Writing as a tool to explore fantasies
Prompted by a discussion on the SGCdarkfic list....
This has probably been discussed before ad nauseum, but since I rarely get to read anything--online or otherwise--these days, please bear with me.
( Follow me for a long-ass ramble and questions to boot )
This has probably been discussed before ad nauseum, but since I rarely get to read anything--online or otherwise--these days, please bear with me.
( Follow me for a long-ass ramble and questions to boot )
So many people say that that I'm starting to believe the reason adolescence exists for writers is to get bad!fic out of their systems. Too bad I stopped writing after 6th grade and just started again when I entered online fandom. Now I'll have to get it out of my system in my late thirties. *laugh*
Lots of it isn't neccessarily obviously my fantasies and doesn't relate obviously to my life, but in some way, everything I write I relate to in some way -- or else I wouldn't be able to write it. It would be empty.
I suppose I never thought of it in quite that way before. Thanks for giving me a new angle to ponder.
In that way, it's easier for me to jump from pairing to pairing to ensure that every story will be unique.
Regarding the concept of uniqueness, have you ever noticed any sort of theme that runs throughout many of your stories? I've been trying to decide whether or not similar themes are a bad thing. Most well-known authors write stories with unifying themes or characters, so I tell myself that this is okay. But I also wonder if this is usually a conscious decision on the writer's part. In my case, I've recently noticed a disturbing tendency that I have to put Sam in situations and with people that she has no control over. (This seems to be a bit of my personal life leaking into my fic, but I won't go into that.) Anyway, I was wondering if you ever noticed a trend in your fic--original or fanfic--to use the same types of characters, situations, emotions, etc., despite the fic being unique in every other way.
Thanks for giving me something to think about. :)
And thank you for the same.
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Honestly, I haven't. People occasionally talk about themes they see in their fic or what the one story that they tell over and over again is, and I'm not really sure what mine is. There are several themes I use repeatedly, and I think I have a style that is somehow recognizably mine, and there are definitely story patterns that I especially enjoy -- once someone described my fic as being about what she called "going away-ness," and I guess that's something I write a lot -- people leaving, or having moments that are somehow removed from the real world and then returning to that world -- hmm! I have been trying to figure this out for a long time and I'm not sure exactly what they are but I think I do have themes: nostalgia, homesickness, remember-when, then-and-now -- and those definitely do relate to my RL situation, so... yep!
Incidentally, if you are still interested in the Daniel/Sam/Teal'c, it's here. :)
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Well, I haven't read any other stories of yours besides the one you provided the link to (an oversight I hope to rectify in the near future *g*), but I can definitely see these themes in "Highest Wisdom, Deepest Love"--that feeling of longing for things to be as they were and the sense of overwhelming grief and isolation that is transformed through meditation and dreaming to finally culminate in a combining and a "coming home." Whew. *That* sentence was overly long. I need to remind myself sometimes of the very thing I say to the people I tutor: The period is your friend. *laugh*
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