Genre: My main genre tendency is that I used to only write gen, now mostly gen and even if I set out to write a pairing chances are it'll vanish halfway through. *points at icon* Apart from that, I've been all over the place - I used to write angsty introspective fic and fluff, then some crack made its way into the picture and now my main fic tends to be snark (which is so a genre).
Lengthwise, I spent years and years writing double drabbles and shortfics around 500-1k and then it suddenly blew up. I can barely get a fic under 10k these days and the thing I'm currently working on is so long it's nothing short of ridiculous. It's technically a novelisation, but I'm 30k words in and barely past the introduction. My fic *now* is mostly one-shots at around 5-15k plus one or two fics that I mentally tag as sort of infinite plus a weird exception that is sort of prospectively middling - maybe 50k? I dunno.
I hit *both* "fun" and "agonising" for writing, because writing tends to be fun but I have somehow built up this humongous amount of anxiety around writing and panic that it all sucks while I'm writing and that's kind of agonising. Um. This may be why my writing output is reeaally low - my fic count for 2009 lies at one. When I do write, I generally write chronologically; I sometimes skip to the scene I really really really!!! want to write but generally regret it because filling in the blanks becomes next to impossible. This way I have an impetus to write the boring bit to get to the bit I'm excited about. I do all my outlining and plotting in my head, which is annoying when I then leave the fic hanging for a year and forget half of it... I also *used* to work out pretty much the entire story in my head and only write it down once I could almost rattle it off, but nowadays I start writing when my ideas are much rougher and see where the keyboard takes me. (This may also depend on genre, because for the snark fics this works /wonderfully/, for the angsty pretentious stuff I used to do not so much.)
Re: betas - I only rarely use betas, because my fandom habits are bizarre and the idea of trying to find a good beta for any fic I was writing makes me want to cry. Some of the fandoms I'm in don't even have the concept of a beta. When I do use betas, it's not so much for spelling/grammar errors - I'm extremely sensitive to spelling errors bar a few, this is one of the few situations where that's actually useful - as for checking overall consistencey and, yes, for cheerleading. .///. See the anxiety mentioned above; I'll often be so convinced that my writing sucks that I can't actually write the fic at all (especially for fics I really want to write - the more I think the fic could be awesomesauce or the more people want to see it, the harder it gets) or mentally blow up extremely minor wording issues into huge flaws that block me completely. Having someone tell me "actually, I don't see what you say is so horrible here, I think it's fine as it stands" or "I like this fic! I don't see why you keep saying your writing is the most awful thing known to man" can be really helpful in getting me out of that kind of funk.
To assuage the embarrassment of admitting I need cheerleaders, I'm beginning to think I need a beta to untangle my sentences. They seem to be getting longer and longer and more and more grammatically complex (and the parentheses, oh god) and I have a lot of trouble fixing them.
via metafandom
Genre: My main genre tendency is that I used to only write gen, now mostly gen and even if I set out to write a pairing chances are it'll vanish halfway through. *points at icon* Apart from that, I've been all over the place - I used to write angsty introspective fic and fluff, then some crack made its way into the picture and now my main fic tends to be snark (which is so a genre).
Lengthwise, I spent years and years writing double drabbles and shortfics around 500-1k and then it suddenly blew up. I can barely get a fic under 10k these days and the thing I'm currently working on is so long it's nothing short of ridiculous. It's technically a novelisation, but I'm 30k words in and barely past the introduction. My fic *now* is mostly one-shots at around 5-15k plus one or two fics that I mentally tag as sort of infinite plus a weird exception that is sort of prospectively middling - maybe 50k? I dunno.
I hit *both* "fun" and "agonising" for writing, because writing tends to be fun but I have somehow built up this humongous amount of anxiety around writing and panic that it all sucks while I'm writing and that's kind of agonising. Um. This may be why my writing output is reeaally low - my fic count for 2009 lies at one. When I do write, I generally write chronologically; I sometimes skip to the scene I really really really!!! want to write but generally regret it because filling in the blanks becomes next to impossible. This way I have an impetus to write the boring bit to get to the bit I'm excited about. I do all my outlining and plotting in my head, which is annoying when I then leave the fic hanging for a year and forget half of it... I also *used* to work out pretty much the entire story in my head and only write it down once I could almost rattle it off, but nowadays I start writing when my ideas are much rougher and see where the keyboard takes me. (This may also depend on genre, because for the snark fics this works /wonderfully/, for the angsty pretentious stuff I used to do not so much.)
Re: betas - I only rarely use betas, because my fandom habits are bizarre and the idea of trying to find a good beta for any fic I was writing makes me want to cry. Some of the fandoms I'm in don't even have the concept of a beta. When I do use betas, it's not so much for spelling/grammar errors - I'm extremely sensitive to spelling errors bar a few, this is one of the few situations where that's actually useful - as for checking overall consistencey and, yes, for cheerleading. .///. See the anxiety mentioned above; I'll often be so convinced that my writing sucks that I can't actually write the fic at all (especially for fics I really want to write - the more I think the fic could be awesomesauce or the more people want to see it, the harder it gets) or mentally blow up extremely minor wording issues into huge flaws that block me completely. Having someone tell me "actually, I don't see what you say is so horrible here, I think it's fine as it stands" or "I like this fic! I don't see why you keep saying your writing is the most awful thing known to man" can be really helpful in getting me out of that kind of funk.
To assuage the embarrassment of admitting I need cheerleaders, I'm beginning to think I need a beta to untangle my sentences. They seem to be getting longer and longer and more and more grammatically complex (and the parentheses, oh god) and I have a lot of trouble fixing them.