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I seem to be failing utterly at writing this morning. So I'll waste time on the Internet instead!
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sga_genficathon is now posting ('til the end of next week). :)
hl_flashfic is currently taking prompts for flashfic involving minor characters from the Highlander universe. Go! Prompt! Signups open next week.
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thingswithwings has made an awesomely critical vid on MANPAIN. (And if you're going "... er, a vid on what?", she also has an explanation/commentary post which is well worth reading! ETA: Now with more links courtesy of rydra_wong!)
tielan has a really interesting discussion post on political affiliations of fandom characters. (Also on DW.)
I find it hilarious and kind of adorable that my cracky little Highlander wingfic, that I just tossed off because "this idea is too crazy not to write", has been kudos'd more than anything else I have on AO3. Oh fandom. But it's a good thing to keep in mind. I think one of the reasons why I'm not getting much written lately is because I'm so focused on writing well, and I keep getting bogged down in structural issues, or abandoning stories because I manage to convince myself that the idea is too silly or too id-stroking or not original enough. But there's no way to know ahead of time what another person is going to find engaging as a reader. I wrote so much more when I didn't worry about that (well, didn't worry about it as much, anyway) and just dumped whatever was in my brain onto the page. Some of it was good, and some of it wasn't, but at least it was there.
I've stalled a bit on Echo Bazaar, because I've realized it's going to take forever to build up enough of what I need to overcome the next challenge in my Ambition quest. So I'm just exploring side stories, increasing my various attributes, spending my money at an alarming rate and waiting for something interesting to happen.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/350911.html with
comments.
sga_genficathon is now posting ('til the end of next week). :)hl_flashfic is currently taking prompts for flashfic involving minor characters from the Highlander universe. Go! Prompt! Signups open next week.thingswithwings has made an awesomely critical vid on MANPAIN. (And if you're going "... er, a vid on what?", she also has an explanation/commentary post which is well worth reading! ETA: Now with more links courtesy of rydra_wong!)tielan has a really interesting discussion post on political affiliations of fandom characters. (Also on DW.)I find it hilarious and kind of adorable that my cracky little Highlander wingfic, that I just tossed off because "this idea is too crazy not to write", has been kudos'd more than anything else I have on AO3. Oh fandom. But it's a good thing to keep in mind. I think one of the reasons why I'm not getting much written lately is because I'm so focused on writing well, and I keep getting bogged down in structural issues, or abandoning stories because I manage to convince myself that the idea is too silly or too id-stroking or not original enough. But there's no way to know ahead of time what another person is going to find engaging as a reader. I wrote so much more when I didn't worry about that (well, didn't worry about it as much, anyway) and just dumped whatever was in my brain onto the page. Some of it was good, and some of it wasn't, but at least it was there.
I've stalled a bit on Echo Bazaar, because I've realized it's going to take forever to build up enough of what I need to overcome the next challenge in my Ambition quest. So I'm just exploring side stories, increasing my various attributes, spending my money at an alarming rate and waiting for something interesting to happen.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/350911.html with
worrying about quality: the death of inspiration
It often happens to me that I start writing a story joyfully and without problems because I am sure it's just a stupid and silly thing that will never amount to anything; mere idle writing, in other words, just for fun. As soon as I start to suspect that - hang on, this story actually could be pretty good... that's when the writing becomes difficult, because I'm always second-guessing myself. Is this really good enough? Is this a stupid idea? Is this too silly...?
Re: worrying about quality: the death of inspiration
Bogged down
Ive also learned not to second-guess, underestimate or otherwise make assumptions about what my audience wants. People can really surprise you. Ive done images where I was convinced "no one but me will like this at all" only to have them become my most popular pieces.
Now, I say all this, after having spent the last 2 weeks beating my head against a piece that is 1- a commission, therefore needs to be "perfect", and 2- an Eagle...I hate eagles, even though everyone else seems to adore them. Sigh.
I'm planning to get over myself by spending the rest of the week working on my dancing pink and orange crabs piece. So there! Take that, Eagle!
Re: Bogged down
Good luck with yours!
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I miss those days. You thought up a story, you liked it, you wrote it, and good or bad you were happy. The most satisfying stories do seem to be the ones that jump into your brain and stomp around demanding to be written, the ones you don't even really think about beyond getting the words in your head down on the page. I wish every story could be like that.
That said, however, it's actually not so much my issue with my own writing these days. Well, it is, but mostly laziness has been my stumbling block. I think I mentioned this before in another post... somewhere... that the energy I put into my stories I would rather use for my original fiction, so when a fanfic starts getting long and complicated and wears me out writing it, I lose interest and don't put as much effort into it as I should (or give up on it all together). But the result is that because the story ends up not as good as it should be, those stories I do want to write - the ones that jump into my head and demand to be written - I start to second guess like crazy. I'm still ticked at myself for over thinking this one story. The plot was great but I kept messing with the writing style and ended up with something I really wasn't happy with.
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Still, it was a pretty interesting essay. Yes, there's a lot I didn't really agree with and a lot I felt to be a matter of "eye of the beholder," but a lot of excellent points were made (it also made me realize that I have a natural aversion to cliches, since a lot of what they talked about I avoid like the plague because it's been done to death, and I try hard to avoid what's been done to death, though it's not easy).
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And also, like you said, avoiding what's been done to death is usually a good thing. :D
I think most of us are going to end up writing cliches from time to time, sometimes because it's a cliche we really like (nothing wrong with that; I've written goodness knows how many hypothermia fics :D), and sometimes because it's really easy to pick stuff up without thinking about it. It's kind of amazing to me to look back on some of my early SGA fic and notice how strongly I was influenced by the prevailing fanon going around at the time -- I think it's especially obvious in the way I used to write the team dynamics and characterize Teyla and Ronon. The trick, I guess, is thinking about it without getting paralyzed by thinking about it and not writing anything at all (which is what I've been treading the borders of, lately).
Edited to add: There's actually an incredibly useful comment here by such_heights on the vid post, where she makes a point that I agree with 100% -- that you can have examples of the "manpain" cliche that are really over the top and head-desky, and other examples that would be fine if the writer hadn't done something else that was unpleasant (like killing off a character unnecessarily to give another character angst), and yet other examples that are just fine on all counts, except that the whole trope is a bit cliche! So it's not as simple as "this cliche is bad"; it's just that it can be wince-inducing, or it can be really well done, but all in all it's somewhat overdone, which is worth being aware of as a writer.
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It makes me think of the whole Mary Sue debacle. Though I still love the Sue litmus test as a means of character cliche avoidance, and though I hate the Mary Sue in fanfic (that is, the Mary Sue that invades the story arc with my favorite character getting character bashed in the process), all the good points (such as encouraging people to think more carefully about characterization) ended up so over-shadowed by the bad points (and all the Sue bashing) that I started to realize how much this was going to stifle a lot of people's creativity. In fact, it nearly stifled mine.
But if you can just get past the paranoia of possibly ending up with a "sue" or a cliche, then working with a cliche can be a lot of fun. I love the challenge of keeping things from getting over the top or severely understated, and I love taking cliches and seeing what I can do differently with them. It's not unlike world-building, really, and I've come up with entire stories based around a single cliche turned on its head.
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And yeah, there's the fanfic-vs-original-fic thing, too. I finished the rough draft of my novel back in May, and I've been sort of spinning my wheels ever since -- I like the idea of doing another long fanfic story, but I feel like I should be working on another novel (I've been roughing out the plot for the sequel to the one I finished). And I end up flailing around and wasting time on the internet instead of working on anything; if I'd just stop goofing off and write some short fanfics, then at least I'd have something to show for my time!
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Oh, and thank you very much for reccing my story on
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