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If it's worth saying once, it's worth saying twice
To express my utmost agreement with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
petronia:
"What a writer wants is for people to tell other people, intelligently or at the very least enthusiastically and at length, why those other people should read the writer's stories: to wit, because they are awesome. In other words, what a writer wants is a good review so they can hem and haw in a bashful fashion and spend the rest of the evening privately glowing in a corner."
That's it, that's all of it, and thank god someone with fandom credibility said it.
I even agree with this part:
"So I grew up with the conviction that I know better than everyone else, no one can solve my problems except me, and furthermore my problems are no one else's business. In other words, I don't really think your concrit does me any good"--
--though in fact there are one or two people whose comments I find immensely useful: not because I think them better writers than I (one of them isn't even a writer) but because their insight into whichever series and their ear for tone and voice are better than mine.
(Though to give my two cents on the discussion debate: I wouldn't want to join in on a bunch of people discussing my fic together as readers of same. True I'm also a reader of my fic, but I have special inside knowledge on account of being the one who wrote it, so it's necessarily going to look different to me than to them. Let the readers discuss. If they miss the point by a country mile- as 90% of Eroica fans miss the point of my Eroica fics- then all they do is demonstrate what idiots they are. If they use a faux-dispassionate analytical style while missing the point, they demonstrate it twice.)
I was stung by a bunch of insects last week, or stung many times by one, and the upshot is an infection in my leg, antibiotics, and strict instructions from my doctor to lie on a sofa with my leg up for the next week on penalty of being put on an intravenous drip if I don't. ('I've already had to put four people on intravenous this summer because of bug bites.' Scary.) So that's kind of what I'm doing, except I'm sitting at the computer with my left foot resting on the little lamp table at the level of my waist, which doubtless isn't quite as up as she meant.
However this means I get to watch a bunch of DVDs and probably read all of FMA, once the head-fuzzing low level fever subsides. And go through my backlog of Reload tapes. Setting up the VCR for same I ejected the tape in it, which I thought was 12 Kingdoms but instead was After Life, rented from and theoretically returned to the video store two weeks ago. I must take it back some time and find out what's actually in the VHS case I returned. Teletubbies, I bet.
petronia:"What a writer wants is for people to tell other people, intelligently or at the very least enthusiastically and at length, why those other people should read the writer's stories: to wit, because they are awesome. In other words, what a writer wants is a good review so they can hem and haw in a bashful fashion and spend the rest of the evening privately glowing in a corner."
That's it, that's all of it, and thank god someone with fandom credibility said it.
I even agree with this part:
"So I grew up with the conviction that I know better than everyone else, no one can solve my problems except me, and furthermore my problems are no one else's business. In other words, I don't really think your concrit does me any good"--
--though in fact there are one or two people whose comments I find immensely useful: not because I think them better writers than I (one of them isn't even a writer) but because their insight into whichever series and their ear for tone and voice are better than mine.
(Though to give my two cents on the discussion debate: I wouldn't want to join in on a bunch of people discussing my fic together as readers of same. True I'm also a reader of my fic, but I have special inside knowledge on account of being the one who wrote it, so it's necessarily going to look different to me than to them. Let the readers discuss. If they miss the point by a country mile- as 90% of Eroica fans miss the point of my Eroica fics- then all they do is demonstrate what idiots they are. If they use a faux-dispassionate analytical style while missing the point, they demonstrate it twice.)
I was stung by a bunch of insects last week, or stung many times by one, and the upshot is an infection in my leg, antibiotics, and strict instructions from my doctor to lie on a sofa with my leg up for the next week on penalty of being put on an intravenous drip if I don't. ('I've already had to put four people on intravenous this summer because of bug bites.' Scary.) So that's kind of what I'm doing, except I'm sitting at the computer with my left foot resting on the little lamp table at the level of my waist, which doubtless isn't quite as up as she meant.
However this means I get to watch a bunch of DVDs and probably read all of FMA, once the head-fuzzing low level fever subsides. And go through my backlog of Reload tapes. Setting up the VCR for same I ejected the tape in it, which I thought was 12 Kingdoms but instead was After Life, rented from and theoretically returned to the video store two weeks ago. I must take it back some time and find out what's actually in the VHS case I returned. Teletubbies, I bet.