Writing...

Apr. 13th, 2008 12:43 pm
fajrdrako: ([Torchwood] - Jack)
[personal profile] fajrdrako


Blogging. Ever since Robin Hobb wrote her piece on how writers should be getting on with the act of writing, not messing around on journaling, I've been struggling with a thread of guilt. Especially since certain people like [livejournal.com profile] maaseru have pointed to the article, and said, "It's absolutely right." And I think guiltily: "if I spend x number of minutes writing LJ instead of fic...."

But it isn't a simply syllogism. I can write a ten-minute LJ entry, easily, and do it often. I can't write fic in segments ten minutes. Usually it takes ten minutes to figure out what my scene is and where I'm going with it. Or sometimes I can, but it isn't the same sort of ten minutes. Fiction has its own parameters.

When there was no blogging in my life or anyone else's, I still kept journals. The difference is that no one but me saw them. (Well, except that time my husband started reading my pre-marriage journals to see what I'd said about him, and what a bad idea that was.) I spent daily time in writing letters to friends - I had dozens of pen-pals. I was in apazines. (Many apazines.) It was all the same blogging impulse.

I remind myself of this, when I find myself feeling guilt for writing in LJ and enjoying it. I see no reason to decide that one form of writing is better than another - any more than one kind of reading is better than another, or one kind of movie or TV show over another.

LJ is fun, and it's a stress reliever, and right now it's a much-needed lifeline to the world outside my apartment. Of course I love it.

[livejournal.com profile] sartorias's LJ got me thinking about this again. I'm trying to live without guilt about the things I love to do: it makes sense that some find LJ a pleasure in itself, and other people don't.

Date: 2008-04-14 01:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Read her piece on fanfic sometime and the urge to take anything she says seriously ever again will just vanish.

Haven't seen that one - I'll keep it in mind.

I like her books - well, mostly - but man. Rant-o-rama.

Hee. I liked the one I read that she wrote as Meghan Lindholm - I think it was called The Reindeer People. Didn't like the next one I tried - can't recall the title - the first fantasy novel of her trilogy of trilogies. I had a long list of complaints about it, most of which can be summed up with the notion that her characters didn't seem psychologically real to me.

Date: 2008-04-14 06:59 pm (UTC)
ext_6615: (Default)
From: [identity profile] janne-d.livejournal.com
I can't seem to find the fanfic rant now - I bookmarked a reply to it that said some good things, but the link at the top to Robin Hobb's original now just goes to the blogging piece and her site is a pig to navigate. So here is the response In Defence of Fanfic (http://pandarus.livejournal.com/199872.html) because it does quote bits. From what I remember, the actual Hobb rant comes off worse in its entirety than in those quotes - meaning her attitude in it and some of the things she said flat out pissed me off.

I haven't read any of the Lindholm books. I did like the Farseer trilogy (starts with Assassin's Apprentice) and the second trilogy to feature the same main character, Fitz (all the second set have Fool in the title). But there is a trilogy set in between those two in the same world with a different cast and I didn't like that at all, mainly because by the end of the first book I really didn't care what happened to any of the characters.

I did think the ending of the Fitz sextet was a cop out though - she spent a good 4 or 5 of the books building up this incredible relationship and love between Fitz and the Fool... and at the end Fitz ends up happily back with his childhood sweetheart, despite them not having seen each other for twenty years and having lived all their adult lives apart and with other people. Gah. It just seemed to come out of nowhere, and that annoyed me (and I'm not the only one who reacted like that either). I got the distinct impression that Hobb freaked out at people seeing Fitz and the Fool as being seriously slashy and that is where her potshots at fanficcers wanting to "fix" things from canon and her insistence that she controls her readers' interpretations came from.

Oh, look. A soapbox. Where did that come from? *kicks it away and whistles nonchalantly*

Date: 2008-04-16 07:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
The Hobb novel I read was Assassin's Apprentice and I found the characters and situations in it didn't jive with my sense of reality - people kept doing and saying things that seemed psychologically unlikely to me. I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to really enjoy it, though there were things in the setting and world-building that I liked. It reminded me of Ghormengast - that happened to me there, too. I like fantasy but I always focus first on the characterization.

The ending of the Fitz sextet does sound disappointing!

I got the distinct impression that Hobb freaked out at people seeing Fitz and the Fool as being seriously slashy and that is where her potshots at fanficcers wanting to "fix" things from canon and her insistence that she controls her readers' interpretations came from.

I've seen other writers have this reaction - horror that fans would dare to meddle with the story. Just look what Shakespeare, Homer, and the writers of the Bible have to put up with!

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