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] seriousfic.livejournal.com 2008-02-13 06:26 am (UTC)(link)
The stories where someone gets amnesia or has some sort of compulsion to act or restriction on acting, and there's a relationship of convenience ("you should move in with me because you've forgotten everything but I only have one bed"), and there's unrequited love except without the plot contrivances it would be requited

Ooh, ooh, I've written that. Only there are two beds. This does not last.

[identity profile] thelastgoodname.livejournal.com 2008-02-14 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
Really? What fandom? What pairing? Would I love it a lot?

[identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com 2008-02-14 02:10 am (UTC)(link)
YA RLY, Batman, Dick/Babs, and I think it's pretty swell. (http://seriousfic.livejournal.com/16663.html#cutid1)

[identity profile] executrix.livejournal.com 2008-02-14 03:10 am (UTC)(link)
Hey, do you know invisibleshrew? Ze just posted about having finished S3 of HLOTS. I told her you were just starting.
ext_2351: (Default)

[identity profile] lunabee34.livejournal.com 2008-02-15 05:01 am (UTC)(link)
No, I don't know that person. But I am planning this weekend to look up those comms and that fic you told me about in your email. I can't do a lot with lj at work because the computers have these crazy filters on them so I haven't had the chance to check it out yet. I am so excited about getting into the fandom though. I've only watched the first couple season three episodes, but hot damn. How is this show so freaking good and the first I really heard of it was when you started watching it?

[identity profile] executrix.livejournal.com 2008-02-15 02:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Unfortunately, it's not much of a fandom, more that a number of people in fandom think it's a great show.

The word is being spread, though--I don't have HBO, so I haven't watched The Wire in broadcast. [livejournal.com profile] herself_nyc recommended it, so I rented some DVDs, liked it, and pretty much picked up HLOTS as an association item.

[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.