melannen | (no subject)

Hi! Been awhile. Lots has been happening out there in the world, huh. I sort of went back to work at the start of the month, except there's no A/C in our building, so it's only sort of. Having all that time home really pointed up to me how much I HATE having to spend so much of my waking time forcing myself into some abstract mold of what a good employee is, even when I like the work (and doing some wfh has made it clear how much energy that I could be spending on work I instead waste on attempting to Be A Good Employee.)

I stopped the post-every-day to

fictional_fans thing I was doing when work started up again, because I knew my energy would nosedive, but then

china_shop is hosting Write Every Day for June, and I've been doing that. One sentence a day, because I really hadn't written at all since Yuletide! I've never tried to write at that pace before - I've written in occasional spurts, and I've written to higher consistent daily goals, but not to one sentence a day. I actually really like it, and it's redirected the habit I'd already formed of "one short DW post a day".

I can't fool myself into thinking I just don't have time, because it's one sentence. And I can't convince myself that I can't write because I'm in the wrong groove and it'll just be bad, because it's one sentence! Not the end of the world if it turns out to be bad! And I can't get discouraged that it's hard and going slow, because the point is one sentence. (I am averaging more like one paragraph actually, but some of them are very short paragraphs.) So anyway I have one-sentence-at-a-timed myself into finishing a ficlet that had been sitting around since last year, and I am going to try to keep going.

Meanwhile today I also started my

intoabar story, because it was time to stop delaying. The premise of intoabar is that two crossover characters meet in a public place like a bar or restaurant, and right now the hardest part is the concept of two strangers meeting in a place like a bar or restaurant. Such a strange idea.

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Hee! Glad the one-sentence-at-a-time writing thing is working well for you! I wrote an exchange fic that way a time or two, too. Progress is progress, even at a slow pace!

Some stories just want to crank out at that speed, I've found. And this is probably the best way to do that kind of story! :D

Ghod I hear you on the employee socialized thing, that was one huge reason why I was a disaster in the workplace.

I can't fool myself into thinking I just don't have time, because it's one sentence. And I can't convince myself that I can't write because I'm in the wrong groove and it'll just be bad, because it's one sentence! Not the end of the world if it turns out to be bad! And I can't get discouraged that it's hard and going slow, because the point is one sentence. (I am averaging more like one paragraph actually, but some of them are very short paragraphs.) So anyway I have one-sentence-at-a-timed myself into finishing a ficlet that had been sitting around since last year, and I am going to try to keep going.

Excellent!

JUST LET ME SIT AND DO WORK THE WAY THAT WORKS FOR ME, DON'T MAKE ME PRETEND. Ugh. Well, one other thing the wfh taught me is that I am better at not just completely failing at life when I try to wfh than I used to be, so maybe it's time to look at that kind of thing again. ....once everything else is not in crisis. Someday.

Things like this are why I shake my head at people who say they're not writing because they're not feeling it, or the muse isn't around - and these are people in decent physical health that aren't raising infants or have any such kind of honest reason to not write. It's a sentence. They can manage a sentence.

Good on you for building up creative momentum and finishing a project!

I don't think I'd go that far - I mean to start with, I have not read back over what I wrote! It may be unsalvagably terrible! And this worked for this story, but I think for faster-paced or more dialogue-based stories I would have found it a lot harder. And there are lots of other reasons someone might just not be able to even do the one sentence. But one sentence a day is working really well when my problem is mostly that I sat idle for so long I needed a crank-start!

Your last comments./o\ It amazes me that I'm long since to the point that when I see a photo of people close together I automatically check for a date. Given my quirks, I may never return to the old normal whatever the course of all this.

I thought about asking the mods if Zoom calls counted, but I ended up going with dog-walking, which luckily works really well for the characters! :D

(I haven't actually done "meet in a bar" for any years' intoabar, because that was already outside my ambit, but even "meet up with a friend of a friend for dinner out" just seems... wrong, now.)

In addition to overtime, we should mandate extra pay for drama time, when one's forced to perform "sociable human" instead of actually getting shit done.

It isn't even necessarily drama, it's the dumb little stuff like "Am I taking too long in the bathroom?" and "Does staring into space while I think make it look like I'm not working hard enough?" and "Will people judge me for having headphones on right now?" and "Does doing this with the workflow that works for me make it harder for other people?"

Like, having a manager with control issues doesn't help, but a lot of it is just insecurity + the wage labor system + the way the wage labor system is designed to exploit insecurity.

You named that tune precisely:

insecurity + the wage labor system + the way the wage labor system is designed to exploit insecurity.