[april 2023] how to triage your WIPs
or: the OFIC Mag special anniversary issue, my sudden deep dive into j-dramas, and an in-depth tutorial on how i tackled (and finished) my dustiest WIPs
congratulations to all us sleepy hoes with seasonal depression for making it through another winter.
in this lkwrnl, we’ve got:
the release of the special anniversary issue of OFIC, inside which i have an essay about my own fandom experience
a rundown of exactly how i went from “hi, i’m betts and i’m a vaguely functional person” to “it’s 4am i have 2 episodes left of this j-drama and if it doesn’t end happy i am going to eat my duvet”
the process i developed for approaching my oldest and most difficult WIPs, which i managed to finish all in 2 weeks because i am sooo great at moderation
the OFIC Mag special anniversary issue is out today!
i don’t know about you, but i’ve always been very interested in the stories of how people find fandom and how it’s changed their lives. for this issue, we gathered together a baker’s dozen fandom origin stories to celebrate our one-year anniversary.
i have an essay in this issue as well that’s very personal to me and far more difficult to write than i thought it would be. and involved a lot more crying than i anticipated, but that’s what happens when you really look back on your life and see how far you’ve come.
here’s an excerpt:
Days later, John invites me out to dinner. We meet at Waffle House. We have not seen each other in a long while. He is surprised to see I have dyed my hair teal. I am surprised to see him with an engagement ring.
We don’t eat. Though it is late, John drinks coffee. He still works third shift at Kroger. We used to live across the street from his store, and in the middle of the night I would pick up McDonald’s and meet him out back during his break. On slow nights, I followed him around the store in my pajamas.
He and I dated from nineteen to twenty-two. I liked him initially because he was more or less exactly like John Mayer—a tall guitarist with dimples and talent. There are other things I liked about him as well, namely that he was somewhat feral. He grew up in a poor area of Riverside and he had been homeschooled, by which I mean his instruction consisted of largely self-guided Wikipedia deep dives, and so he didn’t know things like long division or the periodic table of elements. But that was okay, because I liked to teach.
John allowed me to enact in reality the puffy-clouded fantasies I used to have of John Mayer, playing music for me in bed, knowing just what to say to make me laugh, impressing me with his wit and charm. I told myself he was the one, because if the real John Mayer were to arrive in my life and sweep me off my feet, I would still always choose my John.
Before him, I dated a boy named Chris, who was exactly like John except, instead of guitar, he played bass. They both looked vaguely like My Own Private Idaho-era Keanu Reeves. Both relationships lasted three years. Both relationships were sickeningly obsessive and romantic.
I wonder now what would have happened had I not been in toxically codependent relationships for a grand total of seven years of my early adulthood. I might have found fanfiction sooner, and love later. Fanfiction might have even prepared me for love. Instead, love prepared me for fanfiction. I know intimately the feeling of falling. I can lend credence to the experience of longing, of passion.
John kept my dad company while he was dying. John helped out wherever he could. John did not truly love me, but he loved the role I played in his life, and I did not yet understand the difference. Nine months after my father died, I found out John had been cheating on me. We broke up, but because we are both clingy people, we’ve stayed terrible friends. We are mutually cruel. I do not need to ask him why I wasn’t good enough. I know the answer—I am hideous. I am broken. I never stood a chance.
And now I am sitting across from him in a Waffle House. He has news to share: Tomorrow, he’ll be moving to New York with his fiancée. I have news to share, too: Tomorrow, I’ll be starting grad school.
We pay our respective tabs and leave. In the parking lot, I tell him, “You know this is the last time we’re ever going to see each other.”
“Don’t say that,” he says. “Please don’t say that.”
I stare at the two moles on his throat, nearly identical to the two moles I have on my throat. We used to enjoy finding cosmic evidence like that, signals from a greater power telling us we were meant to be together.
“Okay,” I say, relenting. With John, I am always relenting, letting him have hope that he can keep both her and me. It doesn’t matter anymore. This volume of my life is over.
you can read the rest of the essay in the issue! please be sure to heed the tags in the front matter, though. it has a happy ending but it’s kind of a rough ride to get there.
top 5 j-dramas that have ruined my life
so there i was, living my pajama pants hermit life, not bothering anybody, when the existence of j-dramas suddenly kool-aid-man’d into my home.
i have watched so much anime. i have read so much manga. i’ve seen c-dramas and k-dramas, but somehow the existence of j-dramas had completely eluded me until now. when i started watching Alice in Borderland, i thought—wait, have i seen any live action japanese media?
i have, sort of, but it was nearly 20 years ago when i was working at a chinese restaurant called Mr. Lee’s where, for reasons i still don’t understand, we played old samurai movies on one television and the Food Network on another. we also had a sushi bar. at the time i had braces with these tiny springs connecting my top teeth to my bottom teeth so i could barely open my mouth, and whenever i ordered sushi i asked for little pieces, which is why everyone in the restaurant started calling me Little Pieces. Mr. Lee himself was an 80 year old man from Hong Kong. his son Peter was a wealthy young businessman from Chicago who was possibly the single most attractive human i have ever met in real life. he and i had a mutual crush on one another and i often wonder what my life would have become had i run away with him instead of attending a mediocre state university.
we also had pad thai on the menu.
the point is, here are my j-drama recommendations for anyone who, like me, is exhausted by the grimdark pessimistic agony of american media that, despite having the highest possible stakes, are still boring because they possess largely external instead of internal conflict (and almost no interpersonal conflict).
1. alice in borderland | imawa no kuni no alice (16 episodes, netflix)
netflix tried to get me to watch this show for ages but the obnoxious auto-play of the UI ensures that i will never watch anything on their recommendation, out of spite. but i was scrolling tumblr, as a girlie does, and saw a gifset that conveyed to me that this show is, in fact, a death game series. i love a good death game series. strike that, i love a bad death game series too. and it’s for the same reason i, neurodivergent, love games: there are RULES. there’s just something so satisfying about the high-concept premise of a game-based narrative. it organizes the chaos of storytelling and gives it a clear direction. the takes are high and there’s fundamentally a drive toward complex characterization. (marge i just think it’s neat.jpg)
as the title indicates, the story loosely follows to plot of Alice in Wonderland. the main character, Arisu (japanese pronunciation of “Alice”) is an aimless gamer who one day wanders out of a train station to find a totally abandoned Tokyo, where he and his two best friends are directed toward a game arena in which they have to solve a puzzle or die. the games are based on a deck of playing cards—the suit of each card indicates the type of game it is and the number indicates its difficulty. as Arisu continues playing games and avoiding imminent death, he runs into other wonderland-inspired characters and attempts to figure out where the hell he even is.
tropes incurred:
death game narrative
friends to lovers
big reveal
found family
every character gets a backstory
swoon-worthy byronic hero (the Cheshire cat character)
good things:
exceedingly high production value
everyone is hot
a lot of great female characters, one of whom is trans
satisfying ending (to me, anyway)
really great performances!!
did i mention byronic hero? byronic hero who is also a lowkey catboy? byronic hero who is cold, aloof, hypercompetent, and vaguely evil, only to reveal a heart-wrenching (literally) backstory in which we discover he is a natural caretaker morally injured by the unjust systems he’s working within? and he LEARNS TO LOVE?? you will not be surprised to learn i have 30k words of fic written about him already.
less good things:
anyone can die at any moment (very stressful for someone like me who gets attached to characters)
plot holes (more like world-building inconsistencies/flaws of logic, but not so bad that they diminished my enjoyment)
2. 10 counts for the future | mirae e no 10 count (9 episodes, sketchy streaming sites)
bored and bereft after finishing AiB, i started clicking around IMDb to see what else all the actors had been in. i discovered that this is a great way to find what to watch next (although not on IMDb, which is sometimes inaccurate; i use MyDramaList now). i think something people don’t talk about often is the nature of aesthetic attraction—i find someone pretty and i just want to continue looking at their face. so if i follow actors i like from show to show, it’s a lot easier for me to get emotionally invested.
i’m a simple woman. i find a show about a former boxer down on his luck, i drop everything i’m doing to watch it. why boxers, specifically? i have no idea. maybe it involves the tenacity it takes to devote your life to getting punched, or the aesthetic of characters beating the shit out of each other, or maybe that one Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a boxer because his skull is too thick to get knocked out.
said former boxer gets a job at his old high school coaching the boxing team, which he approaches with extreme reluctance, having given up on happiness and love due to his tragic backstory (sports injury, dead wife, failed restaurant, and now he delivers pizzas). in one episode, he has an actual “who has it worse” trauma battle.
the series follows the boxer as he gets increasingly entangled in his students’ lives, fights with the principal who is desperately trying to get him fired, and falls in love with the plucky young literature teacher played by Mitsushima Hikari who stars in 3 of these 5 drama recs.
tropes incurred:
byronic hero learns to love!! (there is a Pattern here)
regaining the will to live and finding happiness through teaching (if you read my essay, you will see why these kinds of stories are a one-hit KO for me, pun only vaguely intended)
coaching a team to nationals
slow-burn age gap romance
teenage girl defeats drunk abusive father
good things:
having now watched several really not great j-dramas of the same flavor (Aogeba Toutoshi, which has a very similar premise and not one but TWO of my blorbos [they are best friends with homoerotic tension and one of them is blonde], is actually so bad that i couldn’t even make it through the first episode), i think the performances are all-around really good
the tropes are very thoroughly and earnestly explored, and some are even subverted, so it’s predictable in a way i think is satisfying
less good things:
i have yet to find a reliable method to watch certain dramas that aren’t available in the US. there are the sketchy streaming sites of course, but 1) the resolution is sometimes unwatchable and the playback is shitty, and 2) i would like to watch it legitimately! and pay for it! (you can torrent stuff, but some shows never have seeders)
of these 5 recs, this one is probably the most melodramatic, which isn’t at all a problem for me, but melodrama is considered a bad thing in a lot of genres of american media
Murakami Nijiro, who plays Chishiya (the Cheshire cat character) in AiB, is only in 4 episodes :( and his story is kind of sad :(( but his performance is SO good :)
3. first love: hatsukoi (9 episodes, netflix)
for any millennials reading this, this is the only thing i need to say about it for you to understand exactly what kind of show it is: at one of the major emotional climaxes, the entirety of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” plays.
First Love is about two people who used to be in love reuniting 20 years later, after both of their lives have deviated significantly from the paths they’d set for themselves.
there aren’t many things i look at and go, my 14-year-old self would have gone absolutely apeshit over this, but First Love is one of them. i texted my roommate, teen me would have loved this show, to which he said, i know exactly what kind of show it is then. admittedly my tastes haven’t changed that much since then, but nowadays a good show like this flings me into existential terror, whereas before i only rolled around on the floor squealing for a while. at 14, i would watch something like First Love and think, when am i going to fall in love? at 33 i think, oh right, i’m never going to find a partner because i never leave my fucking house.
i cannot emphasize enough exactly how badly this drama affected me. i had a total mental breakdown over it. is it because it’s too much like things i’ve written? is it because the ending is so satisfying and well-earned? is it because beneath my cheerful demeanor is a cold emotionless robot, and beneath that is a soft squishy memory foam pillow, giving way to the shape of things that crush me?
but most likely it’s because, like Yae and Harumichi, my life hasn’t gone the way i expected it to either. to me, it’s really about how people born in a certain era have endured so much technological change and social upheaval that we have to completely redefine our concept of happiness.
tropes incurred:
amnesia!
Holes-esque “i can fix that” romance
falling in love
falling in love again
fate webbing
the specific kind of quirky irreverence that permeated everything from 2002 to 2008 (but part of the work of the show is crushing it with the hardships of the present)
good things:
gorgeous cinematography
non-chronological timeline that re-contextualizes conflicts (think Dirtbag, for those who have read that)
insanely good performances
Sato Takeru having to run long distances to rescue his love interest cinematic universe
Sato Takeru standing very still and having a profound yet devastating emotional reaction cinematic universe
Sato Takeru snuggling a Snorlax cinematic universe (admittedly this is the only drama where he does that, but the other two are prevalent across his filmography [he runs so fast, so far, in so many things. and he stands in the rain a lot. like, a lot.])
less good things:
the casting and direction of the younger versions of the main characters feel a little off-base, but possibly i’m spoiled by shows like Dark
it will rip your heart out and lovingly feed it back to you
obligatory episode 8 where everything falls apart with minimal logic as to why (but be patient, the end is worth it)
4. an incurable case of love | koi wa tsuzuku yo doko made mo (10 episodes, viki)
probably if you’re reading this newsletter, you’ve spent a not-insignificant portion of your life reading fanfiction. possibly some of this fanfiction is of the “the grouchy one is soft for the sunshine one” variety, or maybe even the “he’s mean but if anyone lays a finger on his love interest he will go absolutely apeshit” variety. and if so, i must tell you: this drama is the live action equivalent of a fanfiction you stay up all night to read.
we begin when the main character, Sakura, is in high school. she has no idea what she wants to do with her life. on her way home, she finds a woman having a medical emergency. no one is around. Sakura screams for help. a handsome young doctor out for a jog comes to help (Sato Takeru running to rescue his love interest cinematic universe). she and the doctor have a Moment. Sakura, having fallen deeply and immediately in love, then spends the next 5 years putting herself through nursing school just so she can get a job at the handsome young doctor’s hospital. her first day on the job, she runs into him and confesses her love for him.
and she finds out he’s a total asshole.
cue Sakura steeling her resolve to make the doctor fall in love with her even though he finds her annoying and incompetent. cue the doctor bending to Sakura’s adorable steadfast will as he does indeed fall wildly in love with her.
tropes incurred:
the single greatest tsundere romance i have ever seen
accidental neighbors
age gap, mentor/mentee
“i’m probably not sexy enough” meets “you have no idea how much i’ve been restraining myself”
JEALOUSY
“i’ve only known Sakura for a day and a half but if anything happens to her i will kill everyone in this room and then myself”
love at first sight for one, slow burn for the other
older woman/younger man side pairing
good things:
if one’s id is a mosquito bite, this show is the sweet sweet relief of scratching it for 10 straight hours
Sakura is played by a very talented actress who is a totally normal-looking (albeit very adorable) person, while Dr. Tendo is played by walk-walk-fashion-baby supermodel Sato Takeru
Sato Takeru standing very still and having a profound yet devastating emotional reaction cinematic universe
less good things:
Sakura gets into mortal danger an absurd number of times
the guy in the older woman/younger man side pairing confesses his love at least once per episode
if you’re unfamiliar with tsundere romances, you might find Tendo’s treatment of Sakura off-putting (i saw a post in the tag that was like, “yet another romance where the guy is an asshole to the girl, ugh!” like, yeah man that’s the point)
5. quartet (10 episodes, netflix)
if you read the summary of this one anywhere else, it sounds very boring. but that’s because the basic premise is kind of a spoiler: 4 musicians move into a house together, where quirky found family dynamics and various comedic conflicts ensue. but the lead violinist’s husband is missing, and she may or may not have killed him.
it’s hard to convey exactly how accurate this show is to artist residencies, which is the primary draw for me. having attended many residencies it was really great seeing that experience rendered so well—learning to cohabitate with strangers who all have intense creative interests, cooking for each other and getting to know each other over shared meals, and everyone is the weirdest person you’ve ever met.
this one really healed me from the existential tsunami of First Love. First Love made me think “love is real but i’m going to die alone,” but Quartet reminded me that i have the privilege of doing what i love for a living, and that i’m very grateful for it.
tropes incurred:
found family so intense it’s closer to a polycule
everyone has a secret
accidental baby acquisition
aforementioned quirky irreverence of the early 00s (but it’s 2017)
good things:
the relationship between the two women is so well done—there’s personal conflict between them but it might be the best slow-burn friendship i’ve ever seen
it’s an entire show about the very specific experience of being a creative person in a world where you can’t make money on it, and you’re an adult but you don’t feel like one, and all you want is to live in a house with your best friends and play music, so how do you make the dream work?
really nuanced portrayals of complicated relationship dynamics
the whole thing is so, so funny. i mean the band’s name is Quartet Doughnuts Hole
less good things:
there are romantic elements but no romantic resolution, either because the show isn’t really about romance or they lowkey want you to think the 4 of them are together-together
strange pacing that might be off-putting for younger people who weren’t around for the “don’t ask questions, just roll with it” heyday of filmmaking
if you decide to watch any of these, or if you’ve seen one and want to talk about it, i’d love to chat! part of the reason i wrote all this out is because i have a lot of Feelings about these blorbos from my shows and i just want to talk about them.
the great WIP cleanout of 2023
one of the prevailing problems in fandom is “i have too many WIPs.” having a lot of WIPs (works in progress) is a terrible feeling. it’s like being bottlenecked. all of these half-formed, half-finished ideas stuck in the thin space of the time and energy available to give to your writing.
having a lot of WIPs is, generally speaking, more of a phenomenon of fanfiction than original fiction. in nearly every workshop i’ve been in, i’ve been surprised to be asked something like, “so what are you working on?” and for the most part, writers answer with one project. i used to lie because i thought everyone else was lying. but no, a lot of writers only work on one thing at a time, for a very long time. and here i am, a statistical error, writers georg with 10,000 WIPs, and outlier adn who should not have been counted.
which is all to say: having a lot of WIPs as a fanfic writer is sometimes inevitable. fanfic is conducive to inspiration, community, and total freedom, which means good ideas are plenty. very few of us, i think, are immune to having multiple WIPs.
i did my first WIP cleanout near the end of 2021, where i managed to finish and post 4 fics that had been gathering dust in my gdrive, totaling about 100k words. results were mixed: 2 of them i ended up being pretty proud of, 1 was just okay, and 1 i outright hated.
earlier this year, i saw a tumblr poll asking how much unposted fic you have, and i counted up nearly 275k words. when i really started plumbing the depths of my fanfic folder, i was reminded how many fics i had that were half or nearly complete but simply hadn’t finished. so i decided to take a few weeks and do just that, while keeping a log of my process so i could write this.
i’ve been calling this process “triaging,” an extended metaphor of WIPs to be assessed and treated based on order of urgency.
step 0: facing the damage
the first thing you should do before you begin is to give yourself a time frame for the cleanout. i gave myself 2 weeks during which i promised myself i wouldn’t work on anything else. depending on the state of your WIP folder and how much patience/motivation you have, you may need more or less.
next is the easiest but most annoying: you have to list out your WIPs. i did this by hand, but wherever you keep track of things is fine. on my list, i put the working title, the fandom and pairing, word count, and roughly the percentage to completion.
and now you must Look on your Works, ye Mighty, and despair.
before you begin, there are certain facts you must accept:
you will, in some manner, be disappointed in yourself
there are stories and scene ideas you will let go of that were once dear to you
you will be killing enough darlings to build a graveyard
but hopefully the relief you feel being no longer bogged down by “i should really finish that before i start something new” will outweigh the rest.
generally speaking, i don’t believe in killing darlings (for anyone who doesn’t know, “kill your darlings” is a phrase writers use to describe cutting beloved but unnecessary things out of a manuscript). overall i think writers should keep their favorite things in a manuscript because gutting what you love risks losing the magic of early drafting. but in the case of WIPs you’ve had on your plate for a year or five, sometimes the darlings get in the way of completion, and so when choosing between a darling and finishing a fic, for the purpose of this exercise, the answer is the latter.
my advice is to commit to seeing the process through by treating it as its own project, rather than finishing many projects. seeing the process through doesn’t necessarily mean finishing everything, or even reaching your goals. it means that by the end, every WIP will be in one of three categories:
completed: the fic is finished and either posted or ready to be posted
abandoned: the fic will not be completed
rolled over: the fic will roll over to next year’s WIP cleanout
if a fic is labeled “rolled over,” it means that unless you get a sudden strike of inspiration between this year’s cleanout and next, it is off your plate. the point is to clear everything out of the bottleneck and free yourself of the obligation of completing your WIPs, and thereby free yourself of the guilt and shame inherent in not finishing something you care about.
a note on abandonment: abandoning things you care about is hard, especially if you have readers already invested in the story. you don’t want to disappoint them or yourself, especially if your past self was really into writing it. sometimes you outgrow old ideas faster than you can finish them. whatever the reason, it’s okay to let go of stories. nothing is ever wasted—what you learned writing it can and will be applied to the next thing you write. you’ll reuse imagery and conflicts and character arcs in other works. words are free and life is long. you’re not wasting anything by moving on to the next thing.
step 1: testing
in this step, you decide what to finish and what to abandon. here’s a litmus test you can do to get rid of a lot of them:
go to your AO3 stats page
find your total word count
divide it by the number of fics you’ve written
multiply by 0.1
mark any fic shorter than the resulting number “abandoned”
for me, i have 1.5M words across 78 fics. my average word count is 19k. that means i’ve crossed off any fic currently under 1,900 words. my list went from 18 WIPs to 9.
with what remains, you either put it on your list to finish or you roll it over.
of my 9 remaining WIPs, i’ve committed to finishing 7 of them. the ones i’m rolling over: a fic for a book that i know is in production to be a movie, so i’m going to finish it when the movie comes out (mostly because i’ve forgotten everything about the book and i don’t want to read it again). another is a fic that i only want to work on when i’m super depressed. i’ll look at it again next year to see if i have any motivation to finish it.
step 2: diagnosis
here, to triage means to prioritize the things that are most likely to be completed, so it’s good to start with the project that’s the easiest to complete or the closest to completion. i tried to do one fic at a time down a list, but i ended up juggling them all at various states.
the goal of this step is to reread the work itself and take notes so you can figure out why you stopped writing it. this step is not for editing or writing. in some cases, i’ll send the fics to my kindle just to avoid making any edits.
when going through my own list, i encountered the following symptoms (so to speak):
the fic was leading up to a scene i really didn’t want to write
the fic went in a direction i hadn’t anticipated, and i liked that direction but it made things too complicated
the opposite: my initial idea wasn’t what the fic really wanted to be
my aspirations (length, difficulty) outweighed the amount of energy i wanted to put into it
i moved on to a different fic and used a lot of the concept of the WIP in something else that i already finished
i moved on to a different project and i just haven’t come back to the WIP yet
a piece was missing—a scene, or a time skip, or something else relatively small to get the characters to the end of the story
all of these things are fixable. but sometimes your diagnosis is something that can’t be treated (or is very difficult to treat). in that case, you can mark it abandoned or roll it over. for example:
you don’t want to finish it. this one super sucks if you’ve already started posting it and it has some devoted readers. if this is your situation, sometimes what’s best is to write out a narrative summary/synopsis of how it would have ended and post it as the last chapter, then mark the fic as abandoned either in the tags or in the summary itself.
you have no idea how it ends/what happens next. technically this is treatable, but personally i don’t like forcing things like that too much. if you roll it over to next year, you might have an epiphany between now and then and suddenly know how to finish it. (note this is different than “a piece is missing.” when you’re just missing a couple things, i think it’s worth it to finish. if you really just have no clue what direction to take something, i think it can probably be rolled over or abandoned.)
you can’t concede your ambitions. in some cases you have an idea for a fic that’s really dear to you, and it’s more important to you to get it down in a way that fully honors the premise than it does to simply finish it and move on. sometimes this is an issue of skill—we can have ideas for things we want to write now that we don’t yet have the ability to. sometimes it’s timing—if you had more time/energy, you’d be able to put the work into it that it deserves, but you just don’t right now. whatever the reason, in these instances i think it’s best to roll the fic over to next year’s cleanout. you never know what’ll happen between now and then.
you just don’t know. sometimes it’s not evident as to why a fic can’t be completed. sometimes it’s not the fic, it’s the state of mind you need to be in to write it, or it’s an absent muse, or whatever else. if you go through this process and absolutely can’t identify what’s wrong, it might be worth it to roll it over or abandon it.
by the end of this step, you should have a list of “here’s what’s wrong with this fic.” this step is not for solving anything, only for admitting to yourself what’s not working. many writers skip this step not just in cleaning out WIPs but in revision overall. they think they can go from drafting straight to revision without knowing yet the direction of their revision. but you can’t make your brain diagnose and treat at the same time. so you have to ask yourself “what am i not liking?” before you can start to fix it.
step 3: prognosis
in this case, “prognosis” means figuring out what the most realistic outcome of completing the WIP is going to be by taking the diagnosis and considering, “okay, if i buckle down and finish this, what will it take?”
using the list of 7 diagnoses in the step above, respectively, here are some solutions i’ve come up with:
a scene you don’t want to write. don’t write it! “but it’s necessary!” you might say. no it isn’t. in one WIP i finished, what was stopping me was writing out a backstory that was so dark i simply didn’t have the heart to attempt it. and so i only vaguely alluded to the events of the past without explaining anything, and several people have commented that they enjoyed the subtlety of that. in other fics, i didn’t want to write the smut scene, so i downgraded M to T or T to G, then glossed over, faded to black, or straight-up took it out. in some cases, a moment that you think has to be rendered close in-scene can actually just be summarized. and even if that makes the fic worse, so what? if the alternative is not finishing it at all, then you might as well try.
the fic went in the wrong direction. move backward through the fic and find the moment things went awry. cut from that moment to the end and paste it in a new document. now you have a seed for a new fic idea. for example, one of my fics was leading into a threesome. as much as i love a good threesome, it wasn’t right for this fic, so i pasted several scenes into another doc and now if i want to, i have a premise for something new.
you want the fic to be something it isn’t. figure out what the thing wants to be and make it that thing. in my case, i wanted one fic to be steamy and angsty and deep, when actually it was a fluffy shallow genfic. considering i like everything to have Purpose and Deeper Meaning, it took me a long time to accept that sometimes it could just be silly and fun. and that’s kind of ridiculous, because as a reader, i enjoy silly fun fluff. i need to let myself write it sometimes too.
aspirations outweigh effort. here’s where the disappointment comes in, because in this scenario, you have to settle. this was really hard for me. i have a lot more followers and subscribers than i ever thought i would have, and i’m super grateful for that but the pressure does feel pretty high sometimes. to accept my own disappointment, i had to imagine specific readers i knew who would appreciate being able to read the fic in any state, and tell myself i’m posting it for them. in most of my WIPs, fixing this involved finding a HFN (happy for now) ending instead of aiming for HEA (happily ever after), and that meant concluding the fic with a romantic/sexual resolution without resolving the greater story arc.
used the concept for something else. depending on how long it’s been, people have probably forgotten. also, if someone likes one fic you’ve written, they are going to be thrilled to find another fic of the exact same flavor. in my case, the fics i’d written that were similar were nearly 3 years old anyway.
you moved on and haven’t come back to it yet. now is the time!
a piece was missing. honestly the best thing to do here is have a friend read the draft and then start talking about your problem. when you start talking about it, you’ll probably figure it out. or they’ll say/ask something that will help. if nothing at all is coming to you, though, you either have to just skip over it or roll the fic over to next year.
by the end of this step, you should have some kind of approach or experiment for tackling treatment. it’s probably worth it to mention that the things i initially came up with weren’t what ended up happening. but i needed to put all that thought into it just to approach finishing the fic anyway. again, nothing is wasted.
step 4: treatment
easiest step to explain, hardest to execute. it’s time to actually fix and finish the thing. i’m going to be referring to my drafting process here, which you can read about in full in last month’s newsletter.
first, i made 3 outlines:
how i initially intended to finish the fic (best case scenario)
the absolute easiest way to finish the fic (worst case scenario)
something in between (medium case scenario)
i nearly always chose outline 3, but i needed to write both 1 and 2 to figure out what sat in the middle.
once i had an idea of how to finish, i did the SFD process on the remaining scenes:
down draft (get the scenes down as simply, quickly, and messily as possible)
up draft (clean them up)
dental draft (check every tooth, by which i mean polish)
for several fics, by the time i got to this point i still very much wasn’t happy with the result, so i gave myself 5 days to sit on it. if i came up with a new prognosis in 5 days, i’d tackle it again. if i didn’t, i would go ahead and post. considering these were all fics i’d been sitting on for over a year, i had no eureka moments and ended up posting.
at the end of the time frame you’ve given yourself, every WIP should have a status. if the ball is rolling on a WIP, keep going. anything else you didn’t finish or get around to can be moved over to next year.
step 5: preparation
the final step is setting yourself up for next year’s WIP cleanout. here are some things you can do to set that up:
make a folder called “WIP cleanout” and resolve to put any fic in it that you set down for more than X days/weeks over the threshold word count you came up with in step 1 (or you might want to increase it to 25% instead of 10%). for example, anything over 4,700 words that i don’t work on at all for 2 months, i’d put in the cleanout folder. that way i don’t have to pressure myself to look at it again until this time next year, but if i get the inspiration to work on it before then, i can take it back out of the folder.
in the WIP cleanout folder, make a document and write out some notes for your future self: how did this year’s cleanout go? what are some methods you used for solving problems? how are you feeling about the whole thing? what are some tips you can offer? you can also make a writing log throughout the whole process and take notes as you go, similar to what i did with my 2023 WIP cleanout tag. keeping accountability threads are always really helpful for me.
schedule next year’s WIP cleanout and put it on your calendar. you can always reschedule if you have to.
at the end of the cleanout, no matter how well or poorly it went, reward yourself with something. maybe you let yourself start the shiny new idea you’ve been sitting on a while, or you buy something you’ve wanted for a long time, or you self-indulgently reread your favorite book.
congratulations! you’ve made it through this year’s WIP cleanout!
final results of my own cleanout
out of the 7 fics i intended to finish and post, i finished 6, posted 5 (the 6th is a multichap that i’ll post twice a week starting tonight), and am actively working on 1 which i’m hoping to finish within the next month or so, but that’s okay since the other multichap will take a long time to post.
total word count of all fics in the cleanout: 123,300
total word count written during the cleanout: 13,500
total hours spent on the cleanout: 50, not including however many hours it’s taken to write this tutorial
i feel pretty conflicted about the results. on one hand, i’m glad to have a clean(er) slate. (i still have 2 active fic WIPs, 1 original novel, and a nonfiction proposal i’m working on.) on the other, i’m still disappointed in a few of the fics i posted because i know they could have been better. but, you know, not everything can be my absolute best work all the time, and sometimes it’s best to just let stuff go. two fics i was really unhappy with have some very nice comments on them, and one fic i was actually pretty proud of barely got any traffic at all. once something is posted, though, it’s out of my hands, and the reader develops their own relationship with it. all i can do is keep writing.
coaching & editing (& WIP finishing) services
if your WIP list is too overwhelming to tackle on your own, i’m happy to help! i can:
help you decide what to finish and what to roll over
provide accountability to see your WIPs through
give feedback on what’s written and help brainstorm what’s not
offer cheerleading and support
for example, you can book an initial consultation with me, and before our call send me a list of your WIPs with a short synopsis of each, where you’re at with it, and what you’re struggling with. then, during our call, we can go through each one and figure out what to do with it. by the end, you’ll have a concrete action plan to complete by the next call.
i’ve helped many writers finish big projects from either a seed of an idea or some random spot they’re stuck. i’ve found that monthly accountability with someone invested in your work is a great way to meet your goals. some writers only want to talk about process with me—how things are going, places they’re struggling, what to work on next—and some writers want me to read and offer feedback on what they’re working on. if you’re not ready for critical feedback, i can also read your work and tell you what i think is working and where your strengths are as a writer.
also, i’m thrilled to report that i’ve now coached 5 writers through the creative writing MFA application process and they’ve all been accepted into fully funded programs! (fully funded means that tuition is waived and students receive a monthly stipend, usually for teaching english composition and/or creative writing.)
if you’re interested in starting a creative writing grad program by fall 2024, now is a good time to begin putting your materials together and working on your writing sample. i can help with the entire process—brainstorming and providing feedback on your sample, sharing what i know of certain programs and the overall expectations of grad school applications, helping with your statement of purpose and CV, and writing a letter of recommendation once we’ve worked together for a while.
for those who can’t do an MFA but want a similar (shorter) experience, i can help you apply for writing residencies, conferences, and workshops. and if you’re interested in publishing your work with small/indie presses or querying agents to publish with a major publisher, i can help with that too.
i’ve gone through all of these processes myself and know how hard they can be without guidance and support. if you’ve read my essay in OFIC, you know how deeply i feel about following your dreams and reaching for your highest ideals. i’ve found some success in my own journey and i’m eager to help others on theirs, no matter what that road looks like.
an initial consultation with me is an hour during which i’ll ask you questions about your writing life and your goals. if you’d like me to read your work ahead of time, i’ll provide my feedback as well. sometimes writers want improvement-oriented feedback, but sometimes they send me work that they just want my observations and compliments on. if you don’t have anything you want me to read, that’s fine too. i can guide the meeting; all you have to do is schedule the session and click the zoom link when it’s time.
i recently received a new testimonial from my lovely client, Shauna:
I started working with Beth a little over two years ago, and it has made all the difference in my writing life. I went from frustrated with my work and despairing of ever being a professional writer to writing every day and getting ready to query my second novel manuscript in as many years. Even more important than that: I love writing again. Instead of feeling anxious when I sit down to write, I feel curious and content and grateful.
Beth knows so much about writing. She can speak with equal insight about why a sentence is or isn't working, why a scene is falling flat, or why a character arc is landing wrong. With my most recent novel, she gently told me that my ending didn't fully take advantage of the premise, and gave me some exercises to help me brainstorm something better. The exercises worked: I wrote the new ending in a feverish state, cranking out 12,000 words in a single day and producing an ending that is probably the best thing I've ever written.
Beth is non-judgmental. She helps you figure out what you want your story to be, and works with you to achieve that. She knows how to give really helpful criticism without invalidating either the writer or the writing. The joy Beth takes in writing and in teaching, and in reading the things I send her, makes meeting with her one of the highlights of my month.
I don't know many people who are as good at what they do as Beth is at editing and coaching. In conclusion, if you're at all on the fence about whether or not to try a session with her, go ahead and give it a shot. I have never regretted it.
for more testimonials, check out my website. if you have any questions, feel free to email me at ekweeks@gmail.com. or if you’re ready, you can go ahead and book!