the steps of orig

[lobelia321]

Next week, I'm going on a five-day creative writing workshop run by the Arvon foundation in Yorkshire.

I am very excited about this.

I am also full of trepidation.



You're supposed to take up your novel draft with you and work on it. I don't have a novel draft! Or rather, I have two nanowrimo novels and I've been pretending they're novel drafts!

One of them I have lost interest in. The other one... I just don't know!

I have about 20 novel ideas in my head, five of them perhaps seriously. But which one to pick? I just can't seem to work up the sustained passion for any one of them.

This is what fandom has that orig does not have: ready-made passion. Of course, I can obsess for weeks, months, yea years! over Draco Malfoy or Orlando Bloom. I can even still now get shivers down my spine thinking about John Sheppard on that island with that wraith.

But the origs? It's so hard! You've got to make up your own canon first, and then you've got to fanfic them, and it's embarrassing just to go in and plain slash them, and be so obviously derivative of another genre altogether (although, and this is a total aside deserving of a separate post, I have just started reading Cassandra Clare's City of Bones and my, oh my, it seems that you can actually transpose slash into orig and get away with it... but more on that anon).

Anyway, to get back to the steps of orig (as I see them).

1. Invent canon. (You've got to be your own Powers That Be!)

2. Twist canon into fanon, keeping slashy passion without being too slashy about it. (See how hard this is? See??)

3. Do all this without a fandom to support you! No challenges! No santas! No hyperbolic feedback to cheer you on your wippish way! No pics, no vids, no droolmoots, no nothing!

4. How do people do it, I ask?

*buries head under two-volume Oxford Shorter*

Comments

[perverse-idyll.livejournal.com]

I am so envious that you're 1) going to Yorkshire, which alone is a fantasy-come-true, and 2) going there to participate in a novel-writing workshop! How marvelous is that? I would envy you even more if I actually had something of the novelistic species moldering away on my hard drive, but all such specimens have had the decency to disappear or die off in quiet.

And it's true! Fandom is some sort of drug, complete with addictive tendencies and happy deliriums. It's totally consuming in ways that writing original fic can barely touch, because in the latter you, the writer, have to remain in some way engaged but also detached, like an engineer pondering a structural problem. Also, I can't tell you how many pro fic how-to books I've read that stress the fact that one should never fall in love with one's characters or indulge one's fantasies, for fear of deforming the narrative; aesthetics are more important, excess is bad, and emotional intensity, being excessive, is a sign that the writer's not in control. This is the exact opposite of fan fiction, which values intensity and identification more than it values artistry.

What it does it mean to translate the erotics of slash into original fiction? Can it be done? Or rather, done well? Is it possible to create characters who still vibrate with that intensity of response without it seeming over-the-top romantic or (another conversation entirely) "unrealistic"?

But yay, you're writing! I will happily swarm upon any novel born of your hands and your brain. Especially if you manage to smuggle a semblance of slashy passion into it. And you should poke fandom with a stick and see whether a writing group pops out or, failing that, a nice handful of discerning cheerleaders. Because it seems to me that several other aspiring pro ficcers have found companions in the literary struggle by turning to their peers in fandom. Writers shouldn't have to thrash about in isolation anymore. Invoke the power of the internets!

Lastly, I wish you had at least a month in Yorkshire. Five days will be just enough to get you all excited and possibly inspired, and then, whoops! Deposit you back in reality. Which sounds incredibly frustrating.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

What a nice comment! Thank you so much! The transition to origific is fraught and hard. This is odd in some ways because I started writing as soon as I learned my alphabet and, of course, it was all origfic (though I didn't learn the term until 2002, *g*). Then I fell into fandom and didn't look back except now I am looking back and thinking, where did all that orig passion go? Sucked into the anal annals of Fandom!!! Argh, *stabs self*.

But I didn't really 'write' until fandom. Fandom taught me everything I know: it's true!! And I, too, have read scores of how-to books on writing because I am a sucker for self-help procrastination. I would totally ignore the advice of not falling in love with one's characters, though. I cannot write if I am not in love with the characters. It is fandom that taught me about the libidinal nature of writing. I used to tut-tut feministically at Picasso and Renoir saying how they painted with their pricks -- no longer do I tut as they were totally onto something, namely, as you formulate it, the erotics of painting/writing! And I would not oppose aesthetics and excess but try and celebrate some sort of aesthetics of excess. cesperanza once put it beautifully: Less is more except sometimes more is more. We fans love more is more!

But we also love more is less because why else do we write endless stories about Male Guys who cannot express their emotions and sit taciturnly in front of the sports channel, six-pack cradled on lap, hiding their painful hard-ons for the adored hunk on the couch next to them. And all they say is, 'Want another beer?' And then after the first kiss: 'Fancy a beer?' And so it goes, and we love it. And in the throes of passionate desire, they might just come out with a 'You know', and we fall down swooning. Well, I do, anyway.

What it does it mean to translate the erotics of slash into original fiction? Can it be done? Or rather, done well? Is it possible to create characters who still vibrate with that intensity of response without it seeming over-the-top romantic or (another conversation entirely) "unrealistic"?
Eek so many tricksy questions! I absolutely believe it can be done but how, how, how?? That is the key question.

Er, I am not really writing. I am on hold until Yorkshire... Except in a panic today I gathered up a miscellany of print-outs and plan to shlepp them and my laptop to Caffe Nero for some... some... I don't know! Some... thing!

Yes, advice re internets is great! Thank you!!

If I crave more after Yorkshire with a terrible desperation, I will look into ruining the family financially by signing up for an M.A. *facepalms* Or follow the happy advice of a happy novelist friend: "Don't bother with these courses; why not just sit down and write?"

Why not indeed???!!!!

I know of four people on my flist who have published novels, and another who has published a short story, and a sixth who is taking a year off work to write her novel. Precedents!!!! Slashsibs are go.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

i>But I didn't really 'write' until fandom.

Me neither. I think that's part of the problem. I associate enjoying writing with that particular experience, and that is not the experience of most writers.

And all they say is, 'Want another beer?' And then after the first kiss: 'Fancy a beer?' And so it goes, and we love it.

Hahaha, yes, we do! That's exactly what got me into this whole sorry mess. Bloody Sean Bean and his fictional counterpart's taciturn Yorkshire ways!

I would totally ignore the advice of not falling in love with one's characters, though. I cannot write if I am not in love with the characters.

So would I. I can't think of a piece of advice more guaranteed to totally strangle any emerging, fragile, tiny fragment of joy in writing, at birth. I couldn't write fiction without being in love with the characters , with the world in the story (for whatever your definition of 'in love' is), and I firmly believe that's true of most pro writers (good ones, anyway). There's obviously a conspiracy amongst how-to advice writers who want to get rid of the competition!

Maybe when you've finished something and are starting to edit it (oh, to be in that position!), that's when you need to take off your rose-tinted specs of love, and start being strict. But you need the passion to get to that point in the first place.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

you need the passion to get to that point in the first place.

Oh, and maybe a big huge does of NOT BEING SO DAMN LAZY! *flagellates self*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The bloody LAZY thing! It is the biggest and only obstacle! I'm starting to think nothing bloody else matters, let's write rubbish or derivative nonsense or verbose stuff or 'fancy a beer', but let's just DO IT.

Argh.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am having to revise this. I did write before fandom but I never finished anything. I didn't know how. It wasn't until fandom that I wrote and finished and posted things that actually had a beginning and an ending. And that actually got read by other people.

And yes, I see totally that this can be part of the problem. Because it is a formative experience! And not the experience of most writers (but surely of many, given the thousands that participate in fandom...)

It's been quite interesting reading over my endless HP notes. Some are very verbose, with kitschy declarations of love, and exposition, and then they get whittled down more and more, until some of the phrases are preserved or recur but the taciturnity has taken over! So it might be worthwhile writing badficcy luvstuff and just keep on writing until somehow, it's been evaporated down to the essentials of 'Fancy a beer?'

I couldn't write fiction without being in love with the characters , with the world in the story
Yes! Why even bother? I could hop over and do my academic writing if I wanted to write without love.

And hahaha, I love the thought that the how-to writers want to kill off the competition!! Hahah!

Yes, and when revising, be strict. But I have nothing to revise as yet. So!!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Formulated a new theory about myself, which I'm sure you need to hear about. ;)

I think, more than anything else, it's the starting point that I miss. Something to bounce off. I was thinking, Ok, I've written lots of things that aren't slash, when I think about it. I've written gen. And I've written fanfiction about things I wasn't even a huge fan of. And I've written successful things that aren't even fanfiction, when it comes down to it!

But it came to me that with all of those things, I had some entry into the material. I was given something to work with. Like, that Yuletide story of mine, In a Dark Wood, I was thinking, well I'm not sure that's really fanfiction. It's a retelling of a fairy tale. But it was having that fairy tale to grab hold of and do something with that made the difference, and in some ways made it come alive for me. The story I wrote for Machine of Death wasn't slash or fanfic, but I had that crucial thing given to me at the beginning which was the idea. Someone else's canon, I suppose.

Even looking back to when I made visual art, that was usually created in response to something someone else had made - a building, a poem, a hymn, a myth.

The thought of starting from scratch, with a blank canvas - just seems to make me freeze in terror, and most of what I write comes out strangled and dried up and dead.

Anway... On that odd note, hope the week goes really well, and you come back all energised and raring to go! :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

So maybe the crux is to find a hook into an orig world. In fact, I'm willing to say that fairy tale fic is actually orig fic because the fairy tale 'fandom', if such it be, is vast enough to qualify for orig. Also, there is the school of thought that argues that no story in the world is ever truly original and that everything boils down to quoting the same old three (or seven, or twelve) plots over and over and over again.

Do you think genre is one way in? As in, 'I will now write sci fi.' Because there you practically have a ready-made world: aliens, space ships, mother ships, geeky scientists. Is this maybe why so many fanfic authors publish fantasy?

On that note: I'm reading City of Bones by Cass Clare. It is, I'm afraid, a bit badficcy but total ficcy! It is, in a way, a cautionary tale because it is too close to about eight canons -- this could well count as crossover fic but in the origworld of published fiction, it is just cringemaking and annoying. I'll post on this at some point, perhaps, but I don't really want CC to read it; I don't want to hurt her feelings.

[perverse-idyll.livejournal.com]

I, too, started out writing original fiction, and then for various reasons lost the spark. Fandom gave that spark back to me in a fireworks explosion of joy. It also provided a training ground more rewarding and instructive than any number of creative writing courses and groups (I used to write such a dense, high-flown, image-clotted sort of prose that I either intimidated or infuriated my peers). Membership in this community, where pleasure is as much a standard as technical perfection, stripped me of my pretensions pretty quickly and gave me an audience whose love of the characters coincided with mine.

The problem, as you say: how to make the return journey from fandom back to our own private dreamworlds and rekindle the same giddy exaltation about our characters that we feel in fandom, shameless in our apparent excess, but inspired because of it? I've always been an excessive writer, but prior to fandom I erred on the side of style. I loved some of my characters fiercely, usually the ones to whom I bequeathed (whether I knew it or not) the slash dynamic, the source of UST, emotional negotiation, and pain. I didn't realize at the time that I was working along classic hurt/comfort lines set within a larger, more commercial narrative context.

My two cents regarding the M.A. (or M.F.A. here in the States): it's useful if you want to teach, but the people I've known who went through the time and cost of earning their degree ended up feeling that it *postponed* their commitment to their writing careers. It was intensive and draining but not necessarily favorable to finding their own voice.

Whoops, work calls! Time to go.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes! Fandom gives the spark back! O god, does it ever. *worships fandom*

Okay, back on track. I was having a polytheistic moment there.

Fandom has provided the bestest, most excitingest and most intellingest 'creative writing workshop' evah. Absolutely. Still, though, fandom has not got a retreat up in Yorkshire -- but I will experience what the retreat in Yorkshire does not have that fandom has, :-) Although I tend to know that already.
But you know, when one is in between fandoms (as I am right now), it can get a bit lonely and almost pointless. I find myself waxing terribly nostalgic, and that is also a bit stymying to creativity.

And I've already said to sheldrake that we love the taciturnity of the lads ("Fancy a beer?" said after a world-changing kiss or an earth-shattering fuck or the revelation of deep and unsuspected passionate love). So I love your point about the dense clotted prose, and how fandom whittles it down to the bare essentials of 'fancy a beer'! (That's my take on that, anyway!)

Yes! Rekindle the giddy exaltation! It can be done; I am convinced it can be done. I guess loving an origchar is only slightly lonelier than loving Dudley Dursley. I love the rare pairings and the obscure characters, so I'm already used to having nobody to share my passion with -- although, given fandom, there's always some other lone soul out there who'll go the mile with you. *g* In a way, it's even lonelier loving Dudley Dursley or, as I did in SGA, April Bingham who was a character that many readers didn't even recognise and thought she was origchar, she was so obscure!

Thanks for being so inspiring!!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Wooo, looking forward to hearing all about it! Good luck! :)

This is what fandom has that orig does not have: ready-made passion.

*nods sorrowfully*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes!

I am so excited, Shel, I wake up earlier each morning.

One more evening!

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I am so jealous!
And I would love to sit down and have coffee with you and talk about Arvon and writing. I miss having someone to talk to about writing.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Let's do have coffee in London sometime -- poss. late Nov/early Dec?

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

doesn't have to be London (you do know where I live now, no?)