And No I said No I won't No

[flemmings]

Who do you write your stories for? No, who do you really write them for? Yourself? Your friends? Your public?

I have a Gaiden story idea. As far as I know, it's something that's not been done before, or not in English, and certainly not by me. I have it mapped out in my head because it won't leave me alone but I don't want to write it. It has no sweet spot, no hot spot, no unidentifiable thing that gets my juices flowing, in whatever fashion you wish to take that phrase. It has nothing that speaks to anything but my head. It leaves me cold.

So if I write it, it's only for honour and glory and egoboo and for people to pat me on the head and say Oh cool. (Which they won't anyway, because I don't post to places where they do, and anyone here knows better than to try it.) But while I don't mind being a whore that way on occasion, it's hot and I'm lazy and, more to the point, one of my great pleasures in life is to refuse to do things that might make some (unidentified and unidentifiable) one happy. I love to say no. Well, so long as I'm not saying No to a specific person because then of course it's a problem. But if it's a general No it becomes part of the great refusal I make to the universe, which makes me very happy indeed. The universe needs to have no said to it as often as possible; since the universe refuses to be what people want it to be, people should refuse to be what the universe wants them to be. If that makes sense.

Actually, I can see a way of making this story my story, of putting a sweet spot into it. It will be a worse story if I do, because the sweet spot is extremely self-indulgent, but it'll be a story I'll be happy to read.

So I return to considering who I write my stories for. Me? Or my public?

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Almost always for me, because I have to get the words out. Otherwise they fester...and that's not good. and even though I post in places where it will be read...thankfully only a small number have deemed them worth the while. ^__^

And though it is a wonderful feeling to have reviews and such, nowadays its people I know which is nice.

Nowadays, now that I have friends ( ^__^) , sometimes though in that 'almost always'... I write for others. I think hmmm ...
Ok this one A will like, or that one I think B will appreciate...and perhaps the other C will see the elements I've put in it amusing.

As long as at the end of the day you're happy to read what you write! Generally I do, sometimes I have to get past the cringey feeling over huge things of early pieces, but generally I think, yeah that one was good and all right for me.

...and Gaiden stories and ideas are the best kind! I could be biased though!

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

For oneself because it pleases one to write the story.
For the public because it pleases one to scar (a portion of) them for life with the story. =P