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seldearI finally posted 'Secrets and Shadows' after sitting on it for more or less two months. It would have been nice to get it out just after I finished it, but 'twas not to be.
It's funny how things get you nervous. I'm nervous about the response to the story, not just because I've done the 'cliche' thing as far as the story plot and resolution goes, but also because I cast a character I don't like as the bad guy.
There's always the fear of 'unreasonable demonisation' - although people will be unreasonable about any bad implication when they have their heart set on a character: witness one person's line-by-line pick-apart of a story where I had Pete going through Sam's things for some inkling into her life at the SGC. She objected to the idea that a police detective would search his girlfriend's house without a warrant. Oh the irony.
I guess, if anything makes me sad about my writing, it's that the stuff that people remember and want more of is not usually the stuff that I think is the best written or my best work. 'Forged Steel', 'Trilithons', 'Symbiosis', 'Hostage Situation' - I'll bet most people would hardly remember those stories, mostly because it was more about the situation and the characters in them, than the angst or the romance or the fluff or the humour.
It's nice to have gifts in that area, but, snob that I am, I've always felt it would be better to be able to write whatever genre one set one's mind to - to be able to design a story, craft it, and have people take it as that genre, without reference to what one usually writes. Guess I just dislike being pigeonholed. And, technically, money is not made by writing 'new stuff' - one takes a genre and runs with it. Which probably scuttles any professional writing ideas I ever had right about now.
I've fretted a lot about 'Secrets and Shadows' and how people would take it, whether anyone whom I wanted to read it would read it (and given the lack of feedback or commentary from this quarter, I believe the answer is safely: no) and whether I did a good job with it. Part of me seems to believe that 73,000 words on a fanfic is a horrid waste, while 30,000 or so is quite acceptable. Go figure.
Anyway, it's out there. It's done. Take a bow, watch the curtain fall, thank you very much, goodnight.
And now I have to write 2000 words for NaNo. I hope Sabine is up to evading the Eandlic's groping hands.
It's funny how things get you nervous. I'm nervous about the response to the story, not just because I've done the 'cliche' thing as far as the story plot and resolution goes, but also because I cast a character I don't like as the bad guy.
There's always the fear of 'unreasonable demonisation' - although people will be unreasonable about any bad implication when they have their heart set on a character: witness one person's line-by-line pick-apart of a story where I had Pete going through Sam's things for some inkling into her life at the SGC. She objected to the idea that a police detective would search his girlfriend's house without a warrant. Oh the irony.
I guess, if anything makes me sad about my writing, it's that the stuff that people remember and want more of is not usually the stuff that I think is the best written or my best work. 'Forged Steel', 'Trilithons', 'Symbiosis', 'Hostage Situation' - I'll bet most people would hardly remember those stories, mostly because it was more about the situation and the characters in them, than the angst or the romance or the fluff or the humour.
It's nice to have gifts in that area, but, snob that I am, I've always felt it would be better to be able to write whatever genre one set one's mind to - to be able to design a story, craft it, and have people take it as that genre, without reference to what one usually writes. Guess I just dislike being pigeonholed. And, technically, money is not made by writing 'new stuff' - one takes a genre and runs with it. Which probably scuttles any professional writing ideas I ever had right about now.
I've fretted a lot about 'Secrets and Shadows' and how people would take it, whether anyone whom I wanted to read it would read it (and given the lack of feedback or commentary from this quarter, I believe the answer is safely: no) and whether I did a good job with it. Part of me seems to believe that 73,000 words on a fanfic is a horrid waste, while 30,000 or so is quite acceptable. Go figure.
Anyway, it's out there. It's done. Take a bow, watch the curtain fall, thank you very much, goodnight.
And now I have to write 2000 words for NaNo. I hope Sabine is up to evading the Eandlic's groping hands.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-12 06:33 am (UTC)My ten cents, FWIW.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-12 01:39 pm (UTC)It's not so much whether they like it or not, it's how memorable it is and whether they then pass that 'memorability' on to someone else.
I guess it's my benchmark of a good writer: I tend to pimp my favourite authors quite shamelessly - that's how I show I like them. So when my stories fail to make an impact, I wonder what I've done wrong.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-12 02:11 pm (UTC)