so this is what sleep feels like when you aren't getting it

Between work and insomnia, I think TMI is about to reach epic levels of wtf.

It occurs to me, belatedly, to be thankful I am a.) not part of any famous writing partnership or b.) famous at all, due to my sudden and really uncomfortable flashbacks to losing my two writing partners early on in fandom. And thankful before God and man that LJ, diaryland, and online blogging had not reached fandom yet, because I'm imagining my twenty-something year old self having access to a blogging platform, an audience, several CDs of Sarah McLachlan, and a sense of righteous wrongness. Private then, thank God.

svmadelyn is the only one I ever really talked to about it, and even then, it was weirdly complicated: I couldn't just say "there were these people I wrote with" because God knows, I don't like simple and I am not exactly the minimizing type; it was "they wrote with me and then left and I want to burn our wips that we never finished; instead I zip filed everything and pretend it never happened." Cause I'm classy like that.

I mean, there is a moment when you have to sit back and think to yourself, you really need to let this go.



I've cowritten with a lot of people, but only two were partners for more than a fic or two; after 2001, I never made the mistake of even trying (maybe Pru if we weren't, well, us, but luckily Pru and I went to separate fandoms or she'd probably be my third and possibly my most bitter; she was the best I ever wrote with and I'm guessing I would have taken that as well as can be expected, which is not well at all and with an LJ to take it not-well publicly. Christ, I could have nightmares imagining that. I might now that I can see it unspool in my head. Oh badness).

It was actually really bizarre to remember that; my strongest fannish memories are memorialized here, and the time pre-2002 is all very indistinct now, but the first time, I was mad for months, I changed fandoms and walked away from a WIP that no, I had no excuse not to finish, but I was mad and that story represented all of it. I don't even re-read it and I just--and I mean this--realized why I don't even like looking at it, and it's not the guilt. It's the frustration.

The first time was like losing half my creativity and all the motivation in the world; I had to get out of the fandom because the investment was so huge with her that there wasn't anything left. It's the only fandom I never went back to, either, not directly. We didn't write everything together, and a lot wasn't even direct line-level cowriting, but I could send her anything and she told me what she thought, fixed it, improved it; she improved me beyond words, but she also made me confident about trying anything, because it didn't matter what it was, she'd read it and tell me what she thought and she'd send me things and you see where this is going. And God she was good, better than I was then, clean and sharp and gorgeous prose.

The second time was worse and better; our fandoms grew apart, but we were still friends, and so it dragged it out. It was compounded by the fact that we were close and when it petered out, I a.) was a fandom away from where we'd been together and b.) Te was there and Te was God and pretty much where the entirety of my fannish attention was focused, so I didn't have the bad fandom associations and could blow it off (never speak of it again) and sulk in private and boy, did I sulk.

I still sulk about it, in this weird scorned-woman way that's too self-aware to really enjoy all that much; trust me when I say, it is hard to really feel comfortable with your own neurosis when you can't even remember the last time you wrote with anyone. But I do remember how I felt, and how my work opened up with that, and how it felt giddy-joy to have someone to constantly bounce off of and it's been years--I mean, years and I still remember that and stare at the zip files and wonder if I'll ever open them again.



If there is a happy Beatles fic out there without foreshadowing, I think it is hidden somewhere and I will not find it until I have read another hundred fic that make me want to get really stoned and really drunk. I have to stop reading this; I'm seriously craving a joint and I really never got into that. And I only drink once a year. And they're very girly drinks, ask anyone.

I am thinking it would probably help, on a sideline, if work would back off long enough for me to breathe. I need retail therapy. Luckily, Christmas is obliging that nicely.