Brutal honesty Meme pt 2

[ladyjanelly]

So..the page went down.

I think I saw most of your replies.

I wasn't so surprised that I got crit for leaving fics unfinished. I know it's my biggest fault as a writer. I think I just suck at writing endings and maybe ending things in general.

What I wasn't expecting were the honest questions, which was very cool. 

I find myself really interested in your life outside of writing, because it seems so similar and yet so different from mine. School is/can be hell-- check. Working, going to school, fandommy stuff, cats-- check. But then you're studying something I truly don't understand (I mean, I kind of know what it is but only vaguely) and you live in a place that may as well be a whole other country for all that I really know about it. And WOW that makes me sound like a hick, but there it is-- I'm honestly usually puzzled and kind of generally bewildered by places that are big urban areas and yet not Big Cities of the type featured in films. (SUCH a hick, seriously, but please understand, I lived in my state's biggest city, and it was the BIGGEST CITY at 70,000 people.) I'm curious as to how Kendra is related to you, and how old you are versus how old she is, since you referred to her once as the daughter of your heart, not sister, for example.

Richardson is kind of a neat place to live.  We're on the outskirts of Dallas, which is about as diverse as a city can be.  It's so cut into neighborhoods. Downtown, Deep Ellum, Highland Park, The West End.  Outside the city core there are pockets of rich among the poor and poor among the rich.  Out here in Richardson it's more even as far as income levels go, I think.  Not so many super poor or super rich.  There's a huge immigrant society here. For groceries, you can go to the Chinese or the Korean or the Indian.  We have a Bollywood theatre and Chinese restaurants where I've never seen another causasian person that wasn't in our party.  There are business parks with horse pastures in between.  It's surreal.  I should really go on a photo-hunt one day.

Hmmm. Kendra.  Well her story starts with Adam.  He was a little 14 yr old who played Amtgard with us for a long time and we started giving him rides to save his parents the hassle. That evolved into him eventually coming to our house on Fri night and getting picked up on Sun night.  His mom would call and ask "You guys are taking Adam this weekend, right?" if they had plans.

So when Sam and I bought a house and Adam was 18, he moved in with us.  And a little while after that he started dating this chick and she started sleeping over and I was all "he's a man-whore (and he was) so no point in getting attached,"  But then I woke up one morning and she was still here and I was like "Um, what's your name again?"  But still trying not to get attached. They broke up and I was sad. They got back together and I was happy when she came back.  They broke up again and by that time Soooo Attached and no way in hell was I breaking up with her too, so we still hung out until Adam moved away.

She's 19 now and I'll be 37 in April.  That's coincidentally the spread between my mother and I (and every generation of females through my family as far as anybody remembers).  

When I was 15 I went to live with my grandparents, and I kind of feel like around that age kids need someone older and wiser who isn't a parent to hang out with and talk to.  They're going through so much stuff with growing up but it's scary to talk to their parents. Or the stuff they're going through IS the parents. And yeah.  So I like doing this.  

============


Someone else asked:

And I'm just curious - at what point do you think, "Okay, that's all I can do with this story?" Like, when do you decide that its just not working for you and its time to move on?

I'm curious 'cause I tend to hunker down and force myself to do it whether its working or not. And a friend of mine recently said, "Its not about you forcing the words onto the page; its about you being a conduit for the words to appear on the page." And that sounds all Confucius or whatever, but I thought it was an interesting point. Is that maybe how you feel sometimes, too?

Hmm. Good question too.  I never really thought about it. 
I think I stop writring on fics for a variety of reasons. Well one really, but the causes of that are varied.

I stop writing on a fic because the words stop coming.

Sometimes it's because I realize the story I'm trying to tell here is freakin' HUGE and it overwhelms me and I have no idea which end to grab it from. (Watt St.)

Sometimes something outside the story is making it painful.  Model-verse was about to touch on some stuff that I have similar experiances to.   Kitty-verse got hard when my old-lady cat got sick.

Usually I discover some fundamental flaw with the premise that throws me hard off track and I get distracted with the shininess of some other bunny. (the Jeff/Dean fic where it would have been Dean and John in some ways and I din't want to write that level of twistedness).  the Kitty-verse also suffered from this because I couldn't make Trist competent to give conscent in my head, much less in words.  

Scar!verse I dunno what happened to that one.  They won't go to Austin.  They have no reason to avoid it but I do and they won't go.  I think I love them too much to put a wrench in the works like that.

Every now and then something ends short but right.  The Jensen-bot story and One Easy Lesson worked like that.

I think the only fic I ever ended on purpose was Rollerball and it still feels--off somehow.

Okay. If anybody has any other questions (about me or writing or what-not, not about what's gonna happen in a fic or when I"m going to post more of whatever, etc), here's your chance.  I'll try to answer as best I can.

Comments

[lapillus]

While I don't want to risk derailing you from "In From The Cold", I'll risk asking anyway - do you have an ending for it?

And since you brought them up a whole series of questions about endings:
You said that maybe you don't like them in real life - why not?
Do you feel that the endings to other people's stories are good? What stories (fannish or otherwise, writen or filmed) are your favoreite(s)?

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

I do have an ending planned but getting everything to keep pointing that way is tricky.

It's not that I don't like endings in RL but I'm not good at them. I don't end relationships well. When people go out of my life it's usually a weird scene. Hurt feelings and confusion and stuff.

Hrm. I've read good endings. Um. none come to mind right this second? Maybe I should pay more attention to ends when I read fic. It could be that I'm holding my endings up to an impossible standard, or that I sort of skim the last words and haven't filed away enough good ends to know what one looks like.

[lapillus]

I do have an ending planned but getting everything to keep pointing that way is tricky.

Would it distress you if it found a different ending than the one you planned?

It's not that I don't like endings in RL but I'm not good at them. I don't end relationships well. When people go out of my life it's usually a weird scene. Hurt feelings and confusion and stuff.

That sounds normal enough for how things end in real life, at least if you aren't the sort of person who sticks it out perhaps longer than they should and does all the grief work and emotional cutting of ties before cutting contact.

Hrm. I've read good endings. Um. none come to mind right this second? Maybe I should pay more attention to ends when I read fic. It could be that I'm holding my endings up to an impossible standard, or that I sort of skim the last words and haven't filed away enough good ends to know what one looks like.

I wasn't so much thinking of great last paragraphs (although those are certainly worth looking at!) but more more the situation at the end of stories that you find satisfying. Do they have to be happy? Do you prefer equivocal? Do you like something final or is riding off into the sunset better? Does it really depend on the story?

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

A different ending wouldn't bother me. I think I worry about the threads not tying up in a satisfying way and leaving things dangling that arent' enough to make a sequel but don't really feel complete.

I don't think I have an ending-type preference. "struggles still to go" or "walk off into the sunset" or "everything sucks" or whatever.

In "Threw Away the Sun" I left at a hopeful but fragile place and people liked that. "The things they make in China these days" was definitely a dark this-can't-end-well ending that people loved. So I dunno.

[faunaana.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna step up to the plate and state that I was the one who posed the Confucius line. Not that I did it anonymously over in the thread, but because I think it'd be weird for me to comment here on it without acknowledging that I said it.

Okay, with that out of the way: "I stop writing on a fic because the words stop coming."

This is something I've thought happened to many writers. For me, the most famous example is the ending of "Huckleberry Finn." If I remember correctly, it took Twain something like 10 years to write an ending. He got to a point and apparently thought, "Well, damn. What happens now?" And didn't have an answer, and so he walked away. So why wouldn't it happen to any writer, right?

But I just see so many readers, I don't know, bemoaning - for the lack of a better word - to a writer, "Why won't you finish this?!" And I've always found that off-putting. As if one or ten or 100 people demanding more work from a writer will magically allow the words to come to a writer.

About a month ago, I commented to andsparkles that I was saddened that she had abandoned her 'ruins verse. By which I meant - and I'm not sure I expressed it well - was that I felt like it had real potential, but I understood that a writer can stop at any time. I just wondered why. And again, not because she owed me anything, but my natural curiosity regarding the writing process compelled me to inquire.

"Usually I discover some fundamental flaw with the premise that throws me hard off track"

And I find this intriguing. Its an aspect that that the writer is intimately privy to, but the reader is not. We cannot know what the stumbling block is because we are not writing it. And writing and reading are two separate experiences that I don't think can be rectified. I can enjoy Harry Potter, and talk about the writing of it till I'm blue in the face - but that doesn't grant me the ability to write it.

I'm pretty sure I've commented to you before regarding the homeless Jensen fic that as I read it, it feels as though you already know where its going, that you have a specific end goal in mind. But what if you don't? What if you hit a stumbling block, and it just can't work for you anymore? As I reader, I likely wouldn't have seen it coming, because my experience is that you do know the lay of the land.

I don't know, I really could ramble about this for a while. I just feel that there's something about the immediacy of the internet in general, and livejournal in particular that gives the illusion that the divide between writers and readers is more opaque than it is. The writer often spends hours, days, weeks, months on something, meanwhile, the reader only spends however long it takes to read a chapter/story (which is always considerably less than it took to write). This difference is what I think leads to readers believing that a writer can just whip something up. And my experience is that that really is not feasible.

I have a potentially damaging habit of trying to force something, anything, onto the page. Which, why? Why would I do that? I dunno. So that's why I'm so curious as to how other writers come to the decision to say, "Well, then. Its just not working." And walking away. I think that's probably a healthier thing to do, creatively and emotionally. And I think maybe readers would be more understanding? Less demanding? if maybe a given writer could just give readers a heads up. (Or maybe its just me who apparently cares this deeply! ;) )

Anyway, just my rambling thoughts :)

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the way readers percieve the writer as "in control" of the fic and how could it possibly get to where there's no where to go?

I have a goal in mind for the homeless verse, but I'm in the thick of the trickiest part right now. I just added a fourth POV and I think that really helps. There were things going on that worked less-well from the 3 I'd been using. I think Jensen giving conscent was hard part #1. Now I have to work to the real ending.

I think some of my fics could have been salvaged if I was willing to go back and re-write. The issue is that I write more when I'm getting feedback. Little comments by readers open doors for me and keep me motivated and encouraged. But on the other hand, I feel like it's hard to retroactively change the continuity to fix an error that was 2 chapters ago or something.

One thing that I did when I wasn't writing anything because I was trying to force one particular fic was give myself the entire month of April to play wiht whatever bunny crossed my mind. To re-read my own WIPs and skip parts and write late-chapters or whatever I wanted to write, as long as I did an hr a day. That really got me unstuck and I got some great progress done. Writing was fun again.

[xsethsownstarx.livejournal.com]

As a reader and wanna-be writer, I think I definitely understand better when a story is "abandoned" or can't be finished. I have soo many ideas in my head, and have started so many stories that promise to be great, only to get a few pages in (I think my best was 30) and come to a screeching halt. I've never finished a single thing I've tried to write. It's horribly frustrating. But it gives me a better level of understanding the struggle a writer goes thru, and helps me to appreciate every chapter that much more when it comes.

[pekover.livejournal.com]

This isn't really related to the criticism page, but it's something I've been wondering about lately, not just in relation to you...

Why do you write fanfic? I don't mean why do you write, I mean why have you chosen to write in this genre? A lot of fanfic I've read, it's quite clear why that author has chosen to write fanfic - there's no gift for characterization, or no understanding of plot (sometimes no grasp of grammar)...but since I've started reading, I've noticed you and quite a few other people who are really talented writers, and I wonder why you've chosen to direct your gifts in this direction.

I especially wonder with someone like you, who creates total AUs, and even uses RPS, so that you're essentially creating the characters anyways. I mean, all that your characters have in common with their namesakes is their bodies, really...If you write Jared, I know what he looks like, but everything else about YOUR version of Jared I get from your writing. So you've essentially created your own character, and you've definitely created your own settings and plots...

Is it that writing fanfic gives you a built in audience? Or that it's your way of enjoying fandom? I don't mean this as a criticism, I'm just genuinely curious. Whyever you do it, I enjoy your work, so I'm really not complaining. But in case you ever wondered, now that I've started reading you, I would read something you created completely from scratch, if you tried it. Especially if you promised to damn well finish the story! :)

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Why do I write fanfic?

I started out writing original fic while my husband wrote his, but nobody I knew wanted to read my little gay stories. The feedback numbers on places like fictionpress.com are sooo sad.

Hello, my name is Janell and I'm a feedback junkie.

So I started writing gay elf fic and putting it on ff.net. Crossed over into Yahoo groups elf-fic. A lot of people there had started posting this livejournal stuff so I checked it out and eventually ended up in Boondock Saints fanfic, followed soonafter by SPN and SPN RPS.

I like having the template to play in--someone else's rules even if all they cover is that Jared is tall and Jensen has freckles, y'know?

I like the built-in audience and I really feel that most people would be less sparked by an original fic than they are fanfic. I know I am--even good authors on my f-list that write original stuff I rarely read it.

Which isnt to say I might not try publishing this as original fic or something, but I like to share it in an interactive environment first and fanfic lets me get that.

Does that make sense?

[pekover.livejournal.com]

It totally makes sense...thanks.

[xsethsownstarx.livejournal.com]

Okay, this has been bugging me since I started reading your stories. What's with the title of your LJ?! I kinda thought maybe it was something from Supernatural that I don't understand because I'm only a watch-it-when-I-catch-it-on kinda fan. (Mostly because I don't usually like scary things, and SPN can be pretty scary - or maybe I'm just a pansy - but I love the boys, so they get me sometimes and I can't not watch when I see them.)

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

Heh.
Okay. So there's this game called Amtgard where people hit each other with foam-padded sticks and shoot each other with padded-tipped arrows.

And I may or may not have shot this guy in the face. He yells about "That Justicar Archer Bitch!"

And my teammates (the Justicars) took that a little personal and he had a day that was on the low end of the spectrum for fun.

So the Justicar Archer Bitch is more of a real life (ish) thing than a SPN thing. :)

[xsethsownstarx.livejournal.com]

Oh, so I had not hope of possibly knowing what it was about then? Yay! I'm not retarded. *giggles*