My angst is broken.
Beware the tl;dr and the navel-gazing.
Between Five First Kisses and Second Chances, I broke my angst.
No, really. It's broken. Fractured, possibly a compound fracture. I have the X-rays right here.
I am SO DRAWN to the angsty side of Jack/Daniel- to the fact that they are so wound up in each other, have so much history good and bad. They are both such strong personalities, and those personalities are so often directly in conflict, and these aren't stupid conflicts. They aren't petty soap opera solved-if-only-they-talked to one another conflicts. They care deeply about each other, and this gives them the power to hurt each other, and sometimes they use that power. Maybe intentionally (because my Daniel is kind of a little bitch) or unintentionally (because my Jack is kind of an unintentional bastard and avoidant coward, though I think I want to start writing him differently for some things coming up). Their work is important to them, the team is important to them, and they are important to each other- all of these things passionately, intelligently, directly so. I love that combination, and that means that I love the angst that inevitably results.
That said, I broke it. I have this incredible urge now to settle down and write schmoop. Lazy weekends getting out of bed only to shower together and cook for each other! (Is it just me, or is this fandom obsessed with cooking? Maybe SPN warped my ideas about normal food usage) Secret vacations! Condo-shopping together in DC! (Or, worse yet, shopping for condo furnishings in DC!) Wedding fic!
God help me, I want wedding fic. I want the one where Jack goes all out and gets down on one knee and the one where they hold a tiny little hush-hush ceremony with just SG1 that gets out of hand because somehow (Walter) everybody in the SGC finds out and comes to show support and it overwhelms them, and the one where don't ask, don't tell is repealed and they are married practically before the ink is dry (except that SGA has done all the don't ask, don't tell plots SO MUCH BETTER than SG1 fandom) and the one...
I HATE wedding fic. I hate the "this is the One True Relationship Model" vibe the "obviously, they MUST be happy now; they're married!" idiocy and the "well, now it's finally a Real Relationship" implication and... lots of things about it. But my angst is broken and this is what is happening!
Or porn. I want the porn, with lots of talking and lots of endearments and lots of "I love you"s and every different combination of experienced/inexperienced and top/bottom and every possible point on the sensual-frenzied scale. Because they totally deserve it, after what I did to them.
That won't happen, because I have spn_nostalgia due in three days (I have barely THOUGHT about it. I am feeling so guilty over that- it will suck so much) and crossovers that I promised for the Fandom-free-for-all and the Pushing Daisies thing I want to keep coming and the SGA crack I said I would do. Then I will have to go to my serious WIP list and actually pick something and finish it, because my planning brain and my editing brain are both so much more developed than my writing brain and I am trying to change that.
But re-reading Five First Kisses and Second Chances made me think about my own writing (and re-read tons of other stuff in turn).
I am so drawn to vignette format -- inherent strength of fanfic or inability to sustain longer? And I obsess about structure and symmetry (the three-conversations-three-puzzles bit in Problem Solving, the head on the shoulder symmetry in Timing, all of all my various five things). Using structure as a substitute for plot? This may be a problem in the amnesia WIP.
Also thoughts on POV, and the fact that I find myself tending to do weird things with POV and emotional intensity. Like, while tight-third-personal seems like the natural POV of fanfic to me, I actually find myself ratcheting the overt emotional intensity of a scene way down at the most emotionally climactic moments, sometimes practically to the point of objective-third, with obsessive focus on words and body language and facial expression but no overt emotion at all. Sometimes I think the effect (the juxtaposition of the writing's intensity level with the scene's intensity level, in either direction actually) is good, but sometimes not and it was all very puzzling to me.
Then I realized I was trying to imitate Hemingway. No, really, I am in awe of the emotional intensity and complexity of his brutally objective-third POV stories, and I find myself subconsciously wishing for adjectives like "spare" and "sparse" and "stark." Then I realized that loving Faulkner syntactically and Hemingway tonally leads to Weird Shit. (Then I looked at a particular WIP and went "it all makes sense now!")
So this (being conscious of the difference between the emotional level of the action and of the prose, and even the use of outright objective-third) is another tool in the toolbox, but I think I need to start using it or not using it consciously. And man, isn't that always the way?
Because this whole seven-month thing (November-December last year, April-August this year) has been seven months of learning how to write, and it feels like I've barely started. And the thing that happens over and over again is that I notice something, and end up going "okay, but this time do it on purpose." Then I wonder if that makes me a bad writer, because I see other writers talk about how things "just come to them" and how they wrote something "all in a rush" or how their readers point out themes that they never knew were there and... I'm not like that. I STRUGGLE, dammit, for every single word, and I have to think about everything I'm trying for (tone and mood and structure and symmetry and theme and emotional beats) and if I was any good wouldn't a lot of that just happen?
Then I say to myself, "Self, they have been doing this for much longer than you. Plus, you have always over-intellectualized everything anyway, so relax."
Between Five First Kisses and Second Chances, I broke my angst.
No, really. It's broken. Fractured, possibly a compound fracture. I have the X-rays right here.
I am SO DRAWN to the angsty side of Jack/Daniel- to the fact that they are so wound up in each other, have so much history good and bad. They are both such strong personalities, and those personalities are so often directly in conflict, and these aren't stupid conflicts. They aren't petty soap opera solved-if-only-they-talked to one another conflicts. They care deeply about each other, and this gives them the power to hurt each other, and sometimes they use that power. Maybe intentionally (because my Daniel is kind of a little bitch) or unintentionally (because my Jack is kind of an unintentional bastard and avoidant coward, though I think I want to start writing him differently for some things coming up). Their work is important to them, the team is important to them, and they are important to each other- all of these things passionately, intelligently, directly so. I love that combination, and that means that I love the angst that inevitably results.
That said, I broke it. I have this incredible urge now to settle down and write schmoop. Lazy weekends getting out of bed only to shower together and cook for each other! (Is it just me, or is this fandom obsessed with cooking? Maybe SPN warped my ideas about normal food usage) Secret vacations! Condo-shopping together in DC! (Or, worse yet, shopping for condo furnishings in DC!) Wedding fic!
God help me, I want wedding fic. I want the one where Jack goes all out and gets down on one knee and the one where they hold a tiny little hush-hush ceremony with just SG1 that gets out of hand because somehow (Walter) everybody in the SGC finds out and comes to show support and it overwhelms them, and the one where don't ask, don't tell is repealed and they are married practically before the ink is dry (except that SGA has done all the don't ask, don't tell plots SO MUCH BETTER than SG1 fandom) and the one...
I HATE wedding fic. I hate the "this is the One True Relationship Model" vibe the "obviously, they MUST be happy now; they're married!" idiocy and the "well, now it's finally a Real Relationship" implication and... lots of things about it. But my angst is broken and this is what is happening!
Or porn. I want the porn, with lots of talking and lots of endearments and lots of "I love you"s and every different combination of experienced/inexperienced and top/bottom and every possible point on the sensual-frenzied scale. Because they totally deserve it, after what I did to them.
That won't happen, because I have spn_nostalgia due in three days (I have barely THOUGHT about it. I am feeling so guilty over that- it will suck so much) and crossovers that I promised for the Fandom-free-for-all and the Pushing Daisies thing I want to keep coming and the SGA crack I said I would do. Then I will have to go to my serious WIP list and actually pick something and finish it, because my planning brain and my editing brain are both so much more developed than my writing brain and I am trying to change that.
But re-reading Five First Kisses and Second Chances made me think about my own writing (and re-read tons of other stuff in turn).
I am so drawn to vignette format -- inherent strength of fanfic or inability to sustain longer? And I obsess about structure and symmetry (the three-conversations-three-puzzles bit in Problem Solving, the head on the shoulder symmetry in Timing, all of all my various five things). Using structure as a substitute for plot? This may be a problem in the amnesia WIP.
Also thoughts on POV, and the fact that I find myself tending to do weird things with POV and emotional intensity. Like, while tight-third-personal seems like the natural POV of fanfic to me, I actually find myself ratcheting the overt emotional intensity of a scene way down at the most emotionally climactic moments, sometimes practically to the point of objective-third, with obsessive focus on words and body language and facial expression but no overt emotion at all. Sometimes I think the effect (the juxtaposition of the writing's intensity level with the scene's intensity level, in either direction actually) is good, but sometimes not and it was all very puzzling to me.
Then I realized I was trying to imitate Hemingway. No, really, I am in awe of the emotional intensity and complexity of his brutally objective-third POV stories, and I find myself subconsciously wishing for adjectives like "spare" and "sparse" and "stark." Then I realized that loving Faulkner syntactically and Hemingway tonally leads to Weird Shit. (Then I looked at a particular WIP and went "it all makes sense now!")
So this (being conscious of the difference between the emotional level of the action and of the prose, and even the use of outright objective-third) is another tool in the toolbox, but I think I need to start using it or not using it consciously. And man, isn't that always the way?
Because this whole seven-month thing (November-December last year, April-August this year) has been seven months of learning how to write, and it feels like I've barely started. And the thing that happens over and over again is that I notice something, and end up going "okay, but this time do it on purpose." Then I wonder if that makes me a bad writer, because I see other writers talk about how things "just come to them" and how they wrote something "all in a rush" or how their readers point out themes that they never knew were there and... I'm not like that. I STRUGGLE, dammit, for every single word, and I have to think about everything I'm trying for (tone and mood and structure and symmetry and theme and emotional beats) and if I was any good wouldn't a lot of that just happen?
Then I say to myself, "Self, they have been doing this for much longer than you. Plus, you have always over-intellectualized everything anyway, so relax."