fic pride

[lobelia321]

I have discovered another antidote to the feedback trap. It is to love the fic so much yourself that fb is icing and not essential.

I have finished Cadman fic! And it's with the betas, and although often I am very impatient to post, this time I'm quite happy to sit on it a little and wait for comments to come back. This is because I don't mind tinkering with it some more. I finished it in a frenzy of typing last night, after two full-on afternoons and evenings, and then I printed it out and just couldn't stop reading it! I love it!!

I remembered another reason to write (remember I mentioned myself, others and words? Hm, wasn't there a fourth reason? ETA: thematic concepts). Anyway, this other reason is me at age 80. Do I look forward to taking this particular fic out of the ringbinder in 40 years' time, dusting it off and settling down to a lovely read? With many of my fics, I do look forward to that! They will still warm my cockles when I am zimmered out! Not all of my fics, some are more fly-by-night but with the Cadman fic I truly think that I will actually enjoy forgetting the detail of it so that I can discover it again in the future. *g*

So, if I feel like that about the fic, the feedback starts to have a different role. It is more that the fb isn't ego-stroking for myself but that the fb is recognition for the fic. This fic feels already a bit uncoupled from me, although it's not posted; a bit like a child sent out into the world. And now I wish for that child to have recognition and would feel a bit sorry if it didn't get its share.

Anyway, I am normally such a diffident person that it feels almost strange for a change to be proud of something and just to enjoy it. :-) And, as others have said before me, authors tend to like the ones they struggled over best, and this one did take much longer than expected, had to be reshuffled, had to force key scenes on me that I felt reluctant even scared to write; it's not experimental as such but I still learned quite a bit, especially about revision and painstaking going-through after the first rush of gushing it all onto the screen has passed.

I am also quite proud for having pulled myself out of my non-posting slump, literally by the skin of my teeth, forcing indifferent!fic and experimental!prose onto the world but somehow or other that method worked and I seem to have struggled through and come out the other side. It took about six weeks; that's not even that long, considering.

I also bought Jane Smiley's 13 Ways to Read and Write a Novel and will keep you posted on its interesting bits.

Also: thamiris and phineasjones: I haven't forgotten the snippets I promised you!! They're just taking a little longer than anticipated. :-)

Off to a BBQ tonight round at neighbours'. I made a potato salad for it. Ah, spring!

Comments

[justabi.livejournal.com]

I'm totally psyched for Cadman fic! And I totally agree, if you like the story enough yourself you can brush off the, well, the brush off of no feedback. *hugs*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you, you are too kind. I hope the story gets some feedback but you're right, even if I didn't post it, I'd be happy with it sitting in my ring binder. :-)

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

*bounces impatiently*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You are too sweet! Isis is back on Monday but Sheldrake isn't back from Cornwall until Thursday so nothing posted before then. Probably Tues after that. :-) In the meanwhile I'm going to write wraith/John Sheppard!!

[thamiris.livejournal.com]

I wanted to spout something profound about feedback, but it's 2:30 in the morning and my profound-comment maker is on strike. (At least that's my excuse at the mo'. Heh.) Instead, I'll simply say that I've been popping back here at least once a day hoping for the snippet to appear...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Snippet has appeared! And darn it, woman, you threw me a googlie there because that was harder than anticipated. Which is perhaps why I left it so late. But I had an interesting insight which I thank you for. It is that the thing that makes Homer alien and not of the modern world is that there is no subjective pov, almost none of the focalisation we are used to in even the most omniscient narratorish modern novel. Homer is not novel. Homer is epic. And epic is not us. So whatever you do it will tend to come out as parodic and semi-crack with Homer. (These ideas are also somewhat watered by the waters of Mikhail Bakhtin. Who is quoted by many pretentious farts but who is febulous nonethesuch.)

:-) And then, once in the stride, I ended up writing the SGA snippet in Homeric style as well. Once you get the cracky hang of it, it actually starts to flow out onto that keyboard, o noble Thamiris of the well-turned limbs. (And adverbs? No adverbs in Homer!! So that part was easy, *g*)