lunabee34: (Default)
lunabee34 ([personal profile] lunabee34) wrote2008-02-01 06:20 pm

You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes ...

Expect spammation this weekend. I am all by my lonesome and also ill and unlikely to go anywhere. Consider yourselves thusly warned. :)

So, I've been thinking about something for a little while now and then [livejournal.com profile] thelastgoodname and I emailed about it and I decided to make a post because I find myself intensely curious about the way the rest of you approach this issue.

Until very recently, the fanfic I wrote fell into one of two categories. I either wrote stories that I thought other people would like to read (stories that the current trajectory of fandom is loving) or stories for which I received some bolt of lightning kind of inspiration (and these usually tend towards backstory or bits that canon has elided). By and large, the kinds of stories I usually write are not the kinds of stories I most like to read. In fact, I would often find myself thinking, "I'd really love to read X story. Why has no one written it?" while doing nothing about it.

It suddenly occurred to me that *I* could write the stories I wanted to read. Um, yes. Duh. Really, really duh. But for me not so much. It's taken me a while to get into the headspace where I can enjoy something I've written as much as something someone else has written, and even then I don't enjoy it in the same way. I still would prefer that someone else write that kickass Sheppard/Caldwell sex-slave AU because if I wrote it there would be no mystery for me there, no hanging on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen. There would be pleasure in the words and in the craft of it and in the figuring out the bones of the story, but it's not the same kind of pleasure as coming to a piece entirely from the outside (or as outside as you can be given the way that fandom has a tendecy to make us all rub off on influence each other LOL). Also for me is the issue that many of the stories I really, really want to read hit kinks (either sexual or narrative) that somehow feel strangely personal to write stories about. For example, I have no qualms telling you guys that I enjoy rape fic, but it somehow makes me feel vulnerable to contemplate writing it myself.

Even so, I've found myself writing fic in the past couple months that I wanted as a reader rather than a writer. So what about y'all? Thoughts? Examples?

[identity profile] thelastgoodname.livejournal.com 2008-02-15 05:26 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, that is pretty swell (and it's not even my fandom), but now I have another WIP to track. Alas. (I was led to believe--by my own fevered brain--that this was a finished story; I am bereft of a conclusion and the attendant sex.)

[identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com 2008-02-15 06:09 am (UTC)(link)
It is finished, I'm just posting an update every Monday. I could drop you a line when the whole thing is done.

[identity profile] thelastgoodname.livejournal.com 2008-02-15 06:14 am (UTC)(link)
Would you mind terribly letting me know? I'm enjoying it a lot (you're a great writer), but I am appallingly bad at keeping track of things I want to read when they happen serially, and since I'm not in the fandom or know anyone who is, I probably wouldn't think to check up on it.

[identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com 2008-03-06 05:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey, me again. Just wanted to let you go I finished my story. (http://seriousfic.livejournal.com/tag/series:+change+my+world) Guess we'll just have to start calling me the WIP Slayer, woot.

[identity profile] thelastgoodname.livejournal.com 2008-03-07 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
Awesome! Thanks.