People really write stories just for themselves?
I feel baffled-- writing is hard work, whereas picturing things in my head is easy, and can be done in endless variations. I write only in order to be read. The self-insertion fic in the Harry Potter universe would actually be made much more difficult because I have to write it for the other two people I'm inserting... if it was just me, I'd change the name and no one would know, but this would actually be a collaboration, making things much more complex, and then there is the question of would anyone else want to read it. I really don't want to bother committing to paper that which does not have an audience.
So, tell me, why does a peerson write it out if they don't care if anyone reads it? As a record of their imaginings? I'm seriously curious.
Helen Krummenacker wrote:
People really write stories just for themselves?
I feel baffled-- writing is hard work, whereas picturing things in my head is easy, and can be done in endless variations.
Totally agree! It's hard to write something that will make your readers see the same pictures. You sound very visual, like me. I see my stories as a film - action and dialogue - and I have to translate that to words.
I write only in order to be read.
Me too. Otherwise I'd be content running my own private films in my head for entertainment.
Nico
Helen Krummenacker wrote:
People really write stories just for themselves?
I feel baffled-- writing is hard work, whereas picturing things in my head is easy, and can be done in endless variations. I write only in order to be read. The self-insertion fic in the Harry Potter universe would actually be made much more difficult because I have to write it for the other two people I'm inserting... if it was just me, I'd change the name and no one would know, but this would actually be a collaboration, making things much more complex, and then there is the question of would anyone else want to read it. I really don't want to bother committing to paper that which does not have an audience.
But one *does* have an audience: one's self. And while picturing things in one's head is indeed easy, it's also ephemeral and, unless scribbled down, forgotten. The advantage to writing, even if no one else ever sees it, is that you get to read your thought pictures as well as think them and this engages more of the brain. Writing makes the transient imaginings real, nails them down. Yes, writing is hard work, but it can also become a compulsion, an activity difficult to tear yourself away from.
Didn't Stephen King once say he wrote the stuff that *he* personally wanted to read? Considering his commercial success, probably not the best example, but it still rings true. In the end, the only reason to write at all is because you find the universe engaging enough so that there is nothing else you'd rather be doing.
This said, I can feel mighty envious of those writers out there (Hi, Sally!) who manage to engage others in their universe of choice and, at the same time, are prolific enough to make writing look easy.
Jackie
From: J Taylor jstaylor@intsvc.com
Didn't Stephen King once say he wrote the stuff that *he* personally
wanted
to read
I suspect most if not all writers do this, except those that write purely for profit (which rather excludes fanfic writers by default).
I find it rather hard to get a grip on the idea of writing purely for oneself, but since I've never written anything without at least one foot on a soapbox then I'm automatically assuming an audience. Whether it will listen to what I'm saying, or even notice the message behind Avon's beautiful suffering, is another matter entirely.
My mother used to wonder why I spent so much time writing stuff that only a handful of people were going to read, and was never going to earn me any money. She would then potter out to the greenhouse, where she spent long hours cultivating flowers that only a handful of people got to see, and never earned her a penny. I can see an analogy there between writing for oneself and gardening. At least a story is permanent, whilst flowers have this depressing habit of dying every autumn.
Neil
From: J Taylor jstaylor@intsvc.com
Didn't Stephen King once say he wrote the stuff that *he* personally
wanted
to read
I suspect most if not all writers do this, except those that write purely for profit (which rather excludes fanfic writers by default).
I find it rather hard to get a grip on the idea of writing purely for oneself, but since I've never written anything without at least one foot on a soapbox then I'm automatically assuming an audience. Whether it will listen to what I'm saying, or even notice the message behind Avon's beautiful suffering, is another matter entirely.
My mother used to wonder why I spent so much time writing stuff that only a handful of people were going to read, and was never going to earn me any money. She would then potter out to the greenhouse, where she spent long hours cultivating flowers that only a handful of people got to see, and never earned her a penny. I can see an analogy there between writing for oneself and gardening. At least a story is permanent, whilst flowers have this depressing habit of dying every autumn.
Neil
At 13:03 04/01/02 -0800, you wrote:
People really write stories just for themselves?
Yep. Or at least 'a person'.
I feel baffled-- writing is hard work,
I'm going to disagree--or at least vary--right here, and say that for the majority of the time I find writing to be both easy and fun. If I didn't, I wouldn't do it as a hobby. Hard work is something I only do when I get paid to. :-)
whereas picturing things in my head is easy, and can be done in endless variations.
Indeed it is, and I do a lot of that too. It's one kind of fun. However, I find picturing things has distinct limitations. When I daydream, I do it in detail--line by line dialogue and so on. There is only so much that I can keep in my head at one time. I have to keep running over it to remember it. So if I start thinking of a story, by the time I get through three or four scenes, I've lost the earlier ones.
I only started writing fanfic quite recently, because it took a suprisingly long time for me to realise that if I simply wrote things down, I'd be able to remember them. Obvious, you might think, and you'd be right. Why it took so long for me work it out, I have no idea. Possibly because I thought it would be too difficult and I'm basically a chronically lazy person (see above).
I can daydream in vivid colour, but I can't keep a hundred thousand world novel fresh and clear in my head. I could outline the plot, but that wouldn't be the same as seeing every scene. It's certainly not the same as being able to sit down right now and be able to read it again.
And I do, genuinely, like to read them again. I also like to reread profic novels--in fact, I usually enjoy books more the second and subsequent times through, when I'm less distracted by the plot and can enjoy the prose more.
I write only in order to be read.
This seems very strange to me--almost unimaginable, in fact. But that's why I love talking to people about why and how they write. Everyone is different, and fascinatingly so.
So, tell me, why does a peerson write it out if they don't care if anyone reads it? As a record of their imaginings? I'm seriously curious.
A record of my imaginings is actually a very good way of putting it. A record, and also a foundation for future imaginings.
I love world building. I would far rather write AU stories than strict canon, because that's what interests me. Like self-insertion characters, AU limits the potential audience but, as I've said, that's not a real concern for me.
By writing stories down, I can create a richer, more complicated AU world to play in. Because I have a record of what went before, I can build on it, make the characters more detailed and so more real, and the plots more intricate. Relationships and people can evolve, but if I want to go back and set a story at an earlier point in the timeline, I can easily get myself back into the voices of the characters at that 'when'. I can have 'canon' stories, and stories that may or may not become part of the characters' reality, and I can keep them separate.
Stories can reference the past and foreshadow the future. Characters can remember something that happened fifteen stories and three years (of their time) ago--maybe an incident which I didn't place much importance on at the time I wrote it--and it can have profound effects on what happens in the current story. Similarly, I can go back and read earlier stories, and find things in them I didn't see before, which lead to entire new stories.
And if all I want to do is daydream away a boring afternoon at work, I have my world ready to play in...but if I come up with something I particularly like, I make sure I write it down.
love Anna
I can daydream in vivid colour, but I can't keep a hundred thousand world novel fresh and clear in my head.
<sigh>
Hundred thousand *word* novel. I hate spell-chequers.
(Although a hundred thousand world novel would no doubt be even trickier.)
love Anna
************************* Anna Simpson ************************** Listen carefully. This is the secret of how to live: fire your gun before someone else does. (Jeff Noon - 'Vurt') ***************** http://www.moglit.demon.co.uk *****************
Anna Simpson wrote:
I feel baffled-- writing is hard work,
I'm going to disagree--or at least vary--right here, and say that for the majority of the time I find writing to be both easy and fun. If I didn't, I wouldn't do it as a hobby. Hard work is something I only do when I get paid to. :-)
I *hate* you. :) For me, writing is indeed often hard work... But it's *satisfying* hard work, and that makes it worth doing. Personally, while I can understand the appeal of writing down stories simply for one's own amusement, I very much doubt that I would write anything if there wasn't someone, somewhere who I thought would want to read it. It's actually kind of hard to explain *why*... I guess it's that the story doesn't actually feel *finished* until it's been read. Plus, one of the things that makes the hard work satisfying is the anticipation that I can get better and better at it, and that's hard to do without some sort of feedback.
Anna wrote re: why write fanfic just for yourself...
That sums up what I was trying to say far far more cohenerntly. Glad it's not just me who feels that way!
Leia
Helen wrote:
People really write stories just for themselves?
I feel baffled-- writing is hard work, whereas picturing things in my head is easy, and can be done in endless variations.
The problem I have with pictures in my head is that they play over and over and won't go away. I'll have a scene or several that literally keep me awake in the small hours of the morning, and the only way to stop them is to write them down. After that, I think what the hell and fill in the missing scenes to make it a story.
While I definitely like basking in feedback at the end, I don't think I'd ever start writing a story other than to avoid chronic insomnia.
Louise
Lousie wrote...
The problem I have with pictures in my head is that they play over and over and won't go away. I'll have a scene or several that literally keep me awake in the small hours of the morning, and the only way to stop them is to write them down.
That too! This discussion has been fascinating and is very reasuring somehow. I thought I was the only one that kind of thing happened to, and distinctly remember being told off when I was little for being caught under the bedclothes with a torch writing down an idea that would leave me alone. I haven't changed much ;-)
Leia
People really write stories just for themselves? I feel baffled-- writing is hard work
Writing is _fun_. The whole process -- from the original imagineering and primary research phase, through teasing workable plot and pacing into shape, into scene-boarding and finally popping the words into the framework -- is wonderful. It's always a challenge, you never quite know where the journey will take you and, personally, I'm often a bit sad when I've finished something. Of course I'm also often sick to the hind teeth of it and delighted to be over and done with the damn thing... *GRIN*. Depends on whether it was a commission or an idea I came up with, usually...
On top of that, some ideas are so insistent, powerful, painful or generally all-consuming that you have to let them out of your mind and onto paper before your skull explodes. Then the act of writing becomes a catharsis, a way of channelling the pain.
For many people, whether it's the joy of the journey or the pressure of the material, the process of writing is itself a genuine pleasure, and the idea of sharing the results of something so personal is horrendous -- like being filmed making love.
I'm a definite exhibitionist slut when it comes to words. I wouldn't do it at all without some sort of audience, and nowadays rarely consider writing for free (mainly 'cos I can't afford the luxury of the time, sadly). It doesn't mean that I don't feel the pressure of unborn ideas fighting to escape though...
Tim. -- Imagine there were two of you. Which one would win?
tim@midnight.demon.co.uk
At 01:03 PM 1/4/2002 -0800, Helen Krummenacker wrote:
People really write stories just for themselves?
(As usual, I feel guilty answering this sort of question, because I haven't written any B7 in years. But I do write fanfic still, so....)
I don't write for anyone else *but* myself. Which is a good thing, because I tend to write things nobody but me *wants* to read. (My usual feedback for the fanfic I'm writing these days: "Never would have thought of that. I'm now trying to forget that *you* did." <g>)
So, tell me, why does a peerson write it out if they don't care if anyone reads it?
Not only don't I care if anyone reads my fanfic, but occasionally (though I'm usually coaxed by a friend or my partner into putting the stories on my web page or some other public/semi-public forum) there are stories that I don't *want* to know anyone else has read. The last story I wrote (different fandom) is like that.
Sometimes, I write things that I want to share with the world. Sometimes, I even write things specifically to please other people.
But then there are things like that last story. I finished it on New Year's Day. It had been in my head for about six weeks before that. It popped up at random moments, it turned up in my dreams, it started getting on my nerves. A lot. So I started writing it, about four weeks into the obsession. Now that it's done--sure, I think about it a little bit, but *as a story.* I think things like "did I *really* handle that character right?" or "I wonder if I ought to write a sequel..." But I don't keep getting pictures in my head (and they weren't pictures I wanted, especially).
So...writing as exorcism, maybe?
But I really do write for me. I wrote fanfic before I knew there was such a thing, and I wrote fanfic during a period of my life when I didn't know any other fans any more and (because fandom had left a bad taste in my mouth) didn't care to. I write because *writing* -- not merely "making up stories," but *putting words on paper,* arranging them, playing with them, looking at them--that's what I do.
-- Michelle Wren-Moyer mmoyer@mninter.net "It was excruciatingly unbearable, but strangely fun."
Helen wrote...
So, tell me, why does a peerson write it out if they don't care if anyone reads it? As a record of their imaginings? I'm seriously curious.
I starting writing fanfic before I knew that's what I was doing, just to amuse myself. I'm not sure there's a simple answer why though. I write stories I wish someone else had written so I could read them...sort of...
I write them down beacuse while I have a vivid (some might say overactive) imagination I also have a appalingly bad memeory and short attention span and I like to be able to go back to a particular idea without finding it's vanished.
It's only very recently I've put any of my fanfic out there for other people to read.
Leia (My fic is at http://user.totalise.co.uk/~leiafee as we're on the subject)
On Sat, Jan 05, 2002 at 08:10:57PM -0000, Leia Fee wrote:
Helen wrote...
So, tell me, why does a peerson write it out if they don't care if anyone reads it? As a record of their imaginings? I'm seriously curious.
I starting writing fanfic before I knew that's what I was doing, just to amuse myself. I'm not sure there's a simple answer why though. I write stories I wish someone else had written so I could read them...sort of...
Yeah. I write the stories *I* want to read, because there aren't enough. (And often enough with fanfic, that also might involve "fixing up" things that I wanted fixed up, whether that be saving Our Heros or putting in a missing scene or something). Would I write if there wasn't an audience? I'm not sure. Various factors contribute their different weights -- if it's a scenario demanding to be written (like, I *really* want to fix something up desperately) then the presence of an audience is less of a factor. On the other hand, if I feel like a bit of egoboo, and there's a particular audience out there whom I know from past experience is more likely to give me some nice feedback, then I might write for them -- not so much writing for *them* (because the first principle still holds -- I write stories *I* want to read) but putting a particular story idea higher on the list of things-to-do than what might otherwise be the case (one reason why all of my recent stuff has been Sentinel rather than B7...)
Unfortunately a negative factor from an audience is if I feel as if I'm being pressured to write something (for example, a sequel, or for a zine *deadline*) -- because that makes it so much of a drag, being under pressure, that my Muse flees screaming into the night (or, in other words, I don't wanna write it, no, no, no).
Poetry, on the other hand, is a completely different kettle of aquatic creatures. For me, poetry is catharsis, and it wouldn't matter a bit if nobody ever saw it (and there are some poems I've written which nobody will ever see).
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "Are you the police?" "No Ma'am. We're Musicians" -Elwood Blues, The Blues Brothers
-
Anna Simpson -
Betty Ragan -
Helen Krummenacker -
J Taylor -
Kathryn Andersen -
Leia Fee -
Louise Rutter -
Michelle Wren-Moyer -
Neil Faulkner -
Nico Mody-Nikoloff -
Tim