Outdoing Myself. And the Ficswap DNW Debate.

[dawn_felagund]

It's never good when I outdo myself in terms of working hard. Between Monday and Tuesday, I worked 28 hours: two 14-hour days. I'm not as tired as I probably should be, but I still did not allow myself to bring work home tonight. I felt like a turtle without my shell coming home without my backpack, but here I am

Comments

[just_jenni]

"But the recipient also does not get full creative control over my work. You are requesting a piece of work from an artist, not typing requests into a fast-food kiosk so that an assembly line system can produce a burger matching your specifications."

I think you hit the nail on the head there.

When I read this (and clicked on the link to Indy's piece and read that too) I definitely felt a chill. I am from a different, very un-entitled generation who were raised to actually feel LUCKY to have anything nice happen to them, i.e. receive gifts, and we were taught to appreciate and be thankful for all gifts, no matter what we really thought of them, and be gracious to the giver, recognizing that the person had gone out of their way to produce the gift at some expense to themselves.

While ideally a balance should be struck between the 'enslavement' of my youth and the entitlement of today's children/young adults, the issues being brought up at this time tend to make my poor old simple mind swirl with confusion and angst.

This is very sad:

"I feel like the addlepated old aunt whose been gleefully knitting handmade sweaters for her family for years and has only now found out that half of them hate wool and the other half hate the colors she chose, and what she thought were smiles were grimaces as they rolled their eyes behind her back. I thought that doing my best on a story about something I knew a person liked counted for something, even if I made narrative or interpretive choices they wouldn't have thought to make themselves, even if it was written in first person."

I feel horrible that you were made to feel this way and that you feel now that you should second-guess yourself and what you've written. I used to love taking part in fic swaps but haven't been able to for personal reasons for quite some time. But I'm very much feeling the chill you spoke of. I've always given my best in fic swaps and hoped that the recipients have enjoyed the little gifts I've written for them and worked hard on producing. I'm second-guessing that now, but I don't want to see the trend of fic-swapping die.

We truly are living in the most horrible times. I hate what we are doing to each other.