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Writing becomes you
I finished writing The Way Down!
I have all these things I want to say about endings to stories, but this post is specifically about The Way Down, what it is and why I wrote it. I think the process of writing is fascinating; the process of writing this story in particular is fascinating to me. For the few people in the world reading that fic, there are slight spoilers for it, but nothing big. Did I mention it has no plot? For everyone else, I have no idea whether this will be interesting to you. But I wanted to say it.
I started writing The Way Down in 2007. I got into Harry/Draco at the end of 2006. I still don't know why; I literally woke up one afternoon (I had been napping; there was drool in my mouth) and thought, "I want that." So I read a whole whole lot of those fics and many were good and I had a nice time.
I had a million ideas for my own fics that I would like to write, and started many of them. One of the big ones was this idea for porn, that dealt with D/s dynamics and the power/control dynamics of the characters. It was a rather painful concept, and I had a lot of trouble writing it.
But I kept trying, starting over and over again. Eventually I decided that my problem was I kept trying to start it in the middle of the relationship between Draco and Harry. There was this whole background of what the relationship was in my head, but whenever I started writing the fic, I would take that as given, and begin where the porn begun. So, in order to write the porn, I decided I needed to write the back story.
Because it was back story, and because I wasn't sure I'd even use it for anything except getting straight what the relationship dynamic was like in my head, it was fairly easy to write. It was all summary, sometimes exploding into scenes, sometimes time passing very quickly. I didn't have to worry about there being a plot or anything like that; I was just trying to get somewhere. Each day or night I came back to it, I could just keep going without looking at the rest of it, because it just didn't matter. It was like writing a list of things that needed to happen in order for something else to happen. Even when it turned out to be 40K words, I just thought of it as back story.
Then I finally wrote up to where Harry/Draco were having sex. This was the beginning of their relationship, where the sex is nice, and satisfying some urges but not other, secret ones that Draco is ashamed to admit to, and Harry absolutely refuses to contemplate. I stopped there, and just couldn't write any more.
I stopped writing it in June of 2007. The fucked up D/s porn was in the back of my mind as, "Oh yeah, that story I wanted to write", but for a while I even forgot I'd written 40K worth of back story for it. I found it in 2008, and thought, "I really should finish this," and didn't. I started yet another version of the porny parts in 2009. When I looked at it in 2010, I was surprised I hadn't written more to the back story since 2007. I thought I'd been working on it here and there for the past three years, but apparently I'd just left it to stagnate.
I read the back story over again, and liked it. Then I realized it really wasn't a back story to the D/s porn that I wanted to write. It was its own story, and I really should just try to finish that story instead of trying to get to somewhere else with it. So I erased the sex at the end and tried to think of how it should end.
At the end of 2010, I was changing things around, shuffling here and there. It read very oddly because of the way I had written it. There's a progression in the fic: Malfoy drops by, Harry starts accepting his presence, slowly they become friends, then slowly there's more. The "slowly they become friends" and "slowly there's more" was all there, but not the part where Harry starts accepting Malfoy's presence. Basically, Malfoy's just all the sudden always in Harry's hair and they have to start being friend because what else are they going to do? for no reason.
So I added the first 10,000 words to show how Harry needs Malfoy in his life, with suggestions of Malfoy needing Harry for reasons of his own. I added lots of other scenes to slow down time, and reduce the summary aspect, though there's still lots and lots of that. This is the fic that became The Way Down.
Then I changed a really big part towards the end so that there was a climax. In the old version there wasn't a climax because the climax was meant to be all the stuff that came after--the D/s porny bits. But in this version, there wasn't going to be the D/s relationship stuff. There was going to be stuff about Harry being repressed, and Draco being repressed, but it was going to be about friendship and romance rather than sex.
So, once that was changed, I went to write the ending . . . and realized what the story was actually about. It still shocks me that I didn't realize it before.
I tend to be pretty self-aware. I'm a big navel-gazer and think about myself a lot. I think about what I'm thinking a lot; my favorite thing is thinking about me thinking about me thinking. I also tend to think about what I'm writing a lot. I rather too purposely put in themes. I insert things with which I am concerned, things that I want to discuss, things I want to say but might not otherwise know how. I do this consciously, and have always done. When I was 14 I started writing in a journal; it was mostly fannish meta, before I knew what fandom was. I think it helped to keep me from going mad, and it has influenced my fiction writing for over a decade.
But I started writing The Way Down without any such agenda, because the idea was to write porn, and I was just writing the back story in order to get somewhere, not in order to say something. Because of that, I feel like The Way Down is more of an explosion of my id than most other things I've written that aren't porn. With porn, I'm perfectly aware I'm exploding id. With other things, I tend to be far to conscious and egotistic, if you will. I know what I'm doing.
I didn't know what I was doing with The Way Down when I started writing it in 2007, and to me, it really really shows. This fic is basically rendition of what my life was in that year, minus a Draco Malfoy (though I really wanted one).
2007 was the worst year of my life. That's not saying much, because I am very lucky. I have a great family and people who love me and enough to eat and means to satisfy many of my other less necessary desires. After college in 2005, I felt pretty lost. I only ever wanted to be a writer, but I hadn't published any novels like I'd planned, and I didn't really want to do anything else. My parents suggested I stay home and try to write, so I did.
This proved to be a bad idea. I was paralyzed whenever I tried to write anything original. This shamed me, since I'd always prided myself on the idea that I was going to be independent. Furthermore my parents had spent the money to send me to a fancy school, and my impression was that they expected me to be independent too. I felt ashamed for living off them and then not doing what I said I would do--but somehow I just couldn't.
In 2005 I found lj and that pretty much distracted me with fannish obsession. But in 2006, I started realizing I wasn't doing anything. In 2007, I had a job and got laid off, and began to realize I was not doing well. I slept all the time, couldn't make myself go out and see anyone, couldn't bring myself to apply for a new job, worried all the time, and couldn't even really write any fannish stuff. Furthermore, because I knew all the things I should be doing, but couldn't do them, and didn't know why, I felt like I couldn't even talk about it.
The Way Down is about a boy who can't leave his own house. He has a problem, which I didn't name when I wrote in 2007, but called the "monster in Harry's chest" (from canon) when I edited at the end of 2010. This problem, the monster, makes it so Harry doesn't want to go out and see anyone, doesn't have a job, worries all the time, you get the picture.
The Way Down is about someone learning to live again. Basically, Draco comes and lures him out and helps him do normal things like go to the grocery story. There are literally tens of thousands of words about hanging out with friends, and learning new places, and seeing new things, little bits at a time--the most normal, mundane, prosaic things you can possibly imagine, all lovingly rendered as though they are Triumphs Of Humanity. Surely it's visible how cathartic this must have been for me at the time.
However, because the climax of the story I was writing then was to come in another part I never wrote, Harry wasn't really facing his monster in this part of the story. What Harry's doing as Draco teaches him to live again is basically, repress repress repress.
I didn't consciously realize this when I started working on this at the end of 2010. But when I went to go put in that climax, what I did was make it so that finally the repression wasn't working. Everything boils to the surface, but because he is healthy enough now and can do so, Harry asks for help, instead of slowly destroying himself.
What I was left with at the beginning of this year was the problem of how to end this story. I realized the monster was the villain of the piece, and the natural end of the fic would be monster slaying, just like any other story. But in order to talk about defeating the monster, I had to figure out what the monster was. It wasn't something I'd actually ever thought about before.
The way I had set up the climax, Harry goes to Malfoy for help. But how could Draco Malfoy help Harry defeat his monster? And before I knew what I was writing, Draco was telling Harry to see a psychiatrist.
There are about 8 endings to The Way Down, and all of them are variations on Harry going to a counselor, a Healer, and possibly taking medications, and talking through his problems, and telling the truth to his friends, and going back to all the things he fucked up before and fixing them, and facing everything, and getting Draco to talk about his own problems, and this whole fun loving fest of mental health. Because that's really how this story ends. (Future chapters have warnings about this story dealing with mental health issues.)
I'm really confused about the fact that this is the ending that I feel is right for this fic. I'm confused about the fact that this is what I want to see--people going to doctors and talking about their problems and allowing people to help them. Of course that's what I want to see irl, and it's what I want to see sometimes in fiction, too, but it's very . . . er . . . sort of text book happy ending for someone with a mental disorder. That is, it's not like everyone is "cured" in the end or anything, but it does kind of have the feel of, "try really hard to address your problems in as healthy a way as possible, and you'll be happy!" which isn't true. But I really believe strongly in trying to address your problems in a healthy way, and that sometimes the healthiest way is to get help, because you can't do it on your own.
It makes me wonder whether I'm in that place now. Whether I just went repress repress repress with all the problems I was having, and whether this fic means I'm finally able to face them. Does it mean I should be seeing counselors and the like? Does it mean I'm past the point where I need to? Or does it mean I just really wanted to finish the fic, and this is the only ending that makes sense in light of where I was in 2007?
I'm definitely not cured, or exactly happy. I keep waffling from the idea that I'm doing better than I ever have since highschool, and that I'm terribly depressed--there are a whole bunch of things going on right now in my life that upset me, and I wonder if I'm maybe just going repress repress repress and burying myself in fandom the way I did after I got out of college. That was what caused a lot of the problems in the first place--not fandom in particular, but using other things to distract myself from what I really wanted.
But on that note, finishing things is the source of one of my biggest problems. I can't finish anything, and it makes it so I don't post fic, and then I don't talk about fic, and then I don't participate in fandom like I want, and then I feel bitter and left out, and few people irl care to talk about the theoretical things many fans like to talk about, and then I'm lonely. Also, I can't finish original writing which means the whole shame thing from before is still there, but now I have a good job and even like it, so that's a little less, though it still rankles that I'm not working toward my Ultimate Goal In Life. But I've finished The Way Down, and have a whole plan to finish lots of other things, and maybe it will lead to finishing original things, and maybe that way lies mental health.
The Way Down is not a good story. It really does have no plot, it really is an explosion of id, it really is just a summary--in some ways, a summary of a girl dealing with things like anxiety and depression and the inability to talk about things she's feeling when she's actually feeling them, and the wish-fulfillment of someone who completely gets it and helps you change. It's only castles burning, I think. But I think I've come around.
(Another title idea was "Someone Who's Turning", which I eventually nixed because I was too embarrassed to use such an awesome song for something that is not in essence quality. But that's definitely the way I feel about it.)
I have all these things I want to say about endings to stories, but this post is specifically about The Way Down, what it is and why I wrote it. I think the process of writing is fascinating; the process of writing this story in particular is fascinating to me. For the few people in the world reading that fic, there are slight spoilers for it, but nothing big. Did I mention it has no plot? For everyone else, I have no idea whether this will be interesting to you. But I wanted to say it.
I started writing The Way Down in 2007. I got into Harry/Draco at the end of 2006. I still don't know why; I literally woke up one afternoon (I had been napping; there was drool in my mouth) and thought, "I want that." So I read a whole whole lot of those fics and many were good and I had a nice time.
I had a million ideas for my own fics that I would like to write, and started many of them. One of the big ones was this idea for porn, that dealt with D/s dynamics and the power/control dynamics of the characters. It was a rather painful concept, and I had a lot of trouble writing it.
But I kept trying, starting over and over again. Eventually I decided that my problem was I kept trying to start it in the middle of the relationship between Draco and Harry. There was this whole background of what the relationship was in my head, but whenever I started writing the fic, I would take that as given, and begin where the porn begun. So, in order to write the porn, I decided I needed to write the back story.
Because it was back story, and because I wasn't sure I'd even use it for anything except getting straight what the relationship dynamic was like in my head, it was fairly easy to write. It was all summary, sometimes exploding into scenes, sometimes time passing very quickly. I didn't have to worry about there being a plot or anything like that; I was just trying to get somewhere. Each day or night I came back to it, I could just keep going without looking at the rest of it, because it just didn't matter. It was like writing a list of things that needed to happen in order for something else to happen. Even when it turned out to be 40K words, I just thought of it as back story.
Then I finally wrote up to where Harry/Draco were having sex. This was the beginning of their relationship, where the sex is nice, and satisfying some urges but not other, secret ones that Draco is ashamed to admit to, and Harry absolutely refuses to contemplate. I stopped there, and just couldn't write any more.
I stopped writing it in June of 2007. The fucked up D/s porn was in the back of my mind as, "Oh yeah, that story I wanted to write", but for a while I even forgot I'd written 40K worth of back story for it. I found it in 2008, and thought, "I really should finish this," and didn't. I started yet another version of the porny parts in 2009. When I looked at it in 2010, I was surprised I hadn't written more to the back story since 2007. I thought I'd been working on it here and there for the past three years, but apparently I'd just left it to stagnate.
I read the back story over again, and liked it. Then I realized it really wasn't a back story to the D/s porn that I wanted to write. It was its own story, and I really should just try to finish that story instead of trying to get to somewhere else with it. So I erased the sex at the end and tried to think of how it should end.
At the end of 2010, I was changing things around, shuffling here and there. It read very oddly because of the way I had written it. There's a progression in the fic: Malfoy drops by, Harry starts accepting his presence, slowly they become friends, then slowly there's more. The "slowly they become friends" and "slowly there's more" was all there, but not the part where Harry starts accepting Malfoy's presence. Basically, Malfoy's just all the sudden always in Harry's hair and they have to start being friend because what else are they going to do? for no reason.
So I added the first 10,000 words to show how Harry needs Malfoy in his life, with suggestions of Malfoy needing Harry for reasons of his own. I added lots of other scenes to slow down time, and reduce the summary aspect, though there's still lots and lots of that. This is the fic that became The Way Down.
Then I changed a really big part towards the end so that there was a climax. In the old version there wasn't a climax because the climax was meant to be all the stuff that came after--the D/s porny bits. But in this version, there wasn't going to be the D/s relationship stuff. There was going to be stuff about Harry being repressed, and Draco being repressed, but it was going to be about friendship and romance rather than sex.
So, once that was changed, I went to write the ending . . . and realized what the story was actually about. It still shocks me that I didn't realize it before.
I tend to be pretty self-aware. I'm a big navel-gazer and think about myself a lot. I think about what I'm thinking a lot; my favorite thing is thinking about me thinking about me thinking. I also tend to think about what I'm writing a lot. I rather too purposely put in themes. I insert things with which I am concerned, things that I want to discuss, things I want to say but might not otherwise know how. I do this consciously, and have always done. When I was 14 I started writing in a journal; it was mostly fannish meta, before I knew what fandom was. I think it helped to keep me from going mad, and it has influenced my fiction writing for over a decade.
But I started writing The Way Down without any such agenda, because the idea was to write porn, and I was just writing the back story in order to get somewhere, not in order to say something. Because of that, I feel like The Way Down is more of an explosion of my id than most other things I've written that aren't porn. With porn, I'm perfectly aware I'm exploding id. With other things, I tend to be far to conscious and egotistic, if you will. I know what I'm doing.
I didn't know what I was doing with The Way Down when I started writing it in 2007, and to me, it really really shows. This fic is basically rendition of what my life was in that year, minus a Draco Malfoy (though I really wanted one).
2007 was the worst year of my life. That's not saying much, because I am very lucky. I have a great family and people who love me and enough to eat and means to satisfy many of my other less necessary desires. After college in 2005, I felt pretty lost. I only ever wanted to be a writer, but I hadn't published any novels like I'd planned, and I didn't really want to do anything else. My parents suggested I stay home and try to write, so I did.
This proved to be a bad idea. I was paralyzed whenever I tried to write anything original. This shamed me, since I'd always prided myself on the idea that I was going to be independent. Furthermore my parents had spent the money to send me to a fancy school, and my impression was that they expected me to be independent too. I felt ashamed for living off them and then not doing what I said I would do--but somehow I just couldn't.
In 2005 I found lj and that pretty much distracted me with fannish obsession. But in 2006, I started realizing I wasn't doing anything. In 2007, I had a job and got laid off, and began to realize I was not doing well. I slept all the time, couldn't make myself go out and see anyone, couldn't bring myself to apply for a new job, worried all the time, and couldn't even really write any fannish stuff. Furthermore, because I knew all the things I should be doing, but couldn't do them, and didn't know why, I felt like I couldn't even talk about it.
The Way Down is about a boy who can't leave his own house. He has a problem, which I didn't name when I wrote in 2007, but called the "monster in Harry's chest" (from canon) when I edited at the end of 2010. This problem, the monster, makes it so Harry doesn't want to go out and see anyone, doesn't have a job, worries all the time, you get the picture.
The Way Down is about someone learning to live again. Basically, Draco comes and lures him out and helps him do normal things like go to the grocery story. There are literally tens of thousands of words about hanging out with friends, and learning new places, and seeing new things, little bits at a time--the most normal, mundane, prosaic things you can possibly imagine, all lovingly rendered as though they are Triumphs Of Humanity. Surely it's visible how cathartic this must have been for me at the time.
However, because the climax of the story I was writing then was to come in another part I never wrote, Harry wasn't really facing his monster in this part of the story. What Harry's doing as Draco teaches him to live again is basically, repress repress repress.
I didn't consciously realize this when I started working on this at the end of 2010. But when I went to go put in that climax, what I did was make it so that finally the repression wasn't working. Everything boils to the surface, but because he is healthy enough now and can do so, Harry asks for help, instead of slowly destroying himself.
What I was left with at the beginning of this year was the problem of how to end this story. I realized the monster was the villain of the piece, and the natural end of the fic would be monster slaying, just like any other story. But in order to talk about defeating the monster, I had to figure out what the monster was. It wasn't something I'd actually ever thought about before.
The way I had set up the climax, Harry goes to Malfoy for help. But how could Draco Malfoy help Harry defeat his monster? And before I knew what I was writing, Draco was telling Harry to see a psychiatrist.
There are about 8 endings to The Way Down, and all of them are variations on Harry going to a counselor, a Healer, and possibly taking medications, and talking through his problems, and telling the truth to his friends, and going back to all the things he fucked up before and fixing them, and facing everything, and getting Draco to talk about his own problems, and this whole fun loving fest of mental health. Because that's really how this story ends. (Future chapters have warnings about this story dealing with mental health issues.)
I'm really confused about the fact that this is the ending that I feel is right for this fic. I'm confused about the fact that this is what I want to see--people going to doctors and talking about their problems and allowing people to help them. Of course that's what I want to see irl, and it's what I want to see sometimes in fiction, too, but it's very . . . er . . . sort of text book happy ending for someone with a mental disorder. That is, it's not like everyone is "cured" in the end or anything, but it does kind of have the feel of, "try really hard to address your problems in as healthy a way as possible, and you'll be happy!" which isn't true. But I really believe strongly in trying to address your problems in a healthy way, and that sometimes the healthiest way is to get help, because you can't do it on your own.
It makes me wonder whether I'm in that place now. Whether I just went repress repress repress with all the problems I was having, and whether this fic means I'm finally able to face them. Does it mean I should be seeing counselors and the like? Does it mean I'm past the point where I need to? Or does it mean I just really wanted to finish the fic, and this is the only ending that makes sense in light of where I was in 2007?
I'm definitely not cured, or exactly happy. I keep waffling from the idea that I'm doing better than I ever have since highschool, and that I'm terribly depressed--there are a whole bunch of things going on right now in my life that upset me, and I wonder if I'm maybe just going repress repress repress and burying myself in fandom the way I did after I got out of college. That was what caused a lot of the problems in the first place--not fandom in particular, but using other things to distract myself from what I really wanted.
But on that note, finishing things is the source of one of my biggest problems. I can't finish anything, and it makes it so I don't post fic, and then I don't talk about fic, and then I don't participate in fandom like I want, and then I feel bitter and left out, and few people irl care to talk about the theoretical things many fans like to talk about, and then I'm lonely. Also, I can't finish original writing which means the whole shame thing from before is still there, but now I have a good job and even like it, so that's a little less, though it still rankles that I'm not working toward my Ultimate Goal In Life. But I've finished The Way Down, and have a whole plan to finish lots of other things, and maybe it will lead to finishing original things, and maybe that way lies mental health.
The Way Down is not a good story. It really does have no plot, it really is an explosion of id, it really is just a summary--in some ways, a summary of a girl dealing with things like anxiety and depression and the inability to talk about things she's feeling when she's actually feeling them, and the wish-fulfillment of someone who completely gets it and helps you change. It's only castles burning, I think. But I think I've come around.
(Another title idea was "Someone Who's Turning", which I eventually nixed because I was too embarrassed to use such an awesome song for something that is not in essence quality. But that's definitely the way I feel about it.)
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But I find I talk about the year 2007 quite a lot to people who seem interested in listening, because it was not that bad in the scheme of what people suffer, I learned so much from it, I feel like it made me stronger, and I hope that my experience of it might help other people.
If you ever want to talk, you have my email address, and I'm really good at listening.
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The thing is, I don't think fanfic is necessary to participate in fandom, but I feel like it is. And I have the same issues with meta/discussion that I do with fanfic anyway, so there ya go.
What's your Ultimate Goal? I always kind of imagined yours was to be amazingly smart and awesome and full of joy, and you always seem to succeed at that. And then you go and surprise me by being human after all. ((hugs))
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It could be bunnies.
I don't know. languagebooksinstructionaltechnologycriticismpromotionteachinglearningmediaoutreachaccessibility. Of some sort. My sister's known she was going to be a doctor since age thirteen. I am so damned proud of her, but also not a little envious.
O hai I like hugs. *glomp!*
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But not witches.
languagebooksinstructionaltechnologycriticismpromotionteachinglearningmediaoutreachaccessibility
That's a lofty goal. ;o)
It *is* nice to know what I want. Getting there . . .
I'm not a very hugging person. But sometimes it's just necessary!
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I only do these things because you tell me too, you know. (I'm reading Captive Prince. I have to tell myself what you said about it because ordinarily I would have stopped reading by now. But you'll recall I had to start mistful's fics like, I don't know, like 8 times before I finally got into it.)
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Oh Captive Prince. It does start out completely WTF. I think I had the same reaction you did, back when it first crossed my radar: dipped in, backpedaled quickly. Later,
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*I assumed there was more to him, but freece also does a very nice job of suggesting there's more to him, without at all suggesting he's just a complete woobie beneath a hard shell. She did this right from the beginning. But it just sort of made me want to skip to the part where we start seeing layers underneath. However, now that strong hints have been made about childhood incestual rape I feel better. omg that sounds terrible! I just mean that it's easier to like someone who has strong reasons for being fucked up.
In other news, I did not see the password on the post! Oops. This makes me wonder if I've been missing out on other vids; I see so many recs for ones that are password protected, and then I just click away.
In other other news, I think I mentioned it before, but I do love the WIP culture, where people talk about What Is Going On and Will Happen Next etc. I think I told you this story, but I pretty much got kicked out of the fanfic portion of Republic of Pemberley for doing that! It's the serial format, which is only alive these days in some tv shows (and, obviously fanfic).
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In the meantime, I have nothing of use to offer. I love the way that you think so much about your stories and structure them, it makes them so rich even if they're plot-less porn (or so you think). The meta, she is drawing me in. I'm also curious about that explosion of id. I can appreciate that particular fear induced, locked in place kind of existence. I did it for quite a while and until very recently.
Anyway, absolutely nothing useful to add. Sorry about that.
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how to execute the kind of story that you are writing.
I'm not sure The Way Down should be seen as a lesson in how to execute such a thing? I mean, if one were to do it well. As I said in this post, the nature of this story, how personal it is and how closely it reflects my real life, happened by accident. I think if I had consciously set out to do this, it would be a better story, though it would perhaps ring less true. You're welcome to read it, just don't expect great literature, or anything :o)
absolutely nothing useful to add. Sorry about that.
I think what you have to say is almost always useful, L. It either makes me think or gives me joy, and these are two of the most important things in life, I feel. I am glad you don't feel locked in place any more.
Also: hi! How are you? I miss you!