[OOC: Thoughts on prompting.]
I promise I'm going to get to all of that good writing I've been promising, but I saw something come up tonight and wanted to address it briefly before I went off to get some sleep.
There seems to be a good bit of negativity flying about in LJ world, a lot of injured feelings in regards to character portrayal and voice and things like that. And to be quite honest, it makes me sad. It seems like there are specified cliques and things of writers, and if you aren't "in" with those people then you run the risk of being either passed by or ridiculed for the way you're writing a character. While these things aren't life by any means, they are supposed to be a form of recreation and fun, and it can be hard to have fun doing something you enjoy when you're being picked at and picked apart, told you're not as good at a character as Person X, etc. In fact, it can hurt feelings and just take the fun right out of something that you used to love.
I won't lie, I feel this way frequently, and it hurts. I've even had it happen recently with Rose and Cuddy. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't feel good. But it makes me more sad to see others feel discouraged and saddened when they should be having fun.
So to all of you out there writing muse prompts, fics, role playing, anything like that - do yourself a favor and don't ever let it stop being fun. Ignore the popularity contest and all the things that can be negative, and just do something that you enjoy doing it. If the popular kids don't want to play with you, then it's not your loss - it's theirs. Just have fun, be good to yourself, and don't think for a minute that one person's critique is the final say. Because every person out there is going to write differently, see a character in a situation differently, and make different choices. That doesn't mean one person's right and the other's wrong - it just means there are two different stories or responses out there to read, and the more the merrier, right?
Have some fun. It's therapeutic, I promise.
♥