Random fic thoughts with random facts
Jul. 29th, 2007 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estiroseThere's been a whole discussion on a section of my flist about why writers write. Or, in particular, why we, ourselves, write. It wasn't until I got tagged with the "random facts about yourself" meme that I started figuring out what to write/to contribute to the discussion.
* I'm not the oldest writer in any of my fandoms (well, I'm not sure about the Toku ones), and yet I have fic older than some of my readers.
I wrote fic before I knew there was such a thing as fanfic or that it was in a legal grey area. Or that there was such a thing as fandom. We're talking late 1986/early 1987 here, twenty years ago, and I was a teenager. I wrote because there was a story to be told, and so I told it. I found out later that it was technically a legal grey area after I discovered fandom later in 1987. The urge to write something is probably the best way to describe discovering fanfic writing in a vacuum.
* I took a fic hiatus between the late eighties and when I was in college.
I don't know why, but I stopped writing fanfic between a second story (Jewel of the Sea) and my first Highlander fic in college. Well, I kind of wrote fanfic, but it used the vague concepts of the series in general, so it was more like original fic. (I should dig up Disa and Keegan someday. They were not my first OCs, but they were interesting.)
There was a very limited audience for my fic in the 1980s, mostly because everything was done in hardcopy fanzines. It was hard to reach someone across the United States, much less across either ocean. So, when I wrote fic, it was because I wanted to write fic.
Then I discovered the Internet in 1993. And email. And email lists. And Highla-l and hlfic-l. My first fic, I think, was to celebrate the opening of hlfic-l. I think that was the fic that started me writing for others. Well, not specific others, but to celebrate something other than myself. The next fic, however, was written for myself, I know that (Change of Perspective, which became the first Tomorrow's Future fic). Fic before this was written for others, but because it involved photocopying and mailing, one had to be careful about what one wrote. In the age of the internet and email, it's easier to be part of the "gift economy", to dash off fics for people because they want one.
* I've written my share of Mary Sues. I think all of my OCs are Mary Sues, to one point or another. Heck, I think most of them are Mary Sues, period. Well, the major characters, anyway.
There's a reason there's an OC section of Inkwell, hidden in the Misc section. I'm both simultaneously fond of my OCs and embarrassed by them. From Cordelia, Disa and Keegan to Colleen, Naoko, Nezumi, and Marie, I've got a long history with them. And I'd hide them, but they're part of my fic history and part of who I am.
I'm not confident in my ability to write major OCs without making them exaggerated versions of myself. Or annoying versions of myself. And I annoy myself by torturing said OCs. (One of them does have a few sex fics hiding somewhere, too, to balance it out.)
And it's also hard to talk about my OCs because I have such mixed feelings about them. So, I'll go into my next bit.
* I write for both myself and others; sometimes I write for myself because there isn't enough for others.
I think I can safely say that most of my OCs, I write for myself. But sometimes I have a powerful urge to write and have no clue *what* to write. That's when I turn to others and say, "what would you like to see?" - I'd never have thought of writing, say, Takumi/Yuuji if I hadn't been asked to. And I'll sometimes write popular pairings - Conner/Kira comes to mind - just to be popular. (Needless to say, the more likely I can see a pairing directly impacts how good/finished the product *is*!)
Some fics can turn out to be a combination of both. "Discovering the Sun" was because the most likely pairing I saw online was Tendou/Kagami. As I said before, I discovered I'm not that much of a Tendou/Kagami 'shipper. But I am intrigued by the canon universe and my own what-if, and so that's come forward even as the slash has somewhat faded. (The fact that I can't seem to include certain plotlines because the fic is so Kagami-focused is a different matter.) Of course, there's also the fact that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
capncosmo won't read it until it's done that keeps me writing it as well....
I tend to write fandoms and pairings that aren't popular. Face it, on the Toku side, there's more Sentai than Kamen Rider fanfic. Well, there's more Kamen Rider than Ultraman or Kaiju/Godzilla fanfic, but I haven't seen much of those except snippets of Godzilla movies and Ultraman Nexus. So, I write Kamen Rider. Maybe I hope that someone might start watching it because I'm writing it. In that vein, I need to work on my Kamen Rider Blade fanfic; it's getting to the point where Den-O might actually be decently covered.
* Some shows I read fanfic for I've never seen, or seen only bits of.
I don't like The Sentinel very much, but I love its fic. And at the rate I keep picking up House fic, I should start watching that show too. Don't look to me writing in either fandom anytime soon, however.
* I used to be anti-slash. But then, I hated Power Rangers in college, and look at the makeup of my fanfic archive now....
I first ran across slash, or at least the term, before I got to college. It was in a book about Star Trek (TOS) fandom, I think. (Yes, this was pre-Internet.) When I heard of Kirk/Spock, I was pretty much "ew!", because guys didn't romance guys. But College was about the time I discovered the Gay Rights issue. I think I write at least some slash now because I'm fairly pro-Gay Rights. I figure if I'm open-minded, then I might as well be open-minded in my fanfic as well.
Oh, and I have no clue why I started watching and writing PR. But if I hadn't, I probably would have a smaller archive and a lot less people on my Flist, so I'm not ashamed. And I wouldn't have discovered Sentai, Kamen Rider, or learned any Japanese, either, so I consider it worth it.
(I, however, don't intend to tell my Japanese-American eye doctor that I had to temporarily put aside Japanese in order to work on Swedish....)
* I'm really bad at reviewing.
I should say that I'm really bad at critical reviewing - I don't want to hurt peoples' feelings, because that causes conflict, which causes pain on both ends. Which is really funny, because I know a lot of the people I do read most of the time are able to take criticism. And I don't want to scare newbie writers into not writing before they get their skills together, or get flamed by people who think they're beyond criticism. I recognize that this is not good (on either end), but I have a bad habit of doing neutral or saccharine reviews. Which doesn't do anybody any good.
(I also hate to admit it, but I'm not always good at recognizing *flaws* in stories either! So sometimes I leave good reviews on bad stuff just because I don't realize it's bad. I make a bad beta.)
* Like most people, I don't like my own writing. I think that most people around me write better than I do.
Yes, I realize my grammar is better than most of the people at fanfiction.net, and being from a world before text-messaging really helps my spelling. But I look at other peoples' work and wonder how in the hell I graduated with a degree in *Creative Writing* without being able to string a plot, or even a bunch of sentences, together. I see most peoples' writing sparkle in comparison to mine. Their words make sense, their characters have magic, where I just have a bunch of dull characters, no description, and very little plot. I often teasetptigger that she writes better than I do, but it's because she *does*, to my view. (I'm sure she'll disagree; there's a reason we consider ourselves each others' biggest fans....)
I mean, there is stuff I like, that I barely can believe I wrote, and stuff I can forgive, because I know that I'm writing it blindly. (Heck, "Discovering The Sun" only goes forward because I figure I can clean up stuff in the next draft, I just have to finish it first.)
Is that eight facts? Wow.
Anyway, I write because I'm compelled to, I write what I want unless I want to write for someone else, I have a love/hate relationship with my OCs, read fanfic for shows I've never seen, hate my writing, and am bad at reviewing. I think that just about covers it. :)
* I'm not the oldest writer in any of my fandoms (well, I'm not sure about the Toku ones), and yet I have fic older than some of my readers.
I wrote fic before I knew there was such a thing as fanfic or that it was in a legal grey area. Or that there was such a thing as fandom. We're talking late 1986/early 1987 here, twenty years ago, and I was a teenager. I wrote because there was a story to be told, and so I told it. I found out later that it was technically a legal grey area after I discovered fandom later in 1987. The urge to write something is probably the best way to describe discovering fanfic writing in a vacuum.
* I took a fic hiatus between the late eighties and when I was in college.
I don't know why, but I stopped writing fanfic between a second story (Jewel of the Sea) and my first Highlander fic in college. Well, I kind of wrote fanfic, but it used the vague concepts of the series in general, so it was more like original fic. (I should dig up Disa and Keegan someday. They were not my first OCs, but they were interesting.)
There was a very limited audience for my fic in the 1980s, mostly because everything was done in hardcopy fanzines. It was hard to reach someone across the United States, much less across either ocean. So, when I wrote fic, it was because I wanted to write fic.
Then I discovered the Internet in 1993. And email. And email lists. And Highla-l and hlfic-l. My first fic, I think, was to celebrate the opening of hlfic-l. I think that was the fic that started me writing for others. Well, not specific others, but to celebrate something other than myself. The next fic, however, was written for myself, I know that (Change of Perspective, which became the first Tomorrow's Future fic). Fic before this was written for others, but because it involved photocopying and mailing, one had to be careful about what one wrote. In the age of the internet and email, it's easier to be part of the "gift economy", to dash off fics for people because they want one.
* I've written my share of Mary Sues. I think all of my OCs are Mary Sues, to one point or another. Heck, I think most of them are Mary Sues, period. Well, the major characters, anyway.
There's a reason there's an OC section of Inkwell, hidden in the Misc section. I'm both simultaneously fond of my OCs and embarrassed by them. From Cordelia, Disa and Keegan to Colleen, Naoko, Nezumi, and Marie, I've got a long history with them. And I'd hide them, but they're part of my fic history and part of who I am.
I'm not confident in my ability to write major OCs without making them exaggerated versions of myself. Or annoying versions of myself. And I annoy myself by torturing said OCs. (One of them does have a few sex fics hiding somewhere, too, to balance it out.)
And it's also hard to talk about my OCs because I have such mixed feelings about them. So, I'll go into my next bit.
* I write for both myself and others; sometimes I write for myself because there isn't enough for others.
I think I can safely say that most of my OCs, I write for myself. But sometimes I have a powerful urge to write and have no clue *what* to write. That's when I turn to others and say, "what would you like to see?" - I'd never have thought of writing, say, Takumi/Yuuji if I hadn't been asked to. And I'll sometimes write popular pairings - Conner/Kira comes to mind - just to be popular. (Needless to say, the more likely I can see a pairing directly impacts how good/finished the product *is*!)
Some fics can turn out to be a combination of both. "Discovering the Sun" was because the most likely pairing I saw online was Tendou/Kagami. As I said before, I discovered I'm not that much of a Tendou/Kagami 'shipper. But I am intrigued by the canon universe and my own what-if, and so that's come forward even as the slash has somewhat faded. (The fact that I can't seem to include certain plotlines because the fic is so Kagami-focused is a different matter.) Of course, there's also the fact that
capncosmo won't read it until it's done that keeps me writing it as well....I tend to write fandoms and pairings that aren't popular. Face it, on the Toku side, there's more Sentai than Kamen Rider fanfic. Well, there's more Kamen Rider than Ultraman or Kaiju/Godzilla fanfic, but I haven't seen much of those except snippets of Godzilla movies and Ultraman Nexus. So, I write Kamen Rider. Maybe I hope that someone might start watching it because I'm writing it. In that vein, I need to work on my Kamen Rider Blade fanfic; it's getting to the point where Den-O might actually be decently covered.
* Some shows I read fanfic for I've never seen, or seen only bits of.
I don't like The Sentinel very much, but I love its fic. And at the rate I keep picking up House fic, I should start watching that show too. Don't look to me writing in either fandom anytime soon, however.
* I used to be anti-slash. But then, I hated Power Rangers in college, and look at the makeup of my fanfic archive now....
I first ran across slash, or at least the term, before I got to college. It was in a book about Star Trek (TOS) fandom, I think. (Yes, this was pre-Internet.) When I heard of Kirk/Spock, I was pretty much "ew!", because guys didn't romance guys. But College was about the time I discovered the Gay Rights issue. I think I write at least some slash now because I'm fairly pro-Gay Rights. I figure if I'm open-minded, then I might as well be open-minded in my fanfic as well.
Oh, and I have no clue why I started watching and writing PR. But if I hadn't, I probably would have a smaller archive and a lot less people on my Flist, so I'm not ashamed. And I wouldn't have discovered Sentai, Kamen Rider, or learned any Japanese, either, so I consider it worth it.
(I, however, don't intend to tell my Japanese-American eye doctor that I had to temporarily put aside Japanese in order to work on Swedish....)
* I'm really bad at reviewing.
I should say that I'm really bad at critical reviewing - I don't want to hurt peoples' feelings, because that causes conflict, which causes pain on both ends. Which is really funny, because I know a lot of the people I do read most of the time are able to take criticism. And I don't want to scare newbie writers into not writing before they get their skills together, or get flamed by people who think they're beyond criticism. I recognize that this is not good (on either end), but I have a bad habit of doing neutral or saccharine reviews. Which doesn't do anybody any good.
(I also hate to admit it, but I'm not always good at recognizing *flaws* in stories either! So sometimes I leave good reviews on bad stuff just because I don't realize it's bad. I make a bad beta.)
* Like most people, I don't like my own writing. I think that most people around me write better than I do.
Yes, I realize my grammar is better than most of the people at fanfiction.net, and being from a world before text-messaging really helps my spelling. But I look at other peoples' work and wonder how in the hell I graduated with a degree in *Creative Writing* without being able to string a plot, or even a bunch of sentences, together. I see most peoples' writing sparkle in comparison to mine. Their words make sense, their characters have magic, where I just have a bunch of dull characters, no description, and very little plot. I often tease
tptigger that she writes better than I do, but it's because she *does*, to my view. (I'm sure she'll disagree; there's a reason we consider ourselves each others' biggest fans....) I mean, there is stuff I like, that I barely can believe I wrote, and stuff I can forgive, because I know that I'm writing it blindly. (Heck, "Discovering The Sun" only goes forward because I figure I can clean up stuff in the next draft, I just have to finish it first.)
Is that eight facts? Wow.
Anyway, I write because I'm compelled to, I write what I want unless I want to write for someone else, I have a love/hate relationship with my OCs, read fanfic for shows I've never seen, hate my writing, and am bad at reviewing. I think that just about covers it. :)
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Cool.
Date: 2007-07-29 11:42 pm (UTC)At first, I was going to say how amazed I was, because 20 years is a long time. Then my memory finally kicked in and I realized that I was also "writing" fanfic 22 years ago. Granted, I was like 4 and would regale my mom with stories about my Mary Sue team of human Care Bears who'd save the world.
Every time I create an OC, they start off as Mary Sues. Then I just let them develop, and they grow out of it. :)
I totally hear you on that.
I do that all the time. :)
I'm always forgetting to review things.
I don't think it so much makes you a bad beta. Not everyone sees things the same way. I've had betas who've complained about "issues" in my fics which aren't really issues because of the way I wrote it, but would be issues if it was written in a different tone.
Betas are always most effective when they're on the same wavelength as you. Like, I have a beta in NCIS who practically shares a brain with me. Our writing styles are very similiar, so it's easy for her to pick up on the problems in my fics. Whereas, I've had beta who's styles are massively different from my own, and they rarely notice part of the fic I consider rough.
I guess I'm a minority then. I love my writing. I'm rather embarrassed by some of the stuff from my fangirl phase, but there's always been good points in every one of my fics. From the first one on. I don't hate my writing because each fic I've written was the best I could do at that point in time. I get better, I grow, I still re-read a lot of my old work with a sense of enjoyment.
Granted, I don't think I'm the best writer around. I have weaknesses where others have strengths, and I have strengths where others have weaknesses.
Re: Cool.
Date: 2007-07-31 01:47 am (UTC)You win at earliest writing. (I can say one thing; Even looking back at my first fanfic, I can say it's coherent, if just lacking a bit of... life experience.)
I'm sure mine do; I just can't see it too well.
Me too. Bummer.
Well, there's a difference, and maybe I wasn't being too clear (I really can outBridge Bridge half the time when I'm not imitating Sky), in that I am very uncritical of stuff. It's not really spotting what's wrong, it's an overpoliteness. It is easier to spot the right things when you share a brain with your beta (I've had some of those), but me... I'm very reluctant to criticize. Even with people who can take it. For example, if I ripped one of your stories apart in a critical review, in constructive criticism, I wouldn't be afraid that you'd flame me to high heaven. And yet, I'm afraid of doing it because it *might* happen. My brain is weird.
The different perspectives is a good point, though. I do see things a lot of people don't see, and vice versa.
* Like most people, I don't like my own writing. I think that most people around me write better than I do.
Yay! That's really cool of you. It's a nice attitude to have.
Re: Cool.
Date: 2007-08-16 12:48 am (UTC)I don't see it as weird on your part. For me, being critical of both my own writing and that of others was a learned skill. I want to be a professional writer, and thus need to be able to handle harsher crit. So I had to teach myself to not only be able to step back from my work and look at the bad and the good, but to really see it in other work as well. The downside is that I enjoy less fanfics though.
And I know what you mean about worries of flaming. I've adopted the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy for myself. Unless you hunt me down and specifically ask my opinion on your fic, I won't tell you the warts.
Re: Cool.
Date: 2007-07-31 01:53 am (UTC)Re: Cool.
Date: 2007-08-16 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-30 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 01:52 am (UTC)Anyway, except for the very wonderful and fortunate Angel Negra (above), I think most of us do hate our fics. I think they really do look better when we're not reading them.