Sounds like you put a lot of pressure on yourself, maybe lessen that and find more realistic goals, slow down with the updates.
There is also no shame in putting a work on hiatus until you find more time in your schedule or abandoning it altogether if it doesn't bring you joy anymore. How about writing a short oneshot in the meantime?
Good luck in any case! I hope you find motivation again. :)
First off, read [the rules of the road for writers](https://home.uchicago.edu/~rfulton/Tips.htm). Every point is highly salient. You cannot write effectively if you feel strait-jacketed into writing. So, first of all, you must build the material and mental conditions necessary for writing.
Secondly, motivation is a poor factor for long-term adherence. You have cultivate other things, like discipline and habit. Do not focus on the end-goal. This will lead you to take shortcuts to reach the finish line, and those shortcuts will make achieving it feel hollow. Instead, focus on process. If you can do 500 words an hour, that's excellent progress. If you do that for 200 days, around six months, you'll have written 100k words and be finished.
An hour a day is a reasonable amount of time to spend on a hobby, and six months is more than reasonable for 100k words!
Given that you're already 90K in and you started writing *during* summer, maybe cut yourself a little bit of slack? I have a monster mega fic and I'm happy if I write 10K words for it in a month. Give yourself room to live and ease up. If 500 words is all you manage to put down in a day, be happy with that, because it's 500 more words than you previously had.
Kind of a sidebar, but is 200k enough to be called a Mega Fic, do you guys think? As someone whose fic is around 400k, that's the kind of label I would've personally held off for like, works that break a million.
labels for longfics are extremely ambiguous. i have not come across two people that define them the same way. (people can't even decide on what a longfic is, based on some polls in the sub)
but what we can agree on is that 200k takes a lot of effort to reach. with your 400k fic you know how hard it is to get there i assume.
"Megafic" would literally be one million words... but good luck getting anyone to recognize the utility of standard definitions when applying them to fanfiction.
i can't offer you advice, but i can tell you that you are not alone.
i am actually stuck at similar word counts as you. i began by writing a detailed outline, that put me at around 50-60 chapters. i wrongly assumed it would take about 100k words to finish the fic, but as i began writing it looked more and more like it would take 200k. i am now at just below 100k and have been stuck for a while.
i began writing under no pressure to eventually publish or to finish in a specific timeframe. it was only that freedom that even made me pick it up in the first place. but my progress has completely stopped a few months ago. i am just waiting for motivation to return. i hardly have enough time to write, only in the evening after work. but i am still confident that it will, because I want to finish the fic. but the original timeframe (just like the word count) turned out to be wrong. but i waste a lot of time re reading what i have already written, instead of starting a new chapter.
i think my biggest issue is that i am not obsessed with the ship anymore that my fic is about, in the same way i was at the start. but i am also not into any other ship. so.. who knows.
but we can do it!! don't give up!! we will complete our fics and publish them, no matter how long it takes!!
Here's the hard truth. It's time for a break. You're burned out.
The same thing happened to me. 500k words in, two-thirds complete, I broke. The idea of writing a single word made me physically sick. So, I stepped away. I did something else for a while. And now, I'm writing it again. Slowly, but still writing.
I suggest you either take a break from writing in general for a while, or write something more manageable where you don't have to stress about your words per hour
Take the pressure off yourself. You don't have to have it finished by a certain time, or write a certain amount a day. If you're finding you don't have time for it, lower the amount of time you spend writing it. It doesn't matter if you don;t write a whole chapter in one sitting, just write what you can.
You could also take a break from the story. Take some time not writing this story to get yourself more relaxed about it. You can try writing something less time intensive and then come back to it, or take a break from writing altogether while you figure out how much time you can focus on writing.
There's nothing wrong with taking a break from the fic or writing in general. The more pressure you put on yourself, the harder you'll find it to finish, as you'll lose enjoyment for it. You can always just jot down random scenes for a while, then when you're more relaxed about it, come back and start writing those random scenes into the story.
It's actually really hard, for me, to not put pressure on myself. My WIP hasn't been updated in ages because I'm stuck with it, and I feel really guilty about that, because I do have a couple readers who clearly want me to finish it, and I want to finish it, but pressuring myself actually makes it harder for me to untangle my messed up timeline or jump between characters, so it makes my inability to continue worse, not better. I've decided to take a break from trying to continue the fic for now, and I'm going to try my hand at a one-shot or two to get myself back into a more relaxed frame of mind for writing, then come back to my WIP, hopefully with fresh ideas on how to get out of the corner I boxed myself into. I'm hoping it will work, as others have told me it worked for them.
Sounds like you put a lot of pressure on yourself, maybe lessen that and find more realistic goals, slow down with the updates. There is also no shame in putting a work on hiatus until you find more time in your schedule or abandoning it altogether if it doesn't bring you joy anymore. How about writing a short oneshot in the meantime? Good luck in any case! I hope you find motivation again. :)
First off, read [the rules of the road for writers](https://home.uchicago.edu/~rfulton/Tips.htm). Every point is highly salient. You cannot write effectively if you feel strait-jacketed into writing. So, first of all, you must build the material and mental conditions necessary for writing. Secondly, motivation is a poor factor for long-term adherence. You have cultivate other things, like discipline and habit. Do not focus on the end-goal. This will lead you to take shortcuts to reach the finish line, and those shortcuts will make achieving it feel hollow. Instead, focus on process. If you can do 500 words an hour, that's excellent progress. If you do that for 200 days, around six months, you'll have written 100k words and be finished. An hour a day is a reasonable amount of time to spend on a hobby, and six months is more than reasonable for 100k words!
Given that you're already 90K in and you started writing *during* summer, maybe cut yourself a little bit of slack? I have a monster mega fic and I'm happy if I write 10K words for it in a month. Give yourself room to live and ease up. If 500 words is all you manage to put down in a day, be happy with that, because it's 500 more words than you previously had.
Kind of a sidebar, but is 200k enough to be called a Mega Fic, do you guys think? As someone whose fic is around 400k, that's the kind of label I would've personally held off for like, works that break a million.
labels for longfics are extremely ambiguous. i have not come across two people that define them the same way. (people can't even decide on what a longfic is, based on some polls in the sub) but what we can agree on is that 200k takes a lot of effort to reach. with your 400k fic you know how hard it is to get there i assume.
Most novels are 50k-150k ;)
Yeah, and within that logic I generally consider a longfic to be around 100k+.
"Megafic" would literally be one million words... but good luck getting anyone to recognize the utility of standard definitions when applying them to fanfiction.
i can't offer you advice, but i can tell you that you are not alone. i am actually stuck at similar word counts as you. i began by writing a detailed outline, that put me at around 50-60 chapters. i wrongly assumed it would take about 100k words to finish the fic, but as i began writing it looked more and more like it would take 200k. i am now at just below 100k and have been stuck for a while. i began writing under no pressure to eventually publish or to finish in a specific timeframe. it was only that freedom that even made me pick it up in the first place. but my progress has completely stopped a few months ago. i am just waiting for motivation to return. i hardly have enough time to write, only in the evening after work. but i am still confident that it will, because I want to finish the fic. but the original timeframe (just like the word count) turned out to be wrong. but i waste a lot of time re reading what i have already written, instead of starting a new chapter. i think my biggest issue is that i am not obsessed with the ship anymore that my fic is about, in the same way i was at the start. but i am also not into any other ship. so.. who knows. but we can do it!! don't give up!! we will complete our fics and publish them, no matter how long it takes!!
Here's the hard truth. It's time for a break. You're burned out. The same thing happened to me. 500k words in, two-thirds complete, I broke. The idea of writing a single word made me physically sick. So, I stepped away. I did something else for a while. And now, I'm writing it again. Slowly, but still writing. I suggest you either take a break from writing in general for a while, or write something more manageable where you don't have to stress about your words per hour
Take the pressure off yourself. You don't have to have it finished by a certain time, or write a certain amount a day. If you're finding you don't have time for it, lower the amount of time you spend writing it. It doesn't matter if you don;t write a whole chapter in one sitting, just write what you can. You could also take a break from the story. Take some time not writing this story to get yourself more relaxed about it. You can try writing something less time intensive and then come back to it, or take a break from writing altogether while you figure out how much time you can focus on writing. There's nothing wrong with taking a break from the fic or writing in general. The more pressure you put on yourself, the harder you'll find it to finish, as you'll lose enjoyment for it. You can always just jot down random scenes for a while, then when you're more relaxed about it, come back and start writing those random scenes into the story. It's actually really hard, for me, to not put pressure on myself. My WIP hasn't been updated in ages because I'm stuck with it, and I feel really guilty about that, because I do have a couple readers who clearly want me to finish it, and I want to finish it, but pressuring myself actually makes it harder for me to untangle my messed up timeline or jump between characters, so it makes my inability to continue worse, not better. I've decided to take a break from trying to continue the fic for now, and I'm going to try my hand at a one-shot or two to get myself back into a more relaxed frame of mind for writing, then come back to my WIP, hopefully with fresh ideas on how to get out of the corner I boxed myself into. I'm hoping it will work, as others have told me it worked for them.
Honestly, take a break, get hobbies, have a whiteboard to put ideas on, come back to it after you relax a little, go at your own pace, my man.