Issues with Writing Commissions

[Ego Dominus Tuus]

Hey, I'm a full time commission writer... and I'm wondering if anyone else around here is as well. Do you ever have trouble writing someone else's idea? Does it ever make you want to pull your hair out and just run screaming in the opposite direction to your own story?

I don't feel that way all the time, it's just with the commissions that I take that are particularly... bleh. Though I find that if I work on and finish someones commission (typically between 5-10k words a day) I end up being burnt out by the time I can work on my own novels.

Just kinda fishing around for thoughts on the whole subject, I guess. >_> Aren't we all trying to NOT get burnt out at one point or another.

[LadySnark]

I've never done writing commissions, but 5k a day would burn anyone out. That is a lot of creative juice you need to drain out on a daily basis.

I have a friend who does a lot of commissions and she has her shop set up so that she doesn't accept them all. She has 'slots' and when a slot opens she picks an idea someone has asked her to do that she likes and she does it. It might help if you limit your intake and become maybe a little more picky about which stories you want to write.

[Ego Dominus Tuus]

defineunique

I've never done writing commissions, but 5k a day would burn anyone out. That is a lot of creative juice you need to drain out on a daily basis.

I have a friend who does a lot of commissions and she has her shop set up so that she doesn't accept them all. She has 'slots' and when a slot opens she picks an idea someone has asked her to do that she likes and she does it. It might help if you limit your intake and become maybe a little more picky about which stories you want to write.

That's the plan once I get through everything that I owe. When I started, I took everything... and I didn't realize that it would get as popular as it did. So I gained a huge backlog. Lol, I think another issue of mine is that people expect someone to be able to write a 25k+ word story in a week >_> Trying to explain to them that creatively that can take a lot longer doesn't work. Trying to write for people who have never really poured themselves into a story seems to have a little bit of a language barrier, almost.

[LadySnark]

Yah...a 25k story would take me about half a month to a month of writing, and then that isn't even including the editing. Maybe when you re-vamp your shop you can set it up so that you also have an estimated time log for people so they know how long they realistically need to write for something.

Or you could cap yourself, and give people a 10k word limit.

You know, just play around with the rules for your shop. Get your backlogs out of the way, or reimburse people's gold, and then move on to bigger and brighter things.