Comments | isiscolo: on my own

isiscolo

on my own

Jun 16, 2009 19:49

Hello world! I am at a conference, which means that I am in a hotel room (actually a studio condo) where I have just made myself dinner (chicken mango salad) and drunk a measured 1/3 of a bottle of zin, and now I am sprawled on the couch with my laptop on the hotel wireless which drops about every 10 minutes. I am reading fic and really, truly, ( Read more... )

festathons, meanderings, navel-gazing, remix, feedback

Comments 28

china_shop June 17 2009, 02:54:53 UTC

I think the various Big Bangs are contributing to the general cricket nature of fandom atm, too, FWIW.

it was a story I wanted to write and I am glad I wrote it, and I would have been happy about it even had nobody commented.

\o/ It's lovely to find those stories, eh?

Me, I just spent half the day writing/constructing an experimental fic that failed, but it was still fun in its own way.

isiscolo June 17 2009, 03:01:59 UTC

Maybe - but Sharpe isn't bangy, if you know what I mean. Although I suppose those fans are also likely fans of other fandoms which are bangy. But really, I wrote it for me, because it was a story I wanted to read and nobody had been nice enough to write it yet.

Aw, it is always sad when you feel that something you have done has failed. But if you got something out of the process, that is good. At what point do you decide something is a failure? (Am curious because I'm contemplating an experiment myself.)

china_shop June 17 2009, 03:06:54 UTC

I suppose those fans are also likely fans of other fandoms which are bangy.

Yeah, that. I think there's a lot of ambient banginess around.

At what point do you decide something is a failure?

Usually when I get beta back enumerating the many problems with it, and I think, "Yeah, I kinda knew all that. Doh! Is there anything salvageable here? Not so much. Okay, then..."

In this instance, it was a multi-media response to a ficlet prompt, but the multimedia didn't make a story, and what story it hinted at was bleaker than I intended. I knew something wasn't adding up, so although I was on the verge of posting for several hours, I kept looking around for someone to give me a second opinion, and when they did. Well, see above. *rueful shrug* Thank god for beta!

isiscolo June 17 2009, 03:17:03 UTC

Yeah, I think it's much easier for someone else to spot the flaws and to articulate them in a way that I understand, than it is for me to see that something is hopeless. Although for me at least it's really hard to resist the impulse to post anyway. Sometimes I have failed in this.

Thread 5

painless_j June 17 2009, 03:01:39 UTC

Hope you'll keep having fun!

Also, parenthesis abusers, unite! :)

isiscolo June 17 2009, 03:05:36 UTC

I always feel vaguely guilty typing a smiley without a corresponding open parenthesis. :-)

keerawa June 17 2009, 05:27:14 UTC

(:-)

Smiley face with a toupee!

isiscolo June 17 2009, 14:02:05 UTC

I keep wanting to turn it upside down. Hee!

leyna55 June 17 2009, 08:06:14 UTC

I have it opened in another tab, because - eee - Sharpe! (but I had rather a lot of fic open in tabs, plus the PornBattle, so it's taking a while to get to it *g*).

(parenthesis addict, too)

isiscolo June 17 2009, 14:03:57 UTC

Oh, hee, you made your Rifleman Sheppard into an icon! I love that. And hmm, you know, maybe it's his expression and his sideburns but he looks kind of like Jack Spears in that portrait.

lobelia321 June 17 2009, 08:56:51 UTC

Ah, the endless feedback 'thing'...

The lowest fb I've ever got was 1. I've never got zero but before the '1' appeared, it was, of course, zero for quite some time... And twisting people's elbows doesn't count, I know... *sigh*

The mysteries, eh.

Oh. No, I have got zero! I have repressed it. It was orig, though, and different rules apply there.

But it's nice if one doesn't mind. There are some stories of mine that I love re-reading, and it doesn't matter if others loved them or not. Or rather, years later, that's a sort of remembered bonus. And feedback can be counter-productive, too. It has been for me. I thought, I have to live up to this now, and so forth.

isiscolo June 17 2009, 14:05:13 UTC

I think I minded a lot more back when I wrote in bigger fandoms and had more ego invested in fandom. And when I frequently read stories which had pages and pages of comments.

lonelywalker June 17 2009, 10:26:29 UTC

Oh, feedback. I usually write in wee fandoms, so I never expect very many comments, but if I don't get even one comment (which has happened a couple of times), I do start getting all insecure. I guess I need one person to tell me it's an okay story before I can believe it myself *is possibly pathetic*

...do you think crickets read fanfic?

isiscolo June 17 2009, 14:08:58 UTC

Yeah, I think my perspective changed when I went from Harry Potter and SGA to Wilby Wonderful and Master and Commander. There is also the marketing issue - I posted first only in my LJ, and I don't have a lot of Sharpe fans on my flist; once I posted to the relevant comms, a handful came out of the woodwork. Heh.

My beta presumably has told me it's an okay story. Although with very short stuff in fandoms I know well, I don't get a beta, and if one of those got cricketed, I might freak!

Maybe they read Jiminy Cricket/Pinocchio?