Thank you

[scraplove.livejournal.com]

I love this comm, and I don't think I make a big secret out of it. I love the people, I love the challenges, I love the prompts, I love the encouragement, and I love that I'm writing. Some of you have heard the story of how I ended up here, I'm sure, about how I wrote exactly one thing between January 1 and June 23, 2013, then joined this comm and started writing again and how happy I am about it. So thank you all for being awesome.

But there's something else I want to thank everyone for, that I haven't talked about at all. I left it to kaige68 the one time it came up. And that's how I can't share my writing.



I joined LJ in 2008 and shared my writing until 2012, when I finished my Master's degree and started losing sleep over the prospect of potential employers connecting my RL self with my fandom self, as unlikely as that is. So I took everything down, everywhere. And then the complaints started coming in. Where did it go, why did you take it down, will you send it to me, where is my free entertainment?! And while some people were nice, others were decidedly not. I was called rude, selfish, a troll, and that I was saying "fuck you" to the fandom by removing my writing. For someone with anxiety problems, this was a stressful thing.

Then I came here. I made my first "yay I finished my bingo card" post, and immediately the encouragement came in. Everyone was so kind! And since I was new, there were a few who asked for links to what I had written. Intellectually, I knew that they were asking to be even more nice, so they could squee more and more specifically. I understood that. But there was still the anxious part of me that was waiting to be attacked for not sharing, because that had always happened before. So I asked Kaige to explain for me.

And then... no one ever asked again. I'd be like "yay I wrote this many words even though you can't see them" and everyone would be like "woo good job!" No matter how many bingo cards I posted (which, let's be real, there were a lot), everyone was kind, everyone was encouraging, and no one made me feel like a bad person or a lesser member of the comm for not sharing my writing. This is literally the only place that has happened. You guys are all amazing, and I really appreciate it.

All my love,
scraplove