have to take care of the family
I see people are doing their year-end writing round-ups, and I am like, "but there is still a week left! I could certainly finish something else before the year ends!" I am currently at 72 stories for the year - I would love to make it to 75 if at all possible.
One of the things I was thinking about today, as I finished up my shopping (my mother politely requested that I wait to make cookies until after Christmas, so I am doing that), was that I really want to try to write more stories that only I could write. I mean, obviously, no one is going to write the exact story I would have written, and I am generally not one to let hive mind keep me from writing something if I feel I still have something to say with my version. But even without the really recent hive mind experience, I was thinking about the other story I recced last night, the Narnia story - that is a story I didn't even know I wanted, and wouldn't have been able to write even if I did.
So I guess what I mean is that I want to write the stories I do have in my head, the stories I do want, in a way that makes people reading them think, "even if I had thought of this, I would never have thought to do it like this."
The problem, of course, is that I am not a particularly innovative or creative writer, in terms of thinking up stuff that no one else has thought of. Most of my skill lies in characterization and occasional wordsmithing, not in coming up with new ways of telling stories or talking about characters or turning genres on their heads. So it is a puzzlement.
Because while I am pretty okay with the fact that I really am telling the same story over and over again, in many ways, I also don't want to keep retreading old ground. I don't mean plotwise - obviously, I can write myriad variations on numerous themes and never get tired of them - but occasionally I do get an idea and sit down to write and realize I've already told that story in that way. If I'm happy with that first result, I will probably sigh and consign the idea to the dustheap. If I'm not, or if I can convince myself that no, really, it's different this time because of this (whatever this is for any given story), then I will likely (try to) write it.
I know there are some people who will only write in a pairing or fandom a mere handful of times before moving on, feeling that they're repeating themselves, or looking for new ground to explore rather than digging in and seeing how much more they can get out of where they already are - I am not that rigorous (I am ALL ABOUT writing as self-indulgence; I don't really have a problem with that aspect of things, to a degree - I think that's often where the storytelling impulse originates), but I also don't want to feel like I've plateaued and am yet unable to get to the next level.
Possibly this is why I keep attempting casefiles - they really are hard for me, in ways that the 1200 word OTP stories I used to write fairly frequently in other fandoms were not, particularly, and they are also what I really want to read these days - five to ten thousand word casefiles full of brotherly banter and emoporn and an interesting story to hang it on.
Hmm... that is an awful lot of navel-gazing.
***
One of the things I was thinking about today, as I finished up my shopping (my mother politely requested that I wait to make cookies until after Christmas, so I am doing that), was that I really want to try to write more stories that only I could write. I mean, obviously, no one is going to write the exact story I would have written, and I am generally not one to let hive mind keep me from writing something if I feel I still have something to say with my version. But even without the really recent hive mind experience, I was thinking about the other story I recced last night, the Narnia story - that is a story I didn't even know I wanted, and wouldn't have been able to write even if I did.
So I guess what I mean is that I want to write the stories I do have in my head, the stories I do want, in a way that makes people reading them think, "even if I had thought of this, I would never have thought to do it like this."
The problem, of course, is that I am not a particularly innovative or creative writer, in terms of thinking up stuff that no one else has thought of. Most of my skill lies in characterization and occasional wordsmithing, not in coming up with new ways of telling stories or talking about characters or turning genres on their heads. So it is a puzzlement.
Because while I am pretty okay with the fact that I really am telling the same story over and over again, in many ways, I also don't want to keep retreading old ground. I don't mean plotwise - obviously, I can write myriad variations on numerous themes and never get tired of them - but occasionally I do get an idea and sit down to write and realize I've already told that story in that way. If I'm happy with that first result, I will probably sigh and consign the idea to the dustheap. If I'm not, or if I can convince myself that no, really, it's different this time because of this (whatever this is for any given story), then I will likely (try to) write it.
I know there are some people who will only write in a pairing or fandom a mere handful of times before moving on, feeling that they're repeating themselves, or looking for new ground to explore rather than digging in and seeing how much more they can get out of where they already are - I am not that rigorous (I am ALL ABOUT writing as self-indulgence; I don't really have a problem with that aspect of things, to a degree - I think that's often where the storytelling impulse originates), but I also don't want to feel like I've plateaued and am yet unable to get to the next level.
Possibly this is why I keep attempting casefiles - they really are hard for me, in ways that the 1200 word OTP stories I used to write fairly frequently in other fandoms were not, particularly, and they are also what I really want to read these days - five to ten thousand word casefiles full of brotherly banter and emoporn and an interesting story to hang it on.
Hmm... that is an awful lot of navel-gazing.
***