Thinky thoughts. (There's no real point to this entry.)

[magibrain]

I occasionally feel kinda odd about maintaining two blogs – this one and magistrate – because I post so infrequently that it occasionally feels like I don't have enough content to reliably keep one blog interesting, let alone two. But I do feel like separating my fannish content stream from my more real-life stream is a good pragmatic decision; in how I conceptualize my own life, they represent different spheres of interest.

(I toyed briefly with the idea of separating my original fiction/professional writing into a third stream, but then I noticed that I never posted in it at all, so to magistrate it went.)

Being someone who grew up as a writer in fannish spaces and is now also trying to get somewhere in the big, bad world of original fiction, I think a lot about how skills and paradigms do and don't translate. The different genre structures and conventions, the different skills each type of writing emphasizes or strengthens. (I notice that in my original writing, characterization is something people continually call out as one of my weakest skills. Which is still kind of a mindscrew for me, because in fanfic, a lot of people seem to enjoy my characterization. Then, with fanfic, I have something pre-existing to riff off; one of the consequences of growing into writing through fanfiction seems to be that I have less experience in how to establish and differentiate character in my own work.)

Anyway. Given the amount of time I spend musing about fannish vs. original spaces, I kinda have to raise an eyebrow at myself for needing to discover (and rediscover, and remind myself of, again and again) the fact that the criteria for success for fanfic and original stories are often wildly different.

I think it's something of the same way in which the criteria for success for a TED talk and an awesome discussion in a group of friends is different.

In original fiction, I have to spend a lot of time thinking about arcs and structure and pacing, and how the plot and the story inform each other, and how themes are deployed, and how to create a polished and technically competent work. And, I mean, don't get me wrong, those things are great to pay attention to in fanfiction, but I find that fanfic rises or falls on something more like, broadly oversimplified, its ability to be an efficient delivery mechanism for squee.

I think the fanfics I'm personally most proud of manage to hit both notes; they extend and expand beloved aspects of canon, but they also work as well-structured, polished and tuned-up technical works. But I also find myself, a lot of times, flailing over posting something because its pacing is a mess, the structure is lopsided, there's that one horribly awkward phrasing at the beginning that I can't think of a good way to get rid off, the theme is a contortionist, and the arc thinks about arcing and then veers sideways into a wall, and I have this horrible urge to apologize to everyone for punting it out into the world, and then no one seems to care. Which is reassuring, at times, and then at other times it's just a boatload of cognitive dissonance and the vague suspicion that everyone's just being nice because... some... nefarious purpose of their own? I think a lot of writers share this anxiety. I think this anxiety enjoys the fact that it doesn't have to make sense.

I used to produce a lot more fiction. I mean, that was something like a decade ago, when I was bouncing all around my million FFVIII fics, but I remember being significantly more prolific than I am right now. I think a major factor in my slowdown is the fact that I started turning my attention to craft, and really struggling a lot with the places where I could see something wrong but I didn't know how to fix it.

(Or where there wasn't a plausible way to fix it. If I go back through my braintics scraps collection, for example, there's a ton of stuff which flat-out does not work on a logical level, but which amused me enough to put scenes down. There's also stuff where the tone is too wildly self-indulgent for my sense of propriety, or where it's clearly just me working out my beef with a certain character, or where I looked at it and just went "Nope, not going to write that, because I'm not going to typecast myself as that author who only writes stories where horrible things happen to Sam Carter and the boys go D: and then the whole rest of the fic is only there to showcase how tough and embattled Sam is." (Yes, I have enough of those braintics to make it its own genre. I'm not proud. I also regret nothing.))

This is, of course, not entirely a bad thing: it lets me continually improve my writing, even if I'm not aware of the improvements as they're happening. (But I can go back and look at works from a few years ago – works that represented the best I could do at those times – and see immediately how I could improve them, and that's a humbling and kinda nifty feeling.) But it is, I think, something I also need to become more aware of. Because the other great thing about fanfiction is that it provides a space for me to play around with ways of telling stories in this fantastically open and engaging and forgiving environment, and that's also a fantastic resource for growth. Letting my internal editor set up roadblocks there isn't actually helping me.

(Besides, you people don't mind if I completely shed my dignity now and again, right? Maybe I'll clean up the ridiculous angstcrack scene where Neal is vaguely suicidal circa As You Were and discovers that Peter has an invisible dragon living in his house. Or the wtfery of the braintic where Sam Carter's consciousness gets transposed across a universal boundary and put into a partially-uplifted mountain lion who's a working animal with the USAF. I once heard the Pern books described as "tapping into the 'I want a PONY!' instinct, except for people who liked fantasy." You can probably tell which kind of kid I was.)

Comments

[thebaconfat]

I have this horrible urge to apologize to everyone for punting it out into the world, and then no one seems to care.

hahahaha I feel like some of this has to do with your own standards as a writer and as a reader. I sort of feel like a lot of people reading fanfic just want to enjoy themselves and aren't looking at it that critically, and the issues that seem glaring to you just don't jump out at someone who's just along for the ride and hasn't been spending a ton of time working with the story already. I think a lot of people are that way with published fiction, too, but with published fiction those people aren't the one who are vocal. With fanfic, I feel like you get a little more of the positive reviews just because it's easier to share comments in an online community and you sort of have to if you want more of what you like -- it's the equivalent of buying merch to show your support.

But! I really, really miss putting stuff out just for fun and sharing it even though I could see that it was flawed. I miss writing fanfic and being comfortably anonymous and not caring so much about putting myself out there. I think I just had a few rough experiences where stories I was proud of or just wrote for fun got torn down and that killed a lot of the fun for me. I still write quite a bit but sharing stuff doesn't feel like a good investment of my energy anymore. I think what I'm getting at here is that just because your idea of what makes a story flawed and your readers' ideas about that might be totally different, and it might not be that people are seeing the flaws and not caring. It might be that they don't see them as flaws at all.

It makes a lot of sense to me that really working on your craft and focusing on improving it rather than just having fun with it would make you a lot less prolific. And I admire the hell out of how hard you've worked to identify your weaknesses and work at them.

the tone is too wildly self-indulgent for my sense of propriety

I get hung up on this too, and I totally understand it but it bugs the hell out of me at the same time that self-indulgent automatically equals bad. (Not attacking your idea, here, just my own internal editor throws this at me all the time: you can't show people that! It's not serious enough! You'll embarrass yourself!) I get caught up in the idea of self-indulgence, and in telling myself I'm not allowed to do the things I want to do in a story because it won't be palatable to everyone else. Even though I have no idea if that's actually true or not -- I just feel like I can't judge my own work when it comes to my self-indulgence so it's best to err on the side of caution. And of course there's something very personally revealing about showing other people your indulgences. It takes guts.

ANYWAYS, blah, I have a lot of writing issues, but I totally hear what you are saying here and I really enjoyed reading your thoughts. They made me think thoughts! About something that's important to me but that I don't get to talk about a lot.

The other thing I want to say is that I would so much rather read self-indulgent fic my friends have written than no fic at all. Sometimes my indulgences correlate with theirs and I get to be full of squee. Sometimes they don't but I still really enjoy reading people being passionate and excited about things.

[magibrain]

[and I totally understand it but it bugs the hell out of me at the same time that self-indulgent automatically equals bad.]

I think the issue I have isn't so much that self-indulgent fiction is unserious or unpalatable, necessarily; it's that it angles for an emotional payoff without doing any of the work to establish, justify, or make credible those emotions. Which isn't something that's necessary, when you're writing to indulge yourself: you're already on board with what you're doing.

It's like – if you'll permit me a very silly analogy – if you run a business that makes furniture. One day, your friend needs to borrow a buffet table, and you go "No problem! I'll lend you my personal one." Except that your personal buffet table is a long plane of wood that's held up by an end table at one side and a stack of cinder blocks at the other, and you just throw a tablecloth over it and it's not like anyone notices. So then you show up at your friend's house with this length of wood and a tablecloth, and they'd be quite justified in going "...what the hell?" at you.

I mean, at least, this is how I interact with the term. When I write something self-indulgent, it's just what it says on the tin: it's meant to indulge my particular sensibilities. Even the phrase, to indulge my particular sensibilities, suggests a pre-existing substance which it interacts with. It's the sort of thing you can't get away with in works of fiction proper, where you have to include all the bits that make the fiction functional. If I put out something that's wildly self-indulgent and a reader comes by who shares my sensibilities, it'll work for them – they have a couple of fifty-gallon drums to balance the tabletop on, or something. But if they don't, they don't have a story, just the superficial emotional trappings of one. If nothing else, I feel like I'd have to warn people that the end tables and the cinderblocks are something they'll need to provide, themselves.

If that makes sense?



[But! I really, really miss putting stuff out just for fun and sharing it even though I could see that it was flawed.]

Heh. Well, if you ever want to get back into it...

One of the things I've learned in original fiction, both writing and editing it, is that every single story I've run into is meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have sold has been meaningfully flawed. Every single story I have bought has been meaningfully flawed. Sometimes I've been able to see past the flaws to really love my stories despite them; sometimes by the time I send them out, all I can see is the flaws, and I'm just working on this blind faith in my own process.

(The story I sold at the beginning of this year – the one that's up at Clarkesworld – is one of the latter stories. Dear god, the thing is a mess. Nothing actually happens in it. It's a whole bunch of talking and then the character doing all the talking makes the choice you'd narratively expect her to make, in the end. There's a fairly major background plot thread that I'd meant to flesh out and developed but couldn't, so it just gets totally dropped halfway through. And do not get me started on the title; it has to be one of the worst titles I've ever come up with. ...and yet, the editor liked it enough to buy it. Some people around the internet seem to like it (even as other people clearly don't). I do not understand the affection shown to the story, but in a way, it's not really my place to; my job is to write the best story I can at the moment and try to write a better one next time, not to judge the story. Except to the extent that it helps me write a better story next time.)

And, I mean, there are flaws that ruin people's ability to enjoy a story. I reject a lot of stuff that's fundamentally flawed in a way that makes it not work. (And there's a wide, wide spectrum in that, from "not work as an intelligible piece of prose" through "not work as a cohesive story" to "not work for me, particularly, as a reader".) And when something is flawed in one of those ways, it's probably best to revise it or trunk it or... something.

But as for putting stuff out even though it's flawed... well, there's really no other way to put stuff out. :P

I don't know if that's actually encouraging, but it's something I find a strange, slant kind of comfort in. (And, yeah, as is probably obvious from the post above, it's something I still have a lot of issues with. Because if I see a flaw, I want to be able to fix it. A flaw should, to my mind, be something fixable, and the gap between my ability to see flaws and my ability to correct them frequently rankles. I feel like this is the curse of many creative people.)

[thebaconfat]

(I was super sleep deprived when I wrote that last comment, and I get weird about this stuff even at the best of times, so I apologize for getting all up in your comments with my feelings! I think when people say, "If you can't handle having people criticize your work, don't share it on the Internet, dumbass," they are definitely talking to me. I've come to really like writing as a game -- essentially playing make-believe -- and anytime I try to turn it into work or art I trip myself up. And (despite what my upbringing led me to believe) it is okay to have a hobby and spend your time and energy on something that doesn't have a profitable, tangible result that you can show people. That is okay!)

I really struggle when it comes to my own work about the idea of a flawed thing still having value, even though I know I love a lot of flawed stories, sometimes because of their flaws. But my personal neuroses mean I have a hard time seeing the value in my own flawed works and in trusting myself at all to recognize whether what I'm creating is okay to share with people or not. My own self-perception is so warped that I don't trust myself to be able to look at my work and imagine what someone else's actual reaction to it will be.

I'm curious whether you have that issue with your own stuff. I know you said you can't understand the affection for one of your own stories -- in which case, how do you get to a point where you think "this is good enough to submit"? And do you enjoy the editing and rewriting process? Does it destroy your affection for your work at all?

[magibrain]

[I was super sleep deprived when I wrote that last comment, and I get weird about this stuff even at the best of times, so I apologize for getting all up in your comments with my feelings!]

No worries! Fiction is an emotion-y thing. :P (Even when I am super-bad at emotions.)



[And (despite what my upbringing led me to believe) it is okay to have a hobby and spend your time and energy on something that doesn't have a profitable, tangible result that you can show people.]

Hah. It is, indeed! I find that, for me, I really want to be able to use the things I love to make me money, because then it would cut down on the number of things I didn't love but had to do in order to make money. But there are definitely still things – hi, fanfic, I see you there – which I've been told I should probably grow out of, but I refuse to, because this is my happy place goddamnit and when original fiction is stressing me out because I don't know how to make it work and I don't know why anyone is paying me for this stuff and I'm convinced that the next thing I send out, they'll all figure out that I'm a hack and they'll stop humoring me... fanfic is where I can come back to where I can dial down all those anxieties, if not wipe them away entirely.

Though, speaking of writing-as-game, have you ever done, like, an LJ or DW-based RP? They can be really fantastic, if you find good ones.



[I'm curious whether you have that issue with your own stuff.]

Oh god, yes. You have no idea. One of the things I keep saying, only half-jokingly, is that by the time I start sending things out to magazines, I usually hate it. Which may be some kind of protective response I developed because that way, if it gets rejected, I can go "Yeah, that makes sense" and not feel hurt that the editor didn't enjoy it. Of course they didn't enjoy it; it was completely broken!

How I get to a poing where I think it's good enough to submit? Basically, it's when I get to a point where it's the best that I can make it. If I'm reading over it and I can't figure out how to fix or improve it, that probably means that it's the best my skills are capable of at this moment. And as for the actual decision to send it out when I don't particularly like it, there's a mix of things that goes into it. One of those things is my awareness that I'm a terrible judge of my own work; I know I'm not seeing the thing unbiased, and so I can't be the one to decide that it's not good enough.

If I send something out, the worst thing that's going to happen is that the magazine won't take it and will tell me why not. (In a way, it's similar to fanfic: if I post a fanfic, the worst thing that's going to happen is that people won't read it. Or they will read it, and they'll tell me things are wrong with it.) And that's just data – failed experiments are just data. Data that can be a hard pill to swallow, sometimes, but that's also where being able to see that it has flaws and agree comes in and helps me.

But if I'm overstating the flaws in my own mind, and if I've produced something that other people will enjoy more than I think they're likely to enjoy it, then if I send it out or post it or whatever, I end up with a payday of some sort – either people will enjoy it and tell me what did work for them and reassure me that I can write, or people will enjoy it and buy it and give me money and reassure me that I can write. And after a while, building up that pattern of favorable responses also helps me to put things out, because I know that such a response is possible even when I don't anticipate it. I can look at something and say "I put in a ton of work on this, and there are parts I like, but I don't know that they'll shine past the parts that are broken that I don't know how to fix," and then think, "but I have a fairly good track record on putting things out when I feel exactly like this, so there's no harm in trying."

I guess the other thing that I have to hang on to is the fact that there was something I really loved about the story, or I wouldn't have started it or gotten it through to completion in the first place. So I have to have some faith that whatever I loved about the story is still there, even if I'm not feeling particularly loving toward it. And sending the story out, or putting it up, is one way of doing right by that thing that I loved.



[And do you enjoy the editing and rewriting process? Does it destroy your affection for your work at all?]

Hahaa, that's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Partly because editing and revising are so often such intrinsic parts of the writing process for me. If we're talking about sitting down with a finished draft, seeing that it doesn't work, and then cracking open its ribs to muddle around with its insides, I guess I don't particularly enjoy it, partially because I don't fully understand how it works. I'm so much more comfortable and confident when I'm tinkering with stuff during the process of writing, when everything still feels elastic.

As for destroying my affection for my work, I don't know. At that stage, it's usually not about affection any more; more like a bull-headed determination to get the story into a state where it can go out the door. When I start hating a story, I usually start hating it somewhere around the 60%-80% completion stage.