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This was prompted by a discussion in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glossing’s LJ, which in turn came from a comment I made, so I guess we’re full circle. OK, given what my last post was about, that might serve as a warning as to the merits of this ;-) If I annoy anyone with this, it’s not my intention. It’s just me thinking aloud.
If someone asked us why we write, I’m guessing for most of us, it would be as simple as, ‘because I want to, because I can, because I must’ with all of that tangled up in various proportions – but there’s another reason, that perhaps we only really come to appreciate the importance of after we’ve written, not before. Which means that the first fic we write is special for more reasons than the obvious. It’s pure in intent ;-)
Feedback.
There might be, and probably are, people who write, tuck the stories away in a box, never show them to anyone and really don’t care about anyone else’s opinion as long as they’re happy with them. And I bet even she’s hoping that shoebox gets discovered after she’s dead and thousands make pilgrimages to 84 Warrington Avenue just to gaze on the spot where she wrote.
Once you post that fic though, put it where it can be read by anyone – you want the feedback and tell me you don’t care if no one reviews and I’ll walk away humming, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire’. [OK that’s one of the things that might annoy people but I stand by it as being true for 99% of us and if you’re a 1% go and feel smug or whatever you do for amusement. We might curl our lip at the 'Pleze r and r!!!!!' note on a ff.net fic but we're all thinking it.]. You want it and though you might in time get sophisticated and say truthfully that quality, not quantity matters (and it does; I’d swap a dozen, ‘OMG! This rox! Spike took his shirt off in it! EEEEEE!!!!!’ for one, ‘Your story demonstrated a true understanding of the characters, an intriguing premise and the symbolic removal of Spike’s shirt was a pivotal moment, demonstrating his willingness to....’) you still want it.
And why not? There’s absolutely nothing weird about wanting it. I’m not going to even discuss that, or the beneficial aspects of critical feedback, the comforting pat to the ego that lifts you out of a block, the glow of satisfaction when someone homes in on the very bit of the fic that made you tingle writing it, it was that good, that perfect, that...OK, I said I wasn’t going to discuss it.
But there’s a flip side. We want it; so what will we do to get it? Will we do...bad things?
Someone who no longer reads this LJ (doesn’t that sound nicely portentous? ;-)) once said, ‘I know you're crazy and that you'll slash anything,’ and believe me, it wasn’t a compliment, but I can’t really argue with it as it was attached to a Spike/Dilbert fic. I’ve written some odd pairings but I can say, hand on heart, it’s never been for the feedback. It’s been for my own amusement (Spike/Dilbert, Bertie/Jeeves), to indulge a friend (Angel/Snyder and yes, that’s youswmbo :-)) or because it’s been asked of me in a ficathon and though normally I wouldn’t choose to write it, once I’ve signed up I won’t back out. I’m easy; I don’t have many squicks and if I can knock something off in half an hour and make someone smile, why not? I can, it’s fun, no biggie. Do I feel I’m compromising anything or anyone? No. A world of no.
Would I if I followed a trend and wrote serious fic for a pairing that was the flavour of the month, knowing full well I didn’t like the characters but wanting to be in with the in crowd or whatever? Yep. Which is why I don’t. Oh, I’ll try it on for size to see what the fuss is, read a few fics, but if it’s not grabbing me, I won’t write it. End of story. Literally. Don't care if all the cool kids are doing it. Yay me and my integrity!
I get that it’s a little disheartening to get 15 comments on a fic that took twenty minutes from idea to posting and two on something you slaved over for weeks, going to sleep dreaming about, spending hours researching to get the details right...it doesn’t seem fair. Effort should be rewarded, right?
But it isn’t. Not always.
After two years, I could, if I ever had the time, sit down and work out a formula for the most popular pairing/length/genre I can do and then stick to that, knowing I’ll get feedback. That we all could, that deep down we all know we could but we don’t says something about us. Pats on back all around. (And yes, the fics would show what we’d done after a while but I prefer to believe we’re better than that because I really think we are.)
Anything I write, no matter how trivial, light, dashed off as the kettle boils for my thirteenth cup of coffee, unbeta’d and daft, is written because it pleases me to write it. That’s the starting point. Always. It might please me because I’m doing it as a favour and I like doing things for friends for the warm happy, or because the zing of a fic idea whacking into you is a rush like nothing else, or because it’s a lovely bit of knicker dampening smut and I’m left with a head full of pretty pictures and a smile. Doesn’t matter. I’ve never once written and thought, ‘Yes, that’s good for ten reviews, easy. Got me my naked Spike, got me my joke in paragraph three, my blow job in paragraph six...’
This is turning into all about me. Heh. LJ’s revealed what I already knew; I’m an egotistical, self obsessed feedback whore. I’m sure I had a point to all this.
The challenge is writing well when you can see by looking that all too often, good stuff, tip of the pyramid fic, gets less feedback. Where’s the incentive to do it well and get less back, when you can do it with less effort and get more? Well, I suppose there isn’t any. That’s where self motivation comes in. I have very little. Setting aside the library banana smut, which I do for fun and won’t defend because I don’t see any need to, when I start a ‘real’ fic, I’m filled with good intentions. This fic I’ll take my time. This fic I’ll plot out, get beta’d, let sit overnight, revise, tweak endlessly until it’s perfect...then I get bored, or so chuffed with it that I post it before the keyboard’s stopped quivering from the final stroke...because I want to see what you all think of it. I want to share. I want, oh God, help me, the feedback.
Think this is where I came in.
::head thunks on desk::
ETA; I had one of those aggravating moments stirring the chicken satay and realised that all thousand words of this could be summed up in one sentence; 'Feedback is good if you never ever think about it when you're writing, or make it in any way a factor because if you do you'll post it too fast and the fic will suffer even if the feedback still flows and you'll hate yourself in the morning.' OK, one long, run on sentence.
glossing’s LJ, which in turn came from a comment I made, so I guess we’re full circle. OK, given what my last post was about, that might serve as a warning as to the merits of this ;-) If I annoy anyone with this, it’s not my intention. It’s just me thinking aloud.If someone asked us why we write, I’m guessing for most of us, it would be as simple as, ‘because I want to, because I can, because I must’ with all of that tangled up in various proportions – but there’s another reason, that perhaps we only really come to appreciate the importance of after we’ve written, not before. Which means that the first fic we write is special for more reasons than the obvious. It’s pure in intent ;-)
Feedback.
There might be, and probably are, people who write, tuck the stories away in a box, never show them to anyone and really don’t care about anyone else’s opinion as long as they’re happy with them. And I bet even she’s hoping that shoebox gets discovered after she’s dead and thousands make pilgrimages to 84 Warrington Avenue just to gaze on the spot where she wrote.
Once you post that fic though, put it where it can be read by anyone – you want the feedback and tell me you don’t care if no one reviews and I’ll walk away humming, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire’. [OK that’s one of the things that might annoy people but I stand by it as being true for 99% of us and if you’re a 1% go and feel smug or whatever you do for amusement. We might curl our lip at the 'Pleze r and r!!!!!' note on a ff.net fic but we're all thinking it.]. You want it and though you might in time get sophisticated and say truthfully that quality, not quantity matters (and it does; I’d swap a dozen, ‘OMG! This rox! Spike took his shirt off in it! EEEEEE!!!!!’ for one, ‘Your story demonstrated a true understanding of the characters, an intriguing premise and the symbolic removal of Spike’s shirt was a pivotal moment, demonstrating his willingness to....’) you still want it.
And why not? There’s absolutely nothing weird about wanting it. I’m not going to even discuss that, or the beneficial aspects of critical feedback, the comforting pat to the ego that lifts you out of a block, the glow of satisfaction when someone homes in on the very bit of the fic that made you tingle writing it, it was that good, that perfect, that...OK, I said I wasn’t going to discuss it.
But there’s a flip side. We want it; so what will we do to get it? Will we do...bad things?
Someone who no longer reads this LJ (doesn’t that sound nicely portentous? ;-)) once said, ‘I know you're crazy and that you'll slash anything,’ and believe me, it wasn’t a compliment, but I can’t really argue with it as it was attached to a Spike/Dilbert fic. I’ve written some odd pairings but I can say, hand on heart, it’s never been for the feedback. It’s been for my own amusement (Spike/Dilbert, Bertie/Jeeves), to indulge a friend (Angel/Snyder and yes, that’s you
swmbo :-)) or because it’s been asked of me in a ficathon and though normally I wouldn’t choose to write it, once I’ve signed up I won’t back out. I’m easy; I don’t have many squicks and if I can knock something off in half an hour and make someone smile, why not? I can, it’s fun, no biggie. Do I feel I’m compromising anything or anyone? No. A world of no.Would I if I followed a trend and wrote serious fic for a pairing that was the flavour of the month, knowing full well I didn’t like the characters but wanting to be in with the in crowd or whatever? Yep. Which is why I don’t. Oh, I’ll try it on for size to see what the fuss is, read a few fics, but if it’s not grabbing me, I won’t write it. End of story. Literally. Don't care if all the cool kids are doing it. Yay me and my integrity!
I get that it’s a little disheartening to get 15 comments on a fic that took twenty minutes from idea to posting and two on something you slaved over for weeks, going to sleep dreaming about, spending hours researching to get the details right...it doesn’t seem fair. Effort should be rewarded, right?
But it isn’t. Not always.
After two years, I could, if I ever had the time, sit down and work out a formula for the most popular pairing/length/genre I can do and then stick to that, knowing I’ll get feedback. That we all could, that deep down we all know we could but we don’t says something about us. Pats on back all around. (And yes, the fics would show what we’d done after a while but I prefer to believe we’re better than that because I really think we are.)
Anything I write, no matter how trivial, light, dashed off as the kettle boils for my thirteenth cup of coffee, unbeta’d and daft, is written because it pleases me to write it. That’s the starting point. Always. It might please me because I’m doing it as a favour and I like doing things for friends for the warm happy, or because the zing of a fic idea whacking into you is a rush like nothing else, or because it’s a lovely bit of knicker dampening smut and I’m left with a head full of pretty pictures and a smile. Doesn’t matter. I’ve never once written and thought, ‘Yes, that’s good for ten reviews, easy. Got me my naked Spike, got me my joke in paragraph three, my blow job in paragraph six...’
This is turning into all about me. Heh. LJ’s revealed what I already knew; I’m an egotistical, self obsessed feedback whore. I’m sure I had a point to all this.
The challenge is writing well when you can see by looking that all too often, good stuff, tip of the pyramid fic, gets less feedback. Where’s the incentive to do it well and get less back, when you can do it with less effort and get more? Well, I suppose there isn’t any. That’s where self motivation comes in. I have very little. Setting aside the library banana smut, which I do for fun and won’t defend because I don’t see any need to, when I start a ‘real’ fic, I’m filled with good intentions. This fic I’ll take my time. This fic I’ll plot out, get beta’d, let sit overnight, revise, tweak endlessly until it’s perfect...then I get bored, or so chuffed with it that I post it before the keyboard’s stopped quivering from the final stroke...because I want to see what you all think of it. I want to share. I want, oh God, help me, the feedback.
Think this is where I came in.
::head thunks on desk::
ETA; I had one of those aggravating moments stirring the chicken satay and realised that all thousand words of this could be summed up in one sentence; 'Feedback is good if you never ever think about it when you're writing, or make it in any way a factor because if you do you'll post it too fast and the fic will suffer even if the feedback still flows and you'll hate yourself in the morning.' OK, one long, run on sentence.