tongues and tales
I was talking to someone last night about being 29, and how I feel like I've accomplished nothing. I mean, it's true that I survived when I possibly might not have, and that I'm far more settled and well-adjusted than I could be (I use my good and bad brothers as benchmarks, because it's taken the good one years to get where I've been for the last six, and he's five years older than me, and the bad one will always be a fuckwit asshole with serious emotional issues).
For me, accomplishment seems to be wrapped up in writing. Non-fanfic writing, in fact, which I've done far too little of over the years. My NaNoWriMo word count was pathetically low, and I've stalled in similar manners on every other project I've started. And I'm at a place where I want to say, "Yeah, let's focus on that." But at the same time I wonder if maybe I shouldn't turn writing into this big old measure of my accomplishments/worth. The thing is, I have to write. It's not negotiable. I get off-balance and weirded out when I don't/can't do it. But do I need to be writing original fic for publication? If I do, should I go for it? If I don't, will I always see this as a failure of worth/self/accomplishment?
The easy answer that pops into my head is, "Write! Get published! That's what you should be doing!" But when I think about it from all angles, I'm not so sure.
I feel like I have more freedom with fanfic writing. It can be...fuller, heavier. It doesn't have to be streamlined and near-to-blunt like I see a lot of published writing is. And I don't know if that's how I want to write, if I want to strip down all these things I've learned over the years, all these styles that I actually like.
Which leads to the question of: does the strip down have to happen? The answer to which I think is, yes, because any book I pick up has this "flatness" (for lack of a far better word) to them that I can't conceive of writing anymore. I don't know if I want to go back to not getting inside characters' heads and just writing stage direction for them, just trying to show complexities with one or two actions and hope that a reader will put them all together and see what I'm trying to show. Because people are complicated, all characters I have in my head are complicated, and I like messing about in their psyches to sort it out, but that's not what's on shelves at Barnes and Noble.
Which then leads to the question of: why not just write how I want and if it gets interest, it gets interest? My first thought to this was, "What a waste of time." Which is laughable, because I write fanfic simply because I want to, and it takes a lot of time, and I don't get traditional payoff for it. (Though what I do get, friends, community, the ability to experiment and learn, all count as a lovely payoff to me.)
That's all well and good, but I apparently still have to reconcile this sense of lack of accomplishment in my life, and figure out what I'm really thinking about when I consider it. And I have to decide what I actually do want out of any original writing, what my personal goal with it is.
And, well, blargh. See Dana try to figure serious issues out on this weeks After Fandom Special. Snerk.
For me, accomplishment seems to be wrapped up in writing. Non-fanfic writing, in fact, which I've done far too little of over the years. My NaNoWriMo word count was pathetically low, and I've stalled in similar manners on every other project I've started. And I'm at a place where I want to say, "Yeah, let's focus on that." But at the same time I wonder if maybe I shouldn't turn writing into this big old measure of my accomplishments/worth. The thing is, I have to write. It's not negotiable. I get off-balance and weirded out when I don't/can't do it. But do I need to be writing original fic for publication? If I do, should I go for it? If I don't, will I always see this as a failure of worth/self/accomplishment?
The easy answer that pops into my head is, "Write! Get published! That's what you should be doing!" But when I think about it from all angles, I'm not so sure.
I feel like I have more freedom with fanfic writing. It can be...fuller, heavier. It doesn't have to be streamlined and near-to-blunt like I see a lot of published writing is. And I don't know if that's how I want to write, if I want to strip down all these things I've learned over the years, all these styles that I actually like.
Which leads to the question of: does the strip down have to happen? The answer to which I think is, yes, because any book I pick up has this "flatness" (for lack of a far better word) to them that I can't conceive of writing anymore. I don't know if I want to go back to not getting inside characters' heads and just writing stage direction for them, just trying to show complexities with one or two actions and hope that a reader will put them all together and see what I'm trying to show. Because people are complicated, all characters I have in my head are complicated, and I like messing about in their psyches to sort it out, but that's not what's on shelves at Barnes and Noble.
Which then leads to the question of: why not just write how I want and if it gets interest, it gets interest? My first thought to this was, "What a waste of time." Which is laughable, because I write fanfic simply because I want to, and it takes a lot of time, and I don't get traditional payoff for it. (Though what I do get, friends, community, the ability to experiment and learn, all count as a lovely payoff to me.)
That's all well and good, but I apparently still have to reconcile this sense of lack of accomplishment in my life, and figure out what I'm really thinking about when I consider it. And I have to decide what I actually do want out of any original writing, what my personal goal with it is.
And, well, blargh. See Dana try to figure serious issues out on this weeks After Fandom Special. Snerk.