Snowflake day 2

[obstinatecondolement]

Challenge #2

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I've just reviewed the fandom goals that I posted for 2023 for day 12 of last week's Snowflake Challenge, and I did better on them than I expected to! I had a full success with 5/11, a qualified success with 8/11 (I gave myself a few cheats on three of them to make up lost ground), and made some progress on all of my goals, even the ones I consider failures overall.

Looking at what was easy, what I was just about able to pull out of the bag, and what I thought was going to be easy but then didn't manage, I'm going to make the following adjustments for my goals this year:

• Participate in three fandom exchanges.
• Create one treat for an exchange.
• Create three pinch hits.
• Beta read three fics.
• Bind three books (none of which have to be a new typeset, or my own typeset).
• Typeset three fics (they do not have to be the same ones I bind).
• Record, edit, and post at least one podfic a month (one Mulligan is allowed if I miss a month and then make it up by posting two in another month).
• Finish my podfic of Wedding is Destiny; and Hanging Likewise by sqbr.
• Complete and post two fanvids.
• Health and other circumstances permitting, attend two in-person conventions.
• Comment on at least one fanwork a week.
• Update Dreamwidth at least once a month.
• Write whatever self indulgent niche fic I want to without worrying about whether anyone else will care about it.

The last one is more qualitative, because I don't want to set a hard target of "Write one fic no one cares about a month" or something, but I do want to get more comfortable with just pursuing ideas that I am interested by and want to write without being worried about Alienating People Who Subscribed To My AO3 Profile For [X Fandom] or that no one will read it, or whatever.

In general, I've tried to (slightly) scale up the goals that I succeeded on last year, and scale down the ones that I didn't, or make them less specific so there's a wider scope for success. Most of my goals are less specific than they were last year, actually, but I think that this is good because it means I might try more things. I've also dropped a couple of goals that I think are sort of done, or that I'm doing okay on without tracking them/setting a goal for them.

Comments

[delphi]

Exactly! It's creative expression, not work or some kind of marketing plan. It makes me really happy as a reader when people are out there writing what interests and excites them, even when it's not something I personally vibe with. It's what makes fandom so great.

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah, it feels like the gig culture grindset "make your hobbies into a side hustle" thing has now fully infiltrated completely unmonetisable hobbies where people are trying to optimise posting times and write to "market" and it's like... maybe I should try not to do that, because it's not the point and it's making things less fun. Obviously people have always wanted clout and social capital in fan spaces that, assuming you weren't grifting, didn't translate into real-world prestige or income,* but I think it's gotten really noticeably worse in the last 10 or so years.

And, again, I am not built for making fanworks that I do not on any level care about, so why try to compete with stuff that is just inevitably going to be more read/commented on/kudosed/praised because it's for a big fandom or a bigger ship or has the right constellation of tropes or got recced by the right people? It doesn't matter! I'm doing all of this for fun in my spare time! If other people like it then that's nice, but I don't want the lack of a nice optional extra to be, itself, a painful experience that diminishes the fun of writing stuff I like.

*Or at least didn't do so in a direct or obvious way. Some people did and do incidentally gain skills and connections in fandom that they then used to get career opportunities and improve their circumstances in a more concrete way than the rosy glow of people liking their fan fiction, but I think that it wasn't usually what people who were clout chasing were trying to do and they more likely just wanted the admiration and praise.

[delphi]

Very true. It feels like there was a collision between the worst practical needs of living in a gig economy and the worst parts of being online in an ad revenue algorithm-driven age. Nothing beats real creative leisure time and the chance to work on and share things that interest and excite you.

I'm working on something right now where I'm thinking, "Almost no one is going to click on this, and most of the people who do are going to click away because it's a combination of very specific interests and a very specific format," but I'm having so much fun writing it, and if anything, being beholden to no one is making a much more freeing experience.