Let's talk about process.

[lettered]

I wanna talk about process, but I don't know how.

Comments

[liz_marcs]

I'm not sure about your first idea about fanfic writers volunteering for a month and tossng up whatever snippets they throw at a story before they cut. A lot of it because of the problem you point out: People add, edit, and cut without thinking whether it says something about their "process." Then if you tend to go the perfectionist route (like me), I'd hate to show my undies. I have people beta-ing my DarkXander fic and I couldn't bring myself to show undies.

On the other hand, your second idea has much merit as a basis for a community, because "DVD commentaries" makes the writer think about their process as they explain why they did X instead of Y. I did it for Cuckoo in the Nest (a Tony Harris-centric fic, believe it or not) and remembering how I put it together and what my motivation was just as revelatory to me as it was to people who commented on the commentary

[lettered]

People add, edit, and cut without thinking whether it says something about their "process."

Yeah. I was just thinking that if you used your "post to your journal" window as a word processor, and just clicked "post" every time you worked on it--whether that's a couple times a day or once every three days, depends on the person. The author wouldn't necessarily have to think about, "oh, I have to show this part!", they would just show wherever they've left the piece whenever they pause their work on it a bit. So of course you wouldn't see *every* single step but you'd see steps building.

Then if you tend to go the perfectionist route (like me), I'd hate to show my undies. This is the main problem I see. Though, if I was writing a fic *for* the comm, with the knowledge that people would be seeing as I write, it might be different. I have trouble sending my stuff to betas too, because I hate to show stuff I don't think is perfect, but if people were seeing it from the very beginning, when it just plain *can't* be perfect, it might

[kita0610]

Hunh. This made me thinky.

But like you said, sometimes comms get started and then...it's hard.

Still thinking.

[lettered]

Yeah, and I'm a really terrible type in that I'll come up with this brilliant idea for something like a comm, getting people involved, being very gung ho about it and prepared to work really hard, and then three months into it, just . . . petering out, for reasons I can't fathom.

[kita0610]

Right there with you, Sparky, as you might have noticed.

[lettered]

Oh. Ha! Yeah. I wasn't thinking about that, though. I just love to start things, not so good on follow through.

[lettered]

I love them too! Sometimes the simplest details have hours of work behind them that you would never be able to tell about, and the parts that seem intricate and difficult actually came really easy to the author.

[lettered]

Will do, and thanks for the link--I definitely want to read!

[semby]

Ooh, that first idea for a comm sounds very cool, but very ambitious. I think that would be really, really hard to pull off, but if successful, the results would be very, very interesting. Though I agree that it would probably be pretty uncomfortable and exposing for the author in question. I certainly couldn't do that personally.

The DVD commentary one would be very cool! I love those too. I think any I'd do myself would be pretty dull, but I'd love to hear the thoughts behind other people's creations.

And, if you're up for it, I would love to see you do a commentary for "Down There in the Reeperbaum"

[lettered]

I think it'd be difficult to pull off too. Oh well. I thought I'd throw it out there.

I don't think your commentaries would be dull...I'd love to hear what you were thinking during say, Everything Fades, Until Every Noise Is Drowned, or The Case of the Missing Ancient Statuette. Hee!

And yeah, I'll do the Reeperbahn, that one's fun to talk about.