Fluffy Promptables

[scribblemyname]

We're prompting fluffy, lighthearted stuff of any variety, no canon/pairing/character information required, though permitted.

Comments

[scribblemyname]

Ah. That makes sense.

I do fanfic of my own stuff as well as raw material in commentfics and snippets that will later be revised the mess out of to make work with canon. It does require a very large willingness to create a lot of fodder in order to create the good stuff. Every writer I know writes a lot of unusable material that was nevertheless necessary to write in order to reach the usable stuff.

I'm willing to lose my stuff though, not the good stuff, but the stuff I decide doesn't work for me and can't be revised into something I like. I'm willing to fic out several angles before picking the one I like best to canonize.

I think fanfic did that for me. I treat my own worlds like I treat fanfic writing, but most people don't do that, and it does make prompt stuff like this not as helpful.

And not sure if this will ever help you, but I did discover the secret to writing short after years of trying to ignore that rule when others spouted it: you really do have to start with one character and one focus and write only, only, only the words that get you there, never straying for anything. I didn't use to be able to write short either. Now, it's hard to make myself write long again.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

My way of doing fanfic, I think, is counter to most people's in the first place. I wrote it only to fix what I thought was wrong. If my work needs fanfic, then I did something wrong and I go fix canon.

I do have crossovers and little connections between stories that could make my stories into a larger universe, but I try not to make them very overt in the canon pieces. The trouble with me is that I'd make the crossovers canon, which is why I usually have some kind of outside threat to deal with when I combine worlds.

I am the express train writer. I usually do it in one pass, seldom switching tracks, and that one pass is what sees the story through from beginning to end. I can edit minor details to fix some bad track, but I can't mass edit until it's done and if I have to throw a large chunk out, I have to hate it because I do keep anything I can. I tend more to chuck the whole story than a section of it because once I know where it leads, altering its path means a completely different story, and that's not the one I meant to write, so I'd have to start all over.

I rarely do start over. There's too much baggage and water under the bridge and it's not the story I meant to tell, so I have to either give it to someone else (some other set of characters) or not do it at all.

Because I wrote fanfiction mainly to fix what bothered me about other people's writing, I don't usually fanfic myself because I've already cut most of that stuff out. The main characters are not people who would do the kind of things I object to, and so I don't go down those roads to begin with. I don't need a bunch of AUs when the story is going right.

I have accepted now, years too late, really, that I can never change the way others write what they do and the damage they do to the characters I love, even that the characters are not themselves if I wrote them the way I'd want them to be, and so I figure that I should stick to my own characters and writing because I don't need to change them and no one else's will ever be what I want because they will always be what they want.

I really wish I'd understood that earlier. So much could have been avoided if I did.

As for writing short, I'm not sure it's ever going to be for me. I do give my stories as much focus as I'm willing to give, and I generally only let one or two characters tell the story, which limits things as well. I'm just not willing to be word counting and trying to put in only what's absolutely necessary because my version of necessary is not someone else's, and too many times with short fic I've felt that things should have been explained and weren't, and part of my dislike for reading all together has come from consistently misunderstanding what I read. I put together details that writers forget, and I don't enjoy that how it feels when I realize everything I thought I knew and liked about a character was something I created in my head and not the story at all. I'd rather give more than the necessary details than make anyone feel the way I have, over and over again.

Like I said, I don't have the mental/emotional state to be a writer.

[scribblemyname]

Only fix-it fic, huh? Yeah, I fanfic because I like a lot of possibilities and would rather not have to choose. Or to understand. Or to ask what if. Or because I want more and there simply isn't.

I'm going out on a limb and doing some guesswork, educated though. Your friend was probably wrong. I don't think you write to escape at all. I think you write to gain control of a safe space. Writing was your safe space. Because of that, you're right. If that's the case, it shouldn't be in public. It's not written for others; it's written for yourself, which is a good thing, but not usually very good for sharing.

The fundamental assumption of writing for others is that the reader brings as much interpretation to the story as the writer does. There's no way around it without creating a truly terrible, boring, didactic story. Implication goes a long way because there's no way to tell a GOOD story without it.

So, not a bad thing, your focus when you write, but for the first time I actually get why it's not really a public thing. I don't use fiction that way and haven't actually met anyone else yet who does, so it never crossed my mind.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Makes it dumb that I tried to share it for so long, I guess. I really want people to like the stuff I write, and I have been desperate to share it before, but it's so pointless, isn't it? No one else wants to see that.

Wow. That is actually a very depressing realization.

[scribblemyname]

It's not that no one wants to see it. That wasn't the problem at all. It's that the give/take of reader/writer interpretation isn't a conversation you seem comfortable having. It takes away the safe space factor. So readers could love your work, but it wouldn't make any difference if it made you uncomfortable with your work or you didn't love it or what-have-you. Having trouble articulating this point, but that's the best I can do at first pass.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I guess saying that people didn't want to see it was wrong, but... it just makes it all a very pointless exercise. I've basically wasted years now, and all this time I thought I wasn't, that I was doing something productive with my time, I wasn't. And I not only wasted my time but everyone else's. It would have been better to never have written at all. I've made such a mess of everything.

[scribblemyname]

It would have been better to never have written at all.

On this point, I disagree. It would have been better to decide up front whether you preferred the give and take of reader involvement, engagement, and interpretation or the ability to control the material and feel comfortable with the world you created being exactly what you would have that world be.

Even as a reader, you seem to prefer things nailed down solid. Reading and writing interactively is not nailed down solid. You have a few options, but they are all fairly mutually exclusive:

1. Write and throw your work out to the void without ever, ever considering how people receive it. This is sort of the compromise, but it requires more resolve than I possess.

2. Write for yourself and don't share your work so you don't get it all mucked up in other people's expectations and interpretations.

3. Write for yourself and enjoy/thrive on the interaction with your work and other's interpretations thereof.

4. Write for others and enjoy/thrive on the interaction with your work and other's interpretations thereof.

I vary it up, but I'm a serious 3 and 4 for the most part. I am extremely protective of my canon, but I have room to love things outside my canon, so I'm never threatened by them. Canon is mine. I might gift a change to canon, but that's it, e.g. letting Shift marry Kilter in the end instead of letting her marry someone else before she gets there.

So when I don't think you wasted your time; I just think you have to pick an approach because you can't create a safe personal writing space then allow others who aren't "safe" inside without it getting gunked up. But again, all that's predicated on an educated guess: the idea that writing is something you used as a safe space.

The only solution I have to regain a safe space is to kick everybody else out of it. The only solution I have to keeping them in it is to find another safe space. I think the angst you've been feeling is that you want both: the safe space where you put it in the first place and the other people, so neither solution sounds appealing.


Let me add this: my writing got pretty bogged down when I allowed anyone physically near to me inside the space I wrote it in. I had to kick everybody out or I couldn't write. At all.

Fandom is safe space for me. Liana Mir is safe space for me. There's only certain people in this space and if anyone comes in that puts me on edge again, I kick them out and carve out that space again.

I don't think you have a lot of safe people. I don't think you're as comfortable with room for interpretation as I am. I think your safe space would just need to be smaller.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

Choosing option two is wasting everyone's time, since I supposedly was going to publish and make it a part of my financial income instead of just a hobby. I got a website and had covers made, and if two was what I wanted, I shouldn't have done any of that.

I spent years in that path, not sharing anything with anyone, not people close to me or far away.

Then I started in fanfiction, that I shared, and it taught me a few things, but it put me into other people's worlds and things I knew better than to write about, but I didn't care because I was in a place where sharing my writing seemed like a good thing. Until I realized not only that I was writing against my own beliefs, I was doing it in part to get reviews. I did not think I was, wasn't one of those fanfic writers that held stories for ransom until they got reviews, but the way I reacted when I felt a story was getting ignored or when I had a bad review is not something I am proud of.

When I went into writing original fiction, I found I had almost no audience at all, and it was frustrating, but I thought it in some ways better that I didn't.

I thought I was chucking at least book 3 out there in accord with number one, same with my stubborn insistence on posting serials or snippets even after I left the few writing communities I'd tried and failed to join.

That didn't work, either.

I don't see how I can thrive on other people's interactions with my stuff. It isn't healthy for me. It puts too much of my happiness in other's hands, for one, but I also don't have all that many people to share with, and most of them don't have the time to read as much as I can write.

I don't have anyone to kick out of my space, either. I lost the twins in December, another friend a few months before that, and so I have a grand total of four people that see my stuff: you, my best friend (only one story there,) my mother, and one other girl who has seen a couple stories.

I know I'm not comfortable with interpretation. I have a lot of squiks, a lot of lines I don't want crossed, and I have also in the back of my head not wanting to stumble anyone else with what I've written.

I don't see anything to clear out, and I don't know how I could isolate myself more than I already have. *shrugs*

[scribblemyname]

This is what I meant: you seem to want an audience but are uncomfortable with an audience and it's implications.

When I say safe space, I'm not talking about proximity. I'm talking about control. A safe space is controlled by you. My safe spaces play by my rules and only have people affecting how I emotionally feel about that space who are playing by the same rules.

Very few people in this world relatively speaking play by the rules you do with reading and writing because you nail things down and that makes it comfortable and okay for you, but the world of reading/writing in general plays by the rules of the author writes what they intend, let it loose, and then it's no holds barred what the world does to it in return.

It's your vocabulary, your genre, your being closed to interpretation... You want the audience but you want it on your terms, which means you were right that publishing isn't the right world for you, and I was wrong. Publishing is on the reader's terms and no two ways about that. You have to be willing to write, resolve, and cede control to the reader. If your writing gives you the ability to control a world into something comfortable, then you need to keep that control, not give it away.

Fandom probably worked pretty well for you WHILE it worked because it's on the author's terms, which is why it's sacred, safe space for me even when my nerves are shot and I'm nothing but a big, huge scream that can't write an original fiction word to save my life. I write it when I need to put things back on MY terms.

I hope that makes sense.

I hope that makes clear why I said if you want the audience but you're not comfortable with it, then I don't have a solution because the two approaches are mutually exclusive and that's probably why this has all been so frustrating for you.

If there's anything you ever figure that I can actually DO to help, just let me know. I can't think of anything now.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is anything.

I don't think there is a viable way to make what I have and what I did work, and I don't see any way of continuing on as I have.

It doesn't work. I never did, and I do still think it would have been better not to write because it has distorted my path too much and it so much a part of me that i don't know how to separate it, but it seems the only way to move on and get out of this rut is to let it go.

[scribblemyname]

All things considered though, if you're looking for something to replace writing with, you might consider something that gives you control. I hate the phrase, but for lack of a better one, some people call writing "playing God." I'd look for something with that kind of offering, something that lets you set the rules as easily as writing does.

For me, it was graphics for a while. I'm good at those, so it worked for me for a little bit until I got the itch in my blood for words again. I know you've been having a hard time figuring out what to displace the writing with.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I never considered writing as a means of control and when people brought up that phrase of playing God, it made me want to quit I found it that offensive. I was never trying to compete with God when I wrote. I was a documentary maker at best, along for the ride as an observer and nothing more.

When I discussed giving up writing before, the challenge was finding something that occupies my mind when I'm doing it. Most of the other things don't engage my brain enough. And I'm not an artist. It just frustrates me to see my lack of skill and inability to translate the images in my head to paper when I draw. So I can't see art as a viable alternative. I can shut down or divert my brain with video games or puzzles, but I have to have something that occupies it to maintain interest for more than a few obsessive hours.

There really isn't anything in the world quite like writing, so I don't see myself replacing it any time soon.

[scribblemyname]

For the record, I did mention I hate the phrase. I just couldn't figure out a quicker shorthand.

And I wasn't recommending art, just mentioning that I used it for a while. Though graphic art. Can't draw to save my life.

[thecatisacritic.livejournal.com]

I know. I'm just saying I never consciously thought of writing as a means of control. It's dismaying on many levels to find that's what I have been doing because I really do hate the idea of playing God.

I only ever really did graphic art for my fandoms, and I sucked at it, too. There's a reason I have a cover artist. I wish art was a viable option, but it isn't. That's part of why writing is so soul destroying. There's nothing like it. There are creative endeavors like art or making things (sewing, crafting, etc,) but there isn't the same level of mental challenge in those things for me (or there is too much challenge on the physical side in art's case.)

So I don't really have anything that interests me like writing, and since there really is no safe place in this world, there isn't much point in trying to use something else to create that. I don't know why I bothered doing it with writing.