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Story Title: It's A Long Way Up When You Hit the Ground
Fandom: Men's Football RPF
Link(s): https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795078
Summary: Vincent's future is still uncertain, but rather than dwell on it, all he wants to do is welcome Christian home from the World Cup and find a few moments of bliss in each other's company before the world comes along and sweeps them away again. Christian, however, isn't making things at all easy, and Vincent starts wondering if maybe he has other ideas.
A story about moving in, uncertainty, finding true friendships, and questioning everything about your past, present, and future.
Warnings: None/No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Vincent Janssen, Christian Eriksen, Ben Davies, Tottenham Hotspur players
Pairings: Christian Eriksen/Vincent Janssen
When I Started: Early July, 2018, the timeperiod the fic is set in. Denmark had lost their match in the World Cup on penalty kicks and I was having feelings about it so I started writing this and then it got absurdly out of my control and here we are 13 months later with a fic that isn't really about that at all.
How I Lost My Shit: Honestly, this fic fought me from the start. I don't know what it was about this fic in particular that I couldn't just let myself write terrible words and know I could make them better later, but it just would not cooperate that way. Ordinarily, I'm a person who can sit down and write for 2 hours and finish 1500 words and move on and then edit them into submission when the time came, but this time I was lucky if I was managing 500 words a day in the same amount of writing time. And then... it all just kind of came apart and winter came and I lost all my motivation for writing at all and then I got pulled in to a MASSIVE project at work that took up all my time, and then, and then, and then. Truth is, this fic was always going to stretch me. It was doing a lot and it was a departure from what I'd been writing in many ways, most of them keying in on some of my weaknesses in writing. I had to write a lot of ensemble cast/gathering scenes, which I am notoriously bad at. I had to write the main characters actually arguing and about to be on the outs with one another, which isn't something that I've done before with these two, so it kept coming out as either too much or too little--finding the balance of "they say hurtful things, but not so hurtful that the other person would never forgive them for it" was A. STRUGGLE. FAM. The fight scene at the end I legitimately wrote seven different times, many of those times ending in tears, me wanting to throw my laptop across a room, and me yelling "WHAT IF I JUST NEVER FINISH THIS FIC AND I NEVER WRITE AGAIN?!" It got real in here. To top all of that off, we only get the POV and side of the story of one of the characters, so it was a struggle to convey the emotions of the other one (who is not one to outwardly show any emotion at all and when he does they tend to be misplaced) and not have him come off as such an unforgivable asshole that no one would want anything to do with him ever. It was a lot. And it was HARD. But....
How I Finished My Shit: Perseverance and downright stubbornness. Here's the thing about this fic... it sets up another fic that I DESPERATELY want to write that comes immediately after it and won't make any sense if you don't have the content and resolution of this fic. So in order to write the other one I had to finish this one. And because I want to write the other one and because I'm a stubborn bitch, I kept going. In some cases I was spite-writing. In some cases I was hate-writing. But I kept writing. This challenge helped so much because it could be a thing where I said "I will be done by this day" and it made me say "I know you hate it, but you said you'd do it." That accountability is key for me. I had to learn a lot about how to find a sense of "good enough" during this, and I can't say there aren't parts of this fic that I will read later and think "you could have done that better". It's certainly not going to be a fic I look back on and think of fondly or as one of my favourites (although the ones I dislike the most tend to be the ones most others like, so what do I know). It's not my best work, and it is OVERDRAMATIC and ridiculous and A. LOT. but it's DONE. I still can't actually believe those words when I type them. Like... when I wake up tomorrow I won't have to put "work on this fic even though you hate it" on my to-do list for the day. I can stop, take a breather, catch up on a bunch of other fanworks I need to prioritise, and then get back to work writing the next one. Which... hopefully won't take me another year!
Fandom: Men's Football RPF
Link(s): https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795078
Summary: Vincent's future is still uncertain, but rather than dwell on it, all he wants to do is welcome Christian home from the World Cup and find a few moments of bliss in each other's company before the world comes along and sweeps them away again. Christian, however, isn't making things at all easy, and Vincent starts wondering if maybe he has other ideas.
A story about moving in, uncertainty, finding true friendships, and questioning everything about your past, present, and future.
Warnings: None/No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Vincent Janssen, Christian Eriksen, Ben Davies, Tottenham Hotspur players
Pairings: Christian Eriksen/Vincent Janssen
When I Started: Early July, 2018, the timeperiod the fic is set in. Denmark had lost their match in the World Cup on penalty kicks and I was having feelings about it so I started writing this and then it got absurdly out of my control and here we are 13 months later with a fic that isn't really about that at all.
How I Lost My Shit: Honestly, this fic fought me from the start. I don't know what it was about this fic in particular that I couldn't just let myself write terrible words and know I could make them better later, but it just would not cooperate that way. Ordinarily, I'm a person who can sit down and write for 2 hours and finish 1500 words and move on and then edit them into submission when the time came, but this time I was lucky if I was managing 500 words a day in the same amount of writing time. And then... it all just kind of came apart and winter came and I lost all my motivation for writing at all and then I got pulled in to a MASSIVE project at work that took up all my time, and then, and then, and then. Truth is, this fic was always going to stretch me. It was doing a lot and it was a departure from what I'd been writing in many ways, most of them keying in on some of my weaknesses in writing. I had to write a lot of ensemble cast/gathering scenes, which I am notoriously bad at. I had to write the main characters actually arguing and about to be on the outs with one another, which isn't something that I've done before with these two, so it kept coming out as either too much or too little--finding the balance of "they say hurtful things, but not so hurtful that the other person would never forgive them for it" was A. STRUGGLE. FAM. The fight scene at the end I legitimately wrote seven different times, many of those times ending in tears, me wanting to throw my laptop across a room, and me yelling "WHAT IF I JUST NEVER FINISH THIS FIC AND I NEVER WRITE AGAIN?!" It got real in here. To top all of that off, we only get the POV and side of the story of one of the characters, so it was a struggle to convey the emotions of the other one (who is not one to outwardly show any emotion at all and when he does they tend to be misplaced) and not have him come off as such an unforgivable asshole that no one would want anything to do with him ever. It was a lot. And it was HARD. But....
How I Finished My Shit: Perseverance and downright stubbornness. Here's the thing about this fic... it sets up another fic that I DESPERATELY want to write that comes immediately after it and won't make any sense if you don't have the content and resolution of this fic. So in order to write the other one I had to finish this one. And because I want to write the other one and because I'm a stubborn bitch, I kept going. In some cases I was spite-writing. In some cases I was hate-writing. But I kept writing. This challenge helped so much because it could be a thing where I said "I will be done by this day" and it made me say "I know you hate it, but you said you'd do it." That accountability is key for me. I had to learn a lot about how to find a sense of "good enough" during this, and I can't say there aren't parts of this fic that I will read later and think "you could have done that better". It's certainly not going to be a fic I look back on and think of fondly or as one of my favourites (although the ones I dislike the most tend to be the ones most others like, so what do I know). It's not my best work, and it is OVERDRAMATIC and ridiculous and A. LOT. but it's DONE. I still can't actually believe those words when I type them. Like... when I wake up tomorrow I won't have to put "work on this fic even though you hate it" on my to-do list for the day. I can stop, take a breather, catch up on a bunch of other fanworks I need to prioritise, and then get back to work writing the next one. Which... hopefully won't take me another year!
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