I'm the window washer outside your fandom.

[icarus]

I'm a window washer outside your fandom.

My fandom (Stargate Atlantis) ended* with no replacement in sight. At the same time my fiance and I broke up, I finished my BA, moved across country, and I took up Real BuddhismTM again, rather than just poking at it with a stick from a great distance.

It was the perfect storm.

From someone who averaged a dozen stories a year, and a novel every two years from 2002 to 2010, my writing halted. A mere one or two short fics at Christmas. For eight years it was everything I did, and now I don't write at all.

Oh, I did a final SGA Big Bang and kept up with regular yearly challenges. I've taken a moment now and then to write what I can.

I've tried a little original fiction that hasn't really taken off. Didn't fall in love with my original characters for one thing. Another project I'm still chipping away at from time to time but I'm in over my head.

Other than Dragonlord, my fics have been "surface stories."

There are stories that you pull out of your gut, that are saying something even if you're not sure what, and then there are stories where you're just diddling on the surface. Moving the furniture around.

I miss writing. Can't seem to get into the new fandoms. Avengers, Sherlock, Hawaii 5-O. raveninthewind introduced me to Due South, the standby fandom of all standby fandoms. Enjoyed it. Not fannish about it.

Almost got sucked into X-Men: First Class, I could feel that story digging in somewhere.

But then I went on a month-long retreat and lost the yen. By the time I got back, fandom had trampled on without me. I felt like I was chasing the bus.

There's no juggernaut fandom to suck me in with the power of a black hole. Sometimes I think I'm just too busy.

So I'm the window washer outside your fandoms, looking in, while I'm working, working, working.

I think that I'm around too many Buddhists who don't "get" artists. The artists, with the exception of my mom, all moved to the Sedona temple. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Atira, Cian--they get it. Jetsunma gets it. But the Maryland Buddhists are all very practical, and right now they have good reason: the temple doors have been shut, closed to public assembly, until gajillions of dollars are raised for mandatory renovations. How can I "waste time" writing fic? The sky is falling!

My boss is the same way.

I find that without writing and creative work ... I starve. I left this temple, which I always loved, fifteen years ago because I starved here.

So I took today off. Cancelled chauffeuring Ani Samla. Rescheduled practice to Saturday night. And I'm taking time to write.


* i.e. became a closed canon.

Comments

[zana16]

If you want a juggernaut fandom that will stick around for a while, there's still two Hobbit movies to go...

Not that this is at self-serving or anything. :)

[icarus]

Oh, I'm very books!canon when it comes to Tolkien. That was my first fandom.

Icarus

[zana16]

I'm the same way when it comes to LotR -- not that I've never read moviefic, but I never could understand (for example) why Aragorn/Legolas was so popular when clearly Legolas and Gimli had the most epic romance in all of fantasy... But I was never particularly fannish about The Hobbit as a book, and though the movie was meh, it did give me thirteen dwarves with personalities and backstories to play with.

I do miss LotR fandom; it came along shortly after I'd first discovered fandom, and all my RL friends were in it, and it was awesome.

[busaikko]

*massive hugs*

I could have written, not this post, but the emotional content of it. New fulltime job + marriage in deathspiral + SGA ending = but why is all the fic gone? It's not even that I don't have any free time, but when I do I just want to stare at things (TV, walls, internet) and not do the hard work....

SGA is still around! People are still writing and new writers are joining, there's an anonmeme, you will always be welcome!

(I have yet to find a fandom that grabs me like SGA did. Or rather, one that also has a US fanbase. It's so weird, and I feel resentful of people who blithely wing off into Avengers or Inception, when I'm grounded, flapping my penguin wings...)

[icarus]

It's so weird, and I feel resentful of people who blithely wing off into Avengers or Inception, when I'm grounded, flapping my penguin wings..

OMG, THIS. You understand. I feel ... wistful, watching everyone have fun in their new universes. Why don't they fit me? But they don't.

And THIS: It's not even that I don't have any free time, but when I do I just want to stare at things (TV, walls, internet) and not do the hard work....

Exactly. It's why I'm watching Dancing With The Stars and playing Castleville when I-could-be-writing. My energy and focus is drained.

[busaikko]

My energy and focus is drained. This, exactly!

On the one hand, it's relaxing to go to a film (Iron Man 3!) and enjoy it and not have to be taking canon notes in my head so I can get right on those 10 kinkmeme fills... but on the other hand, my world's smaller now, and not happier.

It's incredibly comforting to know that I'm not alone (not that I'd wish this on anyone, but) - feel free to talk to me anytime, ne ♥

[icarus]

...my world's smaller now, and not happier.

Yes. Much smaller. I feel like someone who had to miss the prom to stay home and babysit.

It's incredibly comforting to know that I'm not alone (not that I'd wish this on anyone, but) - feel free to talk to me anytime, ne

It so is!

Most people offer fandoms to play in.

Every now and then I've forced myself to write a little fluffy SGA fic (or some Hermione fluff). I don't feel like I'm really writing to my ability. I'm currently forcing myself to make the time for a Star Trek: TOS fic. Even though I feel like I'm just diddling, keeping a hand in, rather than really writing.

[icarus]

By the way, I read this on one of your posts:

But sometimes I flip through my flist and see only new fandoms scroll by and feel kind of like a dinosaur or something.

YES.

[busaikko]

I think jumping into online Harry Potter fandom gave me a lot of false expectations. Canon came out in large chunks spaced years apart, but available in Japan the same time as everywhere else - so joining was easy, and there wasn't a need to watch every week or collect every issue. The pace was a lot slower, with people taking months to write thoughtful essays analyzing motifs and exploring theories. I feel like it's harder to do that these days: film fandoms don't have enough canon, and TV fandoms move so fast.... *coughs* Plus, I'm not as young as I used to be *does dinosaur stomp*

[icarus]

We kept up with SGA just fine. No, at least in my case it's my current circumstances.

[ladysorka]

I feel weird about my continued involvement in SGA fandom. It's not like I ever thought I'd be one of those fans who gets stuck in an old closed canon and can't seem to leave it. I've always spent more time in fandoms than some people, but SGA is still, by my count, my 11th big fannish obsession since '95ish. But I've looked at all the big fandoms from about the past four years and every single one of them evokes a giant "meh" from me. The closest I get is Person of Interest, and even there I'm more interested in a 'read all the meta!' sort of a way than actually wanting to read or write fic. And I'm still not interested enough to try and dig through tumblr to find the meta that's probably being written.

And even there, I'm not writing SGA fic or meta, or even really reading that much of it. I still check the AO3 tag every day, but that's, like, one fic a day at this point. And I meant to write a fic for this week's sga_saturday amnesty, one I'd been thinking about for a while, but I didn't. It's not like I didn't have the free time, I just... didn't. Instead, I spent a lot of time fixing tags in my mp3 collection and watching things on youtube.

And I have all of these fic ideas! I just apparently don't have the energy to write them. I just want to blindly watch educational youtube videos all day and then anally reorganize things, apparently. Everyone else is off being excited and having fun doing their things, and I'm just sitting here spinning my wheels.

[icarus]

Doesn't it feel like, well, being at school during summer holidays? Although when I've written, rare as that's been lately, it's mostly been SGA.

That's weird. It's been exactly four years for me, too!

Coincidence?