even have some buffer on certain things, which is coming in handy. That said, I'm way behind on looking at all the links, and maybe I can spend some time getting those all caught up over the next week of holiday.
Deadlines are useful things for getting stuff done. Without them, projects become indefinite and suffer from the need to become perfect. Fic deadlines are good, too, as they make sure that people get gifts on something like a regular basis.
There's a certain amount of odd feeling that goes with seeing your request go out to a pinch hit list. I don't usually know the reasons why, but it seems like a disappointment - that the request of the match wasn't good enough for the original, and now someone gets a second person trying on a much shorter deadline. It doesn't mean that the work will be of lesser quality (in fact, my most kudoed work at this point was a pinch hit), but I don't know many people who can throw off epic-length works on the time between the deadline and the pinch hit deadline.
I guess I feel like I've been out to pinch hit a lot this year, that I know of, and it very well could have been a hundred thousand factors in the writer's life and not anything to do with my prompts, but I feel a little like it's somehow my fault. Because I'm not yet going "well, I love these tropes, hate the other ones, and I want this" in my prompts.
It's the same feeling as being geek-adjacent - I can speak the lingo well enough to pass as someone who knows this, but I'm just not feeling as being part of the tribe. I wouldn't be surprised if it is some part of my brain craving a work that brings in accolades, kudos, comments, and transformations. Hufflepuff ethic wanting Gryffindor results.
I've been trying to train my brain out of that, really. Because I'm never going to get those results unless the work itself really is that good. I won't know whether that work is good enough until it's there and others see it. So it's foolish to want something you can't actually make manifest.
And so we practice. Stuck in the place where Ira Glass referred to where our actual ability isn't up to our own taste, waiting for the time when the two will meet up with each other, and in the meantime, making works that can be enjoyed by others along the way. It should be an uplifting experience, and being in a pinch hit list should only indicate that the community wants to thank you for doing your part by making sure that you get a gift of value in exchange for the work that you have done.
Yeah. Deadlines help move things along. They keep things from being stagnant, which is an important thing, indeed.
Well, this spot was going to be taken up with the showing off of a shiny, but then I realized it's not actually going to be here until much later on, and so instead, I'll talk about something else.
I made my deadlines for all my writing this year. I even have some buffer on certain things, which is coming in handy. That said, I'm way behind on looking at all the links, and maybe I can spend some time getting those all caught up over the next week of holiday.
Deadlines are useful things for getting stuff done. Without them, projects become indefinite and suffer from the need to become perfect. Fic deadlines are good, too, as they make sure that people get gifts on something like a regular basis.
There's a certain amount of odd feeling that goes with seeing your request go out to a pinch hit list. I don't usually know the reasons why, but it seems like a disappointment - that the request of the match wasn't good enough for the original, and now someone gets a second person trying on a much shorter deadline. It doesn't mean that the work will be of lesser quality (in fact, my most kudoed work at this point was a pinch hit), but I don't know many people who can throw off epic-length works on the time between the deadline and the pinch hit deadline.
I guess I feel like I've been out to pinch hit a lot this year, that I know of, and it very well could have been a hundred thousand factors in the writer's life and not anything to do with my prompts, but I feel a little like it's somehow my fault. Because I'm not yet going "well, I love these tropes, hate the other ones, and I want this" in my prompts.
It's the same feeling as being geek-adjacent - I can speak the lingo well enough to pass as someone who knows this, but I'm just not feeling as being part of the tribe. I wouldn't be surprised if it is some part of my brain craving a work that brings in accolades, kudos, comments, and transformations. Hufflepuff ethic wanting Gryffindor results.
I've been trying to train my brain out of that, really. Because I'm never going to get those results unless the work itself really is that good. I won't know whether that work is good enough until it's there and others see it. So it's foolish to want something you can't actually make manifest.
And so we practice. Stuck in the place where Ira Glass referred to where our actual ability isn't up to our own taste, waiting for the time when the two will meet up with each other, and in the meantime, making works that can be enjoyed by others along the way. It should be an uplifting experience, and being in a pinch hit list should only indicate that the community wants to thank you for doing your part by making sure that you get a gift of value in exchange for the work that you have done.
Yeah. Deadlines help move things along. They keep things from being stagnant, which is an important thing, indeed.
