self-love

[lobelia321]

Those of you who write or have written: can you truly say that you love anybody else's fics better than your own? Or do you actually, deep down, love your own best?

Or is it a kind of fraught relationship?

Comments

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

There are a very few people whose stories I love better than my own. A small pantheon of goddesses.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Better? And why do you love those stories better?

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a good writer. But some people, I read their stories, and I think: I wish I had written this. This is better than mine. This is what my stories aspire to.

Fortunately for my ego, there are only about three writers who fit in this class.

I do love my own stories, and I view with suspicion those who claim to dislike their own stories. Because if I am not for me, than who is? If you don't like your story, why should I?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can sympathise with you totally: if you don't love your story, why should I? (said to a writer who claims not to love her stories)

But, alas, I, too, know the feeling of 'this is the type of story I wish I could have written'. There are some stories that are fantastic but they are written in a style I wouldn't choose for whatever reason or in a mode that I know I simply can't do or in a way that's just not me, but sometimes there's a fic that is me but for some odd reason it wasn't written by me!

Actually, the one thing that makes this experience rare for me is that I am so obsessed by the rare pairings and they get written, by definition, rarely. And mostly not in a way that is 'me'.

When I had this feeling strongest was with a published author Anne Marie Macdonald. That is how I wish I could write. But I can't. So I slash.

I think I am a good writer, too!

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

That's an easy question :) I do love LOTS of fics MUCH better than my own. I can't imagine loving any intellectual product of mine that much. I somehow think it's a default, or is it not?

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

Btw, that's why, probably, my fandom role is a reccer first, and then anything else :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me, *g*.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think it is a default! People seem to have quite different responses; some automatically love their own best. And then I'm wondering: why do you love yours not as well as some of the others'? What is it exactly?

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

It's just that it's not *interesting* to read my own fic :) I know everything in there. No surprises, no that undefinable thing that is main for me in reading - I can't *quite* forget what I wrote.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is true: no surprises. But to me the surprises came in the writing and this memory is preserved when I re-read my fics. Also, when I know the plot I read for other things, I can savour the words and the sentences more. Also, do you not re-read some other authors' fics? I do. I've re-read some authors' fics a dozen or more times. So I know what's going to happen and the surprises are gone but I just love the immersion.

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

I do. And I do re-read my own too. It's just... I don't know, it's not like this :) I quite like what I write, don't take me wrong. I don't post a fic until I'm really satisfied with it and so on. Maybe I just like reading far better than writing.

What *is* clear though, is that I'm no good at rationalizing things :D

[crazybutsound]

The reason I stopped writing fic all of a sudden is because I could not love my fic better than most of what was out there. It's not to say I don't like some of my fics and that I'm not proud of them, but that in the face of a lot of what fandom has to offer, I always find my fics lacking.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is interesting. I won't go into any paeons of praise here because that is not what my question was about but I am interested in what precisely it is that fandom is offering and that your fics are lacking, in your view?

[crazybutsound]

Actually, I just found my fics lacking in originality. There was so much out there, so many inventive people who came up with great ideas for plot and I just couldn't find anything interesting or new to write about. So I gave up. I just didn't think my fics were original enough or had good enough plots. It wasn't the writing so much as the heart of them, you know? I mean, i think I can write pretty well, at least as good as a lot of people in fandom and better than quite a few too, but I had nothing interesting to write about. Everything I felt I could write about, I found other people had done just as well if not better. So I stopped.

The only fic of mine I liked enough to want to really work on was "London Calling", and because of other personal and sentimental reasons, I never got to finish it. Maybe I should try again...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether that is a fandom tiredness setting in. That when a fandom has been round long enough and with masses of writers in it, then everything seems to have been 'done'. Otoh, two writers can take the same theme and it will come out totally differently. Sometimes, though, as they say in German, the air just goes out. And then you don't feel like doing that anymore.

I have had on-phases and off-phases in writing now for 35 years so it's probably safe to say that my current off-phase will at some point end. Could be another ten years (*g*) but it'll come round again. Is this also the same with you?

[crazybutsound]

I've had on and off phases too, so I don't know. Maybe I'll go back to writing, maybe I won't, maybe it'll be tomorrow, maybe in a few years... the frustration at the moment though is that I want to write. I haven't stopped having the urge to write, I just cannot think of something to write about, either in fandom or out of it. This not writing wouldn't be so frustrating if it weren't for that, lol.

But yes, a lot of it probably also had to do with fandom tiredness, not to mention the uneasiness with RPS that I developped when I started to get involved in the Libertines fandom. It's all very complicated but I have been thinking about taking up my pen again lately, so who knows? Maybe I'm on the brink of a new phase, lol.

[kallistei.livejournal.com]

I only love a few of my own - the ones where I get absorbed by the story and forget that I wrote them at all.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

O god, I know what you mean. But then I also wonder do I ever really get so absorbed that I totally forget the writing process?

[giglet.livejournal.com]

I did once pick up a magazine, pick a story, read it with a lot of enjoyment, and then found my name at the end of it. I'd completely forgotten writing it, submitting it, wrangling with the editor, and having it published. I didn't even recognize it while reading it!

Then again, my absent-mindedness and distraction have caused me problems all my life, so it was a pleasant change to have them grant me a "first reading" of my own story.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*chokes on laughter*

That is priceless!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting. I don't think I can really compare the two, because I love my fics and other people's in entirely different ways. My love for my own fics is sort of weird and tangled and obsessive and sweaty, whereas that for other people's stuff is fresh-faced and starry-eyed and swoony. However, I can recall a time when I read a fic and, for the first time, thought: "This is better than what I write. I don't like that." Which isn't to say I hadn't read fics I considered better than mine before. I just hadn't minded then. Maybe that's when the rot set in (she mutters darkly)...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh shit, I hate that. The minding! What a terrible description of a terrible moment! See, how do we guard against that? What to do? I agree, the two experiences are very, very different. So then why did it matter that the one experience of reading suddenly spilled over in the other of writing and made the rot set in? (And was it really that which set up the rot??)

Rot

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

I think it was a symptom rather than a cause. Not that I really know anything about the rot, really - it's a very odd thing. I've embarked on a new plan to cure the rot, to wit: ignore it and write something anyway. We shall see how this one pans out. Be nice if it worked.

[thejennabides.livejournal.com]

I can truly and honestly say that there are several people whose fics I love better than my own.

On the other hand, I have often said that there are better Sean/Orlando writers and I have cited authors and individual fics as evidence. But deep down inside, I have to confess that my own Sean/Orlando is my favorite.

Maybe I'm not lying, though: better doesn't necessarily mean more beloved...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Exactly! This is why, I guess, perhaps subconsciously even, I asked about love and not quality evaluation. I think you are really onto something there.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Fascinating question. I am *all* for the self-loving.

That is, I love my writing (sometimes I hate it) with a mad passion (this applies not only to my fic but my poetry and my academic writing -- yes i am that preverted). I love writing. I love the process. I love revision. I love the product. I am totally and bizarrely out of synch with everyone else I know. Always have been.

I do love other stories -- but agree with the others that it's a different kind of love.

But truth to say, if I was made to choose, I'd probably say I love my own writing best. Which is probably why I spend more time writing than reading when I'm rushed for time which I am *constantly* these days.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am impressed that you unequivocally can love your own writing, the process, the revising, the everything. I angst and torment myself over my writing. Over my academic writing and then over my fic writing as well (which is supposed to be rest and relaxation from the academic writing, ack!). What is the other kind of love exactly, I wonder, that we have for others' writing?

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I realized after I posted that there is one caveat here--I haven't ever gone back and reread my dissertation after it was *done,* nor my two published books or the articles I've published in anthologies/periodicals. Something about getting through the whole publiation process is sort of a final kind of well separation maybe? Not a loss of love, but a sort of "you're on your own there kid out in the great big world, I'm not your only reader now."

The angst is much more common from everyone I talk to (including students in my creative writing classes over the year). One friend at least, a comp specialist, and I have talked about how she can better relate to students (through her own angst and struggles) in terms of teaching writing than I can. And it's true. When I talk to my students about my own writing and process, I always emphasize that just because I love what I do when I'm doing it does not guarantee any kind of quality -- the difficulty of writing or lack thereof is not a guarantee of quality, at least not to my mind.

The love for others writing--for me, it's surprise. It's like, wow, I'd never think to do that, so the fics I most love are those that walk into my mind, take me over, and make me see the world from their view for a while (not much different than original fic's effect on me really), which is a lovely vacation from my own brain.

Er, so to speak!

*Wonders how many people would think I am psychotic at this point!*

[yellow-oranges.livejournal.com]

LOL! Erm, no I love other people's fics more. But I do wonder if mine haven't been read by enough people. Although when I read them I am dead chuffed at some passages and occasionally embarrassed as hell at others. So in sum,

???

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I was interested that you hopped from talking about loving your fics to how many others read them. Which is really another issue but seems to be related in your mind. Is it??

[yellow-oranges.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even noticed that!! The leap made sense at the time. As bad and sexless (!) as my fics are, I did work fairly hard on them. I would like other people's input. A future entry talks about the fic vs. the process and they are very intertwined. I think maybe it's easier to see what you were trying to do and read between the lines with your own fic.

I don't feel I've expanded very well on my earlier comment. Perhaps there's a reason I don't write fic anymore?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, I totally agree on the reading between the lines. But often other readers will also read between the lines and frequently they find things between those lines that I did not realise I had ever put there. I love that!

Writing and the God Complex

[thamiris.livejournal.com]

Lobelia, this question is evil, and my brain is gooey after trying to bang out a cogent response. In other words, you rock!

I love best the stories I write, and the stories about which I write. I need to be involved in the creation of a narrative, to be part of the story, to be the story, and simply reading others' fanfiction can't compete with the stories I compose sui generis or the stories I compose from others' stories (which is how I'd define the art of analysis). Reading alone is for me at least one step short of either fiction-writing or analysis, which both depend on critical reading and critical writing, on bloody, sweaty, teary engagement, because I love best what is mine, mine, mine...

...which probably makes me more of a grubby three-year-old with a favourite toy than the God in my subject line, but that's okay--I happily embrace my inner toddler.

Re: Writing and the God Complex

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Sheldrake mentioned the blood and the sweat and I think there's something in that. It was what I was thinking too, though not in so many articulate words, just inchoately, that the very process binds you to the product in a way that doesn't happen when reading others' fics. It's not about quality evaluation, it's a very personal relationship. But for me it is also fraught for that very reason. It is almost easier to love someone else's fic -- although this, for me, can lead either to 'I could do this' thoughts or 'I could never do this' thoughts, so gets me back to me again! Perhaps not so unfraught, after all...

[giglet.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do love my own best -- even the feeble sorry ones. That's partly because I *know* my own best, and partly because if I don't love them, who will?

Other people's fics are presents, and awesome, and I love some of them, too. But they're more like friends, not family.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like this difference a lot! Friends not family! Friends whom you can unequivocally love and invite into your home but family which is fraught and problematic and sometimes you hate and sometimes you love with a strange desperation.

[ios-pillow-book.livejournal.com]

Hah-hah ...

*lamelaughattempt*

Tricky question.

There are lots and lots of fics I love ten times better than mine. Actually, I was sometimes almost paralysed after having read fics *I* considered perfect in the sense of why even try if I never get there. But, of course, that's the wrong approach, and even if I'm at best (more or less) satisfied with the outcome, I just love the process of writing, the surprises it brings and the complete immersion into another world/another person. And that's what in the end makes me start writing again.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Another interesting response! So is it the act of writing you love over and above its product??