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lobelia321Okay, I don't want to go to bed with everyone thinking I'm just going 'feedback, feedback, feedback' because I'm actually not. That is just one of the aspects I've been thinking of in my new posting-fic-again life.
Another aspect is words.
I've had conversations with writers who've said 'I write for myself', and I've had conversations with others who've said 'bullshit, we all write for others'. I can see both points of view, and I think they are both right. For me, writing is an amalgam of writing for myself and writing for others. Writing is always communication, and communication presupposes someone who receives the communication. It's built into the communication. Even my non-posted fics are acts of communication and written, inevitably, with some implicit reader in mind.
But I also write for myself. Or maybe I should say, I've recently been re-learning to write for myself. Because paradoxically, while I was writing my endless HP opus and in effect writing only for myself (because I never posted), I felt much more constrained by possible reader expectation than I do now. I felt worried about the fans and the fandom. But now, that I am blithely posting and not worrying about beta even, I feel much more that I am writing for myself.
I had to write a few fics to get myself there, though. But with this last one, when I was writing I managed not to think or worry about audience. Instead, I thought about words.
I realised that words, for me, are a wonderful resource, source of support and scaffolding. The words will hold me up. All of the other things, plot, structure, characterisation, dialogue, pov -- all of this only exists through and in words. And words are a magical thing, they really are. They are just immaterial lines and dots on page or screen, abstract ciphers, yet in combination they conjure up such great worlds of the imagination. Not only the boys and the men have characterisation; each word has its own character. So I'm thinking there's a third entity to write for, besides writing for others and writing for oneself: writing for the words. Or writing for 'the muse', as one might put it.
So I don't think I'll stop experimenting just yet because I want to explore this 'writing for the words' a while longer. I want to serve my thesaurus and my Oxford Shorter! I want to see where the words lead me. In the Spiralling fic, they took me into unexpected places, so that deep emotions ended up hidden in scientific, very objective language.
Also, I've realised that the fics I like to write are not necessarily identical with the fics I like to read. In SGA, I love those straightforward, late 20th C. generic prose fics, the 'affective realism', as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eyebrowofdoom might call it. But I don't like writing fic like that, perhaps because I find it inordinately difficult. (I've tried with HP for two years!) What I like writing, at the moment, is these prose-switching, pov-veering fics, and I'm not sure I would like reading those in others. But I don't know, perhaps I would; not many people these days are writing experimental fic. Also, lyrical, OTT, sentimental sentences come very easily to me but I never like reading them much in others' fics -- oh, but I do so love writing them! I like writing terse, sparse prose as well, and I also like reading that.
In sum, I truly am grateful that anybody is reading any of these explorations at all because I am learning from what people say; it is so interesting.
sheldrake? Are you going to give me a task to do? I need a scaffolding for John/Wraith!
Another aspect is words.
I've had conversations with writers who've said 'I write for myself', and I've had conversations with others who've said 'bullshit, we all write for others'. I can see both points of view, and I think they are both right. For me, writing is an amalgam of writing for myself and writing for others. Writing is always communication, and communication presupposes someone who receives the communication. It's built into the communication. Even my non-posted fics are acts of communication and written, inevitably, with some implicit reader in mind.
But I also write for myself. Or maybe I should say, I've recently been re-learning to write for myself. Because paradoxically, while I was writing my endless HP opus and in effect writing only for myself (because I never posted), I felt much more constrained by possible reader expectation than I do now. I felt worried about the fans and the fandom. But now, that I am blithely posting and not worrying about beta even, I feel much more that I am writing for myself.
I had to write a few fics to get myself there, though. But with this last one, when I was writing I managed not to think or worry about audience. Instead, I thought about words.
I realised that words, for me, are a wonderful resource, source of support and scaffolding. The words will hold me up. All of the other things, plot, structure, characterisation, dialogue, pov -- all of this only exists through and in words. And words are a magical thing, they really are. They are just immaterial lines and dots on page or screen, abstract ciphers, yet in combination they conjure up such great worlds of the imagination. Not only the boys and the men have characterisation; each word has its own character. So I'm thinking there's a third entity to write for, besides writing for others and writing for oneself: writing for the words. Or writing for 'the muse', as one might put it.
So I don't think I'll stop experimenting just yet because I want to explore this 'writing for the words' a while longer. I want to serve my thesaurus and my Oxford Shorter! I want to see where the words lead me. In the Spiralling fic, they took me into unexpected places, so that deep emotions ended up hidden in scientific, very objective language.
Also, I've realised that the fics I like to write are not necessarily identical with the fics I like to read. In SGA, I love those straightforward, late 20th C. generic prose fics, the 'affective realism', as
eyebrowofdoom might call it. But I don't like writing fic like that, perhaps because I find it inordinately difficult. (I've tried with HP for two years!) What I like writing, at the moment, is these prose-switching, pov-veering fics, and I'm not sure I would like reading those in others. But I don't know, perhaps I would; not many people these days are writing experimental fic. Also, lyrical, OTT, sentimental sentences come very easily to me but I never like reading them much in others' fics -- oh, but I do so love writing them! I like writing terse, sparse prose as well, and I also like reading that.In sum, I truly am grateful that anybody is reading any of these explorations at all because I am learning from what people say; it is so interesting.
sheldrake? Are you going to give me a task to do? I need a scaffolding for John/Wraith!![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2006-04-25 11:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-26 02:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2006-04-26 09:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-27 12:36 pm (UTC)My tabs were zapped again yesterday. This tab malarkey is clearly not for me. I cannot rely on the tabs. I had to trawl through all my Histories to retrieve some of the tabbed fics. :-(
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Date: 2006-04-25 11:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-26 02:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-26 09:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-27 12:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 06:12 pm (UTC)http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0811207897/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-2280683-7475005#reader-page
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-01 08:42 pm (UTC)