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

[lunabee34]

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 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?

Comments

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

OMG yes. I didn't say this in the post, but a lot of the fics I really love to read are not what I would necessarily consider the best writing. They're melodramatic and full of plot contrivances or what have you. But then I have to really stop and think because this fic made me cry or it turned me on or it made me laugh. It made me feel something and so what is good writing anyway? Something with an elegant metaphor or something that makes people feel?

And then I realize that one of the reasons I don't write those stories is because I have this standard of what makes good writing that suddenly seems patently ridiculous.

Am I making any sense here? I feel like I'm sort of flapping my arms about and spewing nonsense. LOL

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a big part of it, too, the "good writing" standard that requires no contrivances and no blatant tugging of heartstrings.

But when you say, "makes people feel," which feelings are we talking about? Because the kind of satisfaction that comes from melodrama is different from the kind that comes from "literature," right? I mean, we've both read very good things that escaped the melodrama curse even though they probably should have succumbed (The Lovely Bones comes to mind). Of course, I'm not sure how you would hit the stuck-together-sharing-a-sleeping-bad-and-then-sudden-sex plot and still be beautifully written with elegant metaphors, but surely someone can do it. Just not me.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

How about using a more, ahem, bottom-up rather than top-down standard: i.e., not "Is this a contribution to World Literature that has Aristophanes biting his nails?" but "I have half an hour for some pleasure reading! Will I get more enjoyment out of reading 8/? in SmarmPeddler's J/D h/c epic or out of reading some more of that new Minette Walters I got from the library?" (I'm using pleasure reading as the standard, because OBVIOUSLY even a bad fanfic is more fun than putting away the laundry.)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

You have a new icon! I like it. :)

For me, I usually do get more pleasure out of reading the fanfic than the other.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right, but this is also the impulse that brought the world American Idol, and I'm not sure I can support that kind of thinking in my writing. Because I'm a huge snob.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I really like So You Think You Can Dance (icon, qv) so I don't think I can throw stones at people who prefer American Idol. I've had a lot of (fortunately reasonably amicable) disagreements in meta posts about Guilty Pleasures fics. The fics that I read (...at least the ones that I get all the way through...) give me insights into characters I love, sometimes in the context of thrilling adventures (for one value of thrilling or another), and they often use strikingly fresh language and are technically very well-crafted. If I said that they deserve to be in the Pantheon of Great Literature, I'd be lying or delusional, but they're absolutely as good as, well, Minette Walters.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

See, I wonder how people like Walters go about writing what they write. I think maybe I'm just a fundamentally different sort of writer. Or maybe I just need to broaden my writing horizons.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

See I don't know.

I gave a paper at a conference last weekend and my paper was about a Victorian writer named Ouida. She was hugely important and famous and influential in her day but she's pretty much fallen off the radar at this point. Someone asked me whether I think Ouida's work is interesting in terms of what it has to say about the culture and the time period or whether I think it has genuine literary merit. And the question made me stop and think and realize that I didn't know how to answer it. Because elegant metaphors, not so much. But yes with the fun and the funny and the tears and suspense.

I'm not sure that the satisfaction I get from high literature and other kinds of reading *is* different because I tend to not separate them in my mind. (Which, of course, begs the question of why I do so with fanfic if I don't with published works) Stephen King alongside Dickens.

I guess it really all boils down to what I think I'm trying to do when I write fanfic. Impress/intellectually engage or stimulate the emotions. And suddenly, I'm kinda not sure anymore. As you say, both would be super awesome.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

That's a great question: what are we trying to do when we write fanfic?

I've just realized that I have very different headspaces for reading and writing. Maybe the intent -- what I'm trying to do -- is different, too: I read to entertain myself. Do I write to entertain other people? Or to make a point? Or something else entirely?

Also, what does "genuine literary merit" mean? I mean, John Grisham and Danielle Steele have some sort of merit, and so do Dickens or Shakespeare -- and it's the exact same merit, right? Culturally, at least, at the time of their writing. Shakespeare and Dickens have just lasted longer, but maybe that's only because Grisham or Steele haven't had the opportunity to last through generations.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

You know I hear a lot of people say they write for themselves and I believe that as a motivation, but I'm not really sure it's true for me. I pretty much always write for others. Doesn't mean that I'm afraid to write stuff that I think will appeal only to a very small percentage of people, but I am always aware of and thinking about how an audience is going to respond to what I'm writing.

And I have no idea what genuine literary merit means. I really don't. I feel vaguely blasphemous saying this, but it's like porn. I know it when I see it. Or something. I mean, I will argue that The Stand has literary merit but not so much The Bodyguard's Assignment which is the most formulaic and crappy romance novel I have perhaps ever read. But that's not because I think romance novels have no literary merit--hello, Sweet, Savage Love--but because that particular novel is freaking awful.