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My Yuletide story is up. I think it's one of the best things I've written, and it's in a fandom that I still love that I haven't written anything in for a while. It's making me want to write more.
My Down the Chimney story is up. It's awful. I'm not proud of it. I'd like to orphan it. But the recipient seemed to enjoy it, so that's all right.
I'm trying to decide whether I should spend my free time meandering around on more fanfic or writing real things. The problem is:
--Fanfic is easy. Path of least resistance. High potential for success.
--Fanfic has a built-in audience and immediate feedback. The egoboo potential is high.
--Original stuff is hard and it can be hard to connect with the characters or flesh out an idea. Potential for dismal and disheartening failure is high.
--Original stuff is likely to be overlooked or rejected in favor of works that are far better than you can ever do or that are total crap. Again, PFDaDF is high.
--I've gotten many compliments on the unique quality of my fanfic, but I find it really hard to transfer that quality to my original stuff. My original writing feels clunky and slapdash to me, except in small doses.
--However, people like my poetry a lot, and the potential for reward in original writing is also very high.
I think what I need to do is write a lot more original stuff until I get it right. I can't expect my first works to be the stuff that gets published. Hopefully, with everything I write, I'll learn and improve. Also, now that I've won NaNoWriMo, I think I may not try to do it again unless I really need a boost at that time--I won it, yes, but the thing I wrote was a terrible slog.
While I'm trying to choose what to work on next, I'm also going to try to put together a chapbook. I've been working on jewelry to try to sell at the Bizarre Bazaar at OTBP, and if I have enough done by early February or so, I'll team up with my mom and work on things. I'd like to work on sewing more things, but the problem is that sewing takes longer and tends to be more complicated, so the time I'd put into sewing something provides less of a profit in terms of productivity. I think I'll probably work on making some drawstring bags for this one, and try to perfect some more interesting styles for the next.
Also been cooking. I got a new immersion blender, and in the past few days have chopped up spinach for Florentine/saag dishes, made vodka applesauce and chopped apples with hard sauce, started an orange/ginger-infused vodka (and decanted an apple-infused vodka), and made a huge tray of hummus for a party. Then I made chai powder.
I also made a blog: The Library of Babel. It's all professional-y and stuff. Sara's blog is really taking off, and I whinged about my own blogging style and Kids These Days for a while before I decided to go fucking make my own gimmick. Remember when blogs just used to be blogs and some people found a good style or gimmick and then got readers? Now you have to have a gimmick at the start and then you do twenty good posts and get a damn book deal.
Ultimately, I think I'm afraid that I'm really just a very middle-of-the-road writer, that I don't really have the imagination, skill, or energy to create something that's both original and transcendent. And I feel like most of what I'm doing now is procrastinating, but I don't know what I'm procrastinating.
I might end up trying to write my own life story, how goddamn dull would that be?
*
In happier news, I have a full social life. I've been getting to hang out with some friends from college who now live in a little town 40 miles south of me, and we have been watching samurai movies and Westerns and comparing them. It's nice :)
My Down the Chimney story is up. It's awful. I'm not proud of it. I'd like to orphan it. But the recipient seemed to enjoy it, so that's all right.
I'm trying to decide whether I should spend my free time meandering around on more fanfic or writing real things. The problem is:
--Fanfic is easy. Path of least resistance. High potential for success.
--Fanfic has a built-in audience and immediate feedback. The egoboo potential is high.
--Original stuff is hard and it can be hard to connect with the characters or flesh out an idea. Potential for dismal and disheartening failure is high.
--Original stuff is likely to be overlooked or rejected in favor of works that are far better than you can ever do or that are total crap. Again, PFDaDF is high.
--I've gotten many compliments on the unique quality of my fanfic, but I find it really hard to transfer that quality to my original stuff. My original writing feels clunky and slapdash to me, except in small doses.
--However, people like my poetry a lot, and the potential for reward in original writing is also very high.
I think what I need to do is write a lot more original stuff until I get it right. I can't expect my first works to be the stuff that gets published. Hopefully, with everything I write, I'll learn and improve. Also, now that I've won NaNoWriMo, I think I may not try to do it again unless I really need a boost at that time--I won it, yes, but the thing I wrote was a terrible slog.
While I'm trying to choose what to work on next, I'm also going to try to put together a chapbook. I've been working on jewelry to try to sell at the Bizarre Bazaar at OTBP, and if I have enough done by early February or so, I'll team up with my mom and work on things. I'd like to work on sewing more things, but the problem is that sewing takes longer and tends to be more complicated, so the time I'd put into sewing something provides less of a profit in terms of productivity. I think I'll probably work on making some drawstring bags for this one, and try to perfect some more interesting styles for the next.
Also been cooking. I got a new immersion blender, and in the past few days have chopped up spinach for Florentine/saag dishes, made vodka applesauce and chopped apples with hard sauce, started an orange/ginger-infused vodka (and decanted an apple-infused vodka), and made a huge tray of hummus for a party. Then I made chai powder.
I also made a blog: The Library of Babel. It's all professional-y and stuff. Sara's blog is really taking off, and I whinged about my own blogging style and Kids These Days for a while before I decided to go fucking make my own gimmick. Remember when blogs just used to be blogs and some people found a good style or gimmick and then got readers? Now you have to have a gimmick at the start and then you do twenty good posts and get a damn book deal.
Ultimately, I think I'm afraid that I'm really just a very middle-of-the-road writer, that I don't really have the imagination, skill, or energy to create something that's both original and transcendent. And I feel like most of what I'm doing now is procrastinating, but I don't know what I'm procrastinating.
I might end up trying to write my own life story, how goddamn dull would that be?
*
In happier news, I have a full social life. I've been getting to hang out with some friends from college who now live in a little town 40 miles south of me, and we have been watching samurai movies and Westerns and comparing them. It's nice :)
