On Commissions!

[seventhe]

(Who wants to make me an “I’m not dead yet” icon) (Or some sweet Good Omens icons) (Or any MCU icons at all, I guess, I’m like 20 years behind on icons)

I LIVE.

Things are both exciting and not, and I’ve had some grand old panicking, and I’ve had a lot of sleep and alcohol, but today I’m here to talk about commissions.

I intend to open up a second round of commissions, all of which will go towards a new laptop and a mobile upgrade. I am finding my old laptop only barely adequate for (a) the work I’m currently doing (the screen is being a weird with spreadsheets etc) and (b) the other activities I’m picking up. For many things I can use my iPad Pro but it’s still a mobile device and I’ve found some definite cases where I need the actual power of a computer. Desktops no longer interest me, I’m a mobile person, so a laptop it is. I don’t need top of the line or SUPER gaming power (I’d like a little, yes, but I’ve also found I much prefer games on console when possible) but I do need something sleeker, quicker, and more stable than what I have, which has aged poorly.

But: I opened commissions in February, and here I am in July, still finishing them up. Is it stupid to open another round? probably I’m actually gonna say no, really, cause I learned a lot about what works for me and what doesn’t, and I’m hoping the next round of comms can be a lot more successful and efficient. So, in the hopes of people still being interested in a commission, here are some things I learned.

1. I need to raise my prices. I picked my prices wanting it to be accessible to a lot of people no matter their financial state, and also thinking that there would be little interest so I should aim to be cheap to get by that. I, um. I guess I’ll just say it: first, I think I’m a pretty good author. I’m not going to say my shit’s the best ever, but I am even more confident now that I’ll put out a good piece of writing no matter what, and that they’ll be good quality. And I’ve now got a proven track record that, I think, agrees. Second: Nearly every single one of these fics has involved planning, discussing w other people, occasionally outlining, lots of editing: these aren’t slapdash bits. These are serious works. Which means I’m putting more time into them than expected, which means that in order for commissions to be worth my while, I need to adjust time in and price charged. I kind of hate writing this sentence, but I believe my writing has value, and I should reflect that better in pricing.

2. Wordcount targets don’t necessarily work for me. Sure, they can give me a general idea of how much to dive into a prompt or subject, but really, I’m going to write the story that comes to me, and it’s pretty much ALWAYS longer rather than shorter. Out of all the things I’ve posted this year, there’s only one I think was average rather than awesome, and it’s one where I tried to rein myself in on wordcount rather than letting the story flow. This also led to the “i’m Not charging enough for the work I’m putting in” conundrum because it isn’t the prompter’s fault I want to spill 5000 words into an idea. So moving forward I’m going to generalize wordcounts and take commissions based on concept I guess, or depth of the work: I’ll still write short things, but prompts for those will be smaller, thus producing shorter works. This is part of the “finding my work has value” bit; I’m seeing myself take longer and be more careful with commissions because I know they’re paid, which then leads to me always exceeding the word count lmao.

3. Taking 15 commissions all at once and having them stare at me from a spreadsheet doesn’t work. I’ve learnt this year that I’m very heavily plagued by ADHD and executive dysfunction at this point in my life. So while I originally figured having them there would be exciting! And motivating! That was not the case. It was overwhelming. So next round, I intend to have rolling spots, where I’ll only take maybe 5 at a time and then open spots as they become free. I’m also going to better balance the spots, like, maybe I’ll only take on 1-2 long fics at a time, before taking any more long prompts, but I can manage a handful of short prompts all at once. Different queues for different kinds of fic, which should work a lot better for my stupid brain.

4. Even for fandoms I love, if I haven’t been there in a while, it’s gonna take time to get back there. I eventually skipped ahead to write MCU commissions because I got stuck on a solid row of fandoms that i was EXCITED to write about but really needed to do some research to remind me of what was going on. There’s a big difference in my preparedness to write “active” fandoms vs historical fandoms. I need to balance that somehow, whether with an upcharge or an extended delivery time or both.

5. Gotta leave space for other projects. The other thing I got stuck on with commissions was that I’m active on tumblr, active in a couple fandoms, and ended up the mod of an MCU discord — so there were tons of other things going on I WANTED to do! And I’d either (a) not do them and then stare sulkily into a commission blank page, or (b) sign up for them and then feel SUPER GUILTY for not doing commissions. I’ve found I need to have a couple ongoing, relaxing, casual projects I can go dive into when my brain won’t do a commission, AND i need to not feel guilty about doing that. I need to allow space in my timing to just go fuck off into a restaurant AU or a dumb fic about 40 snakes when I need, and I need to be okay with that mentally.

6. I need to work with the lifestyle. If I’m writing for pay, writing on commission, working on original fiction, and blogging: that’s a lot of time on my ass in front of a screen. I need to adjust the rest of my life so I’m still somewhat active, eating well, and not burning my eyeballs out. I also gotta understand my own limits: which I’m learning. For example: I can hit about 1800 words of my current paid work daily before my brain explodes from research and technical writing. I know that. I’m working on it but right now that’s my expectation. I’ve also learnt from sprinting in the BDBD that I can manage about 1000 words per hour on my own stuff. That’s a realistic average, including breaks, stretching, googling things, looking up words, getting stuck, cats on the keyboard: it’s a number I can sustain. Compare that to pricing, and it like, wranked something in my brainspace. I need to manage wording if I want it to be long-term.

I have a draft, right now, I’m working with to consider all of these things together. Thoughts from anyone, commissioners or not, totally welcome!

Basically I’m recognizing a point where I can offer commissions as something different than the other fanfic I will continue and write and post for free, tl;dr, i still need money lol.

Lessons learnt, though, lessons learnt, thinky thoughts, god where is my lottery ticket the eND