stunt_muppet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stunt_muppet) wrote2006-12-22 12:51 am
stunt_muppet) wrote2006-12-22 12:51 am
(no subject)
It feels good to be home.
I got home on Saturday afternoon, after driving most of the six hours myself (Dad took over for an hour or so). I've never driven that far before. It's exhausting and I don't know how people do it all the time. I don't know how Mom does it every year when we go on vacation.
So far, I've done little. I've gone Christmas shopping (luv you Whit) and I've lounged around the house in my pajamas till noon...and that's about it. Oh, and I've played video games too. Lego Star Wars, specifically. I haven't done that in a while.
Big Christmas party tomorrow. I'm going to eat way too much food and feel sick afterwards, but it'll be okay because I also get to see all the friends I haven't seen yet. I'm kicking myself for not staying in touch with everyone better while I was in school. I kept whining about how I had no one to talk to; maybe it's because I'm a lazy smush and never bothered to call anybody. I've got a lot of talking to make up for.
And now, on to the author-crisis.
So my family and I were all gathered round the TV this evening (as we're wont to do after dinner), and a trailer for the Eragon movie plays. I make some offhand comment about how the author of Eragon was only eighteen when the book was published, and how he's only twenty-something now but is probably making millions off the royalties from the film alone.
Mom look up at me, raises an eyebrow, and says "Gosh, how come you haven't written anything yet?"
At the time, I rolled my eyes and gave her my usual spiel about how even if I had written something, it wouldn't make any difference because very few authors ever make any money anyway. I suffer from a bad case of realism in that regard.
But it did get me thinking. Why haven't I written anything? I've been writing stories since I knew how to string letters together to form words. I've had the same four or five stories bouncing around in my brain for the past eight years. Why haven't I written any of them yet? What's keeping me from putting them down on paper?
Logically, there's no good reason for it. Plenty of crappy novels get a publishing green-light every day; why am I so afraid that I won't get published? (Um, because I won't. There's that realism thing again.) Lots of writers write their stories in bits and pieces, leaving the beginning for last or only writing a proper ending the day before it's due to be published; why does my inability to write a proper beginning paralyze my progress? Why do I endlessly retell and tweak my stories inside my mind but never actually write them, let alone show them to anybody?
Part of it is that, in the face of what I read and watch, my own stories seem inadequate. When you start reading the raw human dramas that the Post book critics recommend, when I start reading these sad, brutal - and, most importantly, real - tales of broken lives and hopeless people and everyday tragedies and ordinary people trying to make sense of themselves, my own fantasy escapades feel pallid, lifeless, melodramatic, meaningless. Why bother? I'm writing escapes, childish fantasies dressed up with grown-up themes that are trying to pass themselves off as adults. I try to pretend that I'm mature, that I can write lifelike people with lifelike troubles even in a fantasy setting, but let's just admit it - deep down I'm a child. Deep down, I'm still clinging to happy endings and love that works and everything turning out all right in the end, even though I know that never, ever happens in real life.
I've tried to let go of that. I don't want to. I hate it when I have to. I just want to keep clinging, damnit, keep holding onto this lie until it falls apart beneath me.
Perhaps there's nothing I can do about that, though. I'm still only legally an adult - biologically and by society's rules, I'm still an adolescent. I can spin fantasy tales and adventure yarns, because I've figured out how to tell a story. But human drama? Writing real people? I haven't seen enough of the world to know how to do that yet. I haven't seen enough of people yet to really know how they work. How can you write about someone who's been beaten and deadened by life when you're still a fresh-faced, supposedly idealistic college student? It just doesn't work.
So maybe I shouldn't try. Maybe I should just see how my own stories do now, meaningless escapism though they are. Maybe I should leave the soul-crushing human tragedy of everyday life for later.
Not like saying that helps.
The same thing's been happening with my fanfiction. Back when almost all my fandoms were fantasy-related or sci-fi-related, I sould write fanfics every day. I kept coming up with new stories, new plots, new adventures. New escapes. Again, I tried to make my characters lifelike - what author doesn't? But I also loved to tell an adventure story, something with the artificial drama of the action movie.
As my fandom umbrella has come to include more down-to-earth shows, I've found that even in fanfiction I'm having to confront the same thing - human drama. I can't write adventures anymore - these characters don't have them. And I don't know jack about writing crime dramas or courtroom proceedings, so doing my own episode-style fic is out.
No, even in my fanfics - my "for-fun" writing - I have to try to write about characters leading lives of quiet desperation. I have to try to put myself in the shoes of characters with unhappy families, abusive parents, failed marriages, estranged children, and world-weariness by the effing busload. It's not working really well.
Mostly, it's unfamiliar terrain. I've devoted fics to a characters thoughts and feelings before, but never characters like these. I don't feel like I know the characters well enough to write about them that way. I feel like I don't - I can't - understand them. So I don't even bother.
And then the fanfic inertia spreads to my other fics, until everything I write seems hollow and meaningless because it lacks that dimension of human drama.
And don't tell me not to worry about all that. Don't tell me that everyone else doesn't worry about that stuff, because reading other people's fanfics is partly what inspired this self-search. Other people are very capable of writing this sort of thing. They write emotional dramas that never even once sink into angst. They make the characters and their unhappy lives vivid and real - and they seem to understand the character so fully that that character is an extension of themself.
And I'm stuck hiding back here, clinging to my childishness, occasionally writing fluff that doesn't deserve to see the light of day.
Maybe if I force myself to start writing again I'll feel better.
Maybe if I think about this less I'll feel better too.
I got home on Saturday afternoon, after driving most of the six hours myself (Dad took over for an hour or so). I've never driven that far before. It's exhausting and I don't know how people do it all the time. I don't know how Mom does it every year when we go on vacation.
So far, I've done little. I've gone Christmas shopping (luv you Whit) and I've lounged around the house in my pajamas till noon...and that's about it. Oh, and I've played video games too. Lego Star Wars, specifically. I haven't done that in a while.
Big Christmas party tomorrow. I'm going to eat way too much food and feel sick afterwards, but it'll be okay because I also get to see all the friends I haven't seen yet. I'm kicking myself for not staying in touch with everyone better while I was in school. I kept whining about how I had no one to talk to; maybe it's because I'm a lazy smush and never bothered to call anybody. I've got a lot of talking to make up for.
And now, on to the author-crisis.
So my family and I were all gathered round the TV this evening (as we're wont to do after dinner), and a trailer for the Eragon movie plays. I make some offhand comment about how the author of Eragon was only eighteen when the book was published, and how he's only twenty-something now but is probably making millions off the royalties from the film alone.
Mom look up at me, raises an eyebrow, and says "Gosh, how come you haven't written anything yet?"
At the time, I rolled my eyes and gave her my usual spiel about how even if I had written something, it wouldn't make any difference because very few authors ever make any money anyway. I suffer from a bad case of realism in that regard.
But it did get me thinking. Why haven't I written anything? I've been writing stories since I knew how to string letters together to form words. I've had the same four or five stories bouncing around in my brain for the past eight years. Why haven't I written any of them yet? What's keeping me from putting them down on paper?
Logically, there's no good reason for it. Plenty of crappy novels get a publishing green-light every day; why am I so afraid that I won't get published? (Um, because I won't. There's that realism thing again.) Lots of writers write their stories in bits and pieces, leaving the beginning for last or only writing a proper ending the day before it's due to be published; why does my inability to write a proper beginning paralyze my progress? Why do I endlessly retell and tweak my stories inside my mind but never actually write them, let alone show them to anybody?
Part of it is that, in the face of what I read and watch, my own stories seem inadequate. When you start reading the raw human dramas that the Post book critics recommend, when I start reading these sad, brutal - and, most importantly, real - tales of broken lives and hopeless people and everyday tragedies and ordinary people trying to make sense of themselves, my own fantasy escapades feel pallid, lifeless, melodramatic, meaningless. Why bother? I'm writing escapes, childish fantasies dressed up with grown-up themes that are trying to pass themselves off as adults. I try to pretend that I'm mature, that I can write lifelike people with lifelike troubles even in a fantasy setting, but let's just admit it - deep down I'm a child. Deep down, I'm still clinging to happy endings and love that works and everything turning out all right in the end, even though I know that never, ever happens in real life.
I've tried to let go of that. I don't want to. I hate it when I have to. I just want to keep clinging, damnit, keep holding onto this lie until it falls apart beneath me.
Perhaps there's nothing I can do about that, though. I'm still only legally an adult - biologically and by society's rules, I'm still an adolescent. I can spin fantasy tales and adventure yarns, because I've figured out how to tell a story. But human drama? Writing real people? I haven't seen enough of the world to know how to do that yet. I haven't seen enough of people yet to really know how they work. How can you write about someone who's been beaten and deadened by life when you're still a fresh-faced, supposedly idealistic college student? It just doesn't work.
So maybe I shouldn't try. Maybe I should just see how my own stories do now, meaningless escapism though they are. Maybe I should leave the soul-crushing human tragedy of everyday life for later.
Not like saying that helps.
The same thing's been happening with my fanfiction. Back when almost all my fandoms were fantasy-related or sci-fi-related, I sould write fanfics every day. I kept coming up with new stories, new plots, new adventures. New escapes. Again, I tried to make my characters lifelike - what author doesn't? But I also loved to tell an adventure story, something with the artificial drama of the action movie.
As my fandom umbrella has come to include more down-to-earth shows, I've found that even in fanfiction I'm having to confront the same thing - human drama. I can't write adventures anymore - these characters don't have them. And I don't know jack about writing crime dramas or courtroom proceedings, so doing my own episode-style fic is out.
No, even in my fanfics - my "for-fun" writing - I have to try to write about characters leading lives of quiet desperation. I have to try to put myself in the shoes of characters with unhappy families, abusive parents, failed marriages, estranged children, and world-weariness by the effing busload. It's not working really well.
Mostly, it's unfamiliar terrain. I've devoted fics to a characters thoughts and feelings before, but never characters like these. I don't feel like I know the characters well enough to write about them that way. I feel like I don't - I can't - understand them. So I don't even bother.
And then the fanfic inertia spreads to my other fics, until everything I write seems hollow and meaningless because it lacks that dimension of human drama.
And don't tell me not to worry about all that. Don't tell me that everyone else doesn't worry about that stuff, because reading other people's fanfics is partly what inspired this self-search. Other people are very capable of writing this sort of thing. They write emotional dramas that never even once sink into angst. They make the characters and their unhappy lives vivid and real - and they seem to understand the character so fully that that character is an extension of themself.
And I'm stuck hiding back here, clinging to my childishness, occasionally writing fluff that doesn't deserve to see the light of day.
Maybe if I force myself to start writing again I'll feel better.
Maybe if I think about this less I'll feel better too.
!!!
S, let me tell you something: Don't try writing about something you have little experience with if you aren't comfortable with it! It's the whole bandwagon thing - just cause everyone else is doing it doesn't mean it's the only way to write a story. Human dramas are good in their own right (almost typed write. Hahah...), but that is not at all the entirety of the fiction world. Trust me, I know. You've seen my bookshelves. Human drama gets old really fast. Much faster that anything else, I think. Except for maybe romance novels. I think every one of them is written in a sophisticated mail merge document. Or maybe as naughty madlibs.
Besides, the Post has awful taste in movies, so why doesn't that extend to books? The Post critics are cranky people who have a profound discontent with their lives. They like things that parallel that, so it makes them feel normal.
Besides, if you ever need validation that the real world really *is* like an action movie, go read Darwin Awards. It'll cheer you up. Promise.
On a completely different note, Christmas party? Is that tonight (meaning Friday night)? Jeez, being in Mass. gets me out of the loop quick. I'm in the airport now! Woo! Boarding starts soonish.
Miss you!
Re: !!!
I know, I know, the folks at the Post just love drama and I shouldn't go by that, but still. Every time they savage a fantasy novel, I can't help but feel a bit depressed. I'm not expecting to write the Great American Novel or anything, but a little critical kudos would be nice.
I dunno. Sad thing is, all this angst didn't get severe until I started trying to write L&O and CSI fanfiction. I began feeling all sad because other fic-ers could write realistically from the POV of fourty-something divorced men with abusive families and estranged kids and I couldn't. Of course, considering that I am neither fourty-something, nor divorced, nor a man, nor abused as a child, I don't see why this surprised me.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2006-12-23 02:36 am (UTC)(link)And as for getting published, anyone with a manuscript can get published- look at Dan Brown! If he can do it, so can you- only I know you'll go one better. :)
no subject
Thanks a lot. *hugs*
no subject
Yet, even at 22, I still feel like I am 11 and other times like I am 15.
The problem with me is all of my stories start off-strong and have no plots. A lot of them are just reflection on my life, or about people I want to be or become closer. I based them on people on my college, especially guys I have a crush on.
I love to write a characters family problems more than about relationship problems, I try to somehow make a happy ending, if i finish the novel.
I run out of ideas sometimes along the process
call me, sometime, we should hang out ;)
no subject
Maybe it doesn't kick in till your thirties or something.
I've written a lot of stories like that - stories that are about my life or people I've met. Most of them, like you said, have no plot or anything; they're just mood pieces. Still, people have written whole novels with no particular plot. You never know.
Yes, we must get together! I must take you out for sushi! When are you available?
no subject
You never seem to be online. This is my cellphone number (240) 687 0512
no subject
I'm online, I just usually forget to sign on AIM. I'll try to do that more often.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2006-12-29 02:29 am (UTC)(link)It is in the early evening. 7.15, the information is on facebook, so please sign in and confirm the invite
no subject
I work at the Boy Scout shop, but I don't know if they have any additional openings. They let me come back mostly because they need everyone they can get to do inventory. Still, won't hurt to ask. :D