The Secretary Will Disavow Any Knowledge

Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: All Ages.
Warnings: Schmoop (no, seriously). OC death. Messy mysticism.
Spoilers: None. AU futurefic.
Word Count: 1,142
AN: A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far way…wait, no, that's something else) I offered to write shotofjack something for her birthday. And foolish me, I insisted on a prompt. She gave me: Heartverse. Dean's been missing 3 days and then Sam finds him. Well. It started to turn into a case fic. And then shotofjack said, "No, no, no! Not a case fic! Just a ficlet!" And this is what happened. So. Heartverse. Somewhere in the vicinity of Year 18.

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( Maybe it's not surprise. Maybe it's amazement. )

It's no secret that writing is my pleasure, my joy. I'm pretty vocal about that.

Sometimes I feel guilty about the rambling that I do after some stories, recounting anecdotes about how the story came to be or things that happened in the writing, my thoughts about the story itself. It feels self-indulgent and, sometimes but not always, self-involved.

But in some sense, that's exactly what it is and why it's there. This journal started out as my writing journal. A place for me to think and talk about craft. To perhaps hone it. Though I love every fragment of feedback I have been given, I would write these stories anyway. Though I've written stories for ficathons and requests, the truth is that I write what I like. I wouldn't write a story that I didn't enjoy writing. And I frequently write things that I expect no one to read…though I'm as frequently pleasantly surprised. *g*

So when I write these self-indulgences at the end of a given story, it's less about you, Dear Reader, than it is about me being able to come back to that story and see where I was then, what my mind was doing. Being able to see the fingerprints and the seams. The craft marks.

Again, not to in any way denigrate the lovely feedback I've been given, the energy of my writing usually goes in one direction. From inside of me, out. I write because I want to, but I also write because I have to, haunted by these stories as thoroughly as any ghost. That sounds like a negative, I'm sure…and sometimes it is. There are few things more frustrating than having this story on the tip of my brain (as it were) and being unable to disgorge it onto paper or screen.

But when it's good…oh, saints and lepers, it is really fucking good. And like any good junkie, I will break the face off of any person that tries to take that from me. There are many things in this world I can live without. Story, creating story, storytelling…is not one of them.

And so I will confess to the self-indulgent pleasure of writing about and thinking about the craft of writing. I will give myself these little road markers to visit, when I wend this way again. I will allow myself to be involved with myself in this way, and I don't feel bad about it at all.

This is what I'm here for.