weather, birthday, criticism, brains
It's very hot today, with a bunch of clouds hanging around looking as though they'd rather be off somewhere else, raining. The sweetpeas are in bloom, finally, and smell wonderful. Possibly they are celebrating elynross's birthday, yay her.
Lots of talk about concrit here and there, like summer reruns when you turn on the tv. synecdochic has a post here that's all ( Read more... )
Lots of talk about concrit here and there, like summer reruns when you turn on the tv. synecdochic has a post here that's all ( Read more... )
Cause I'm all for talking about stories, freely and frankly, and personally, yes, I'd rather the writer stay out of some of those conversations, including cases when the writer in question is me. I think the cutting board had the policy of not letting writers comment on discussion of their stories because then it would seem like they were correcting a test or something, giving the right answers, and that would give all the power and authority to the writer. Whereas for a writer getting their work discussed, it would seem that the people doing the commenting had all the power and were speaking with an authority the writer felt those people didn't have, shouldn't or couldn't have.
I commented to synecdochic that she was welcome to use my stuff for sample crit, and even though I volunteered, and also don't think she'll pick one of my stories, I'm still sitting here thinking, and what if she says "the story tried to do X and failed because" and I wasn't trying to do X at all! people will believe her because she sounds all intelligent and persuasive! And at the same time, I feel a great deal of admiration for her for being willing to talk about a story like that in public and discuss her perceptions where the writer, let's pretend it's me, can comment on her interpretation in a way that can be seen as correcting it.
I don't know how to untangle that or make the situation less fraught. I know there's story discussion going on these days in a comm called sga_talk where permission is required to discuss stories and the writer is welcome to be involved in the process, and I think you can get great discussions out of that, and out of discussing a story directly with the writer, but it won't be the same discussions as when people talk about a story without the writer there.
The only thing I feel sure about when it comes to public fanfic critique is that we talk about it a whole lot more than we do it. *g*
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Direct quote. I could even still, after all these years, name the people in that discussion and the one who said it, though I won't. They had been people I respected. Note the past tense.
In many ways I left fandom that day, and I have not returned.
I would like not to have that happen to other authors.
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