Man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward

[flemmings]

Now some people, I'm told, listen to Evanescence when they want to feel sorry for themselves, but my generation quotes the Old Testament, especially Job and Ecclesiastes, and occasionally even The Book of Common Prayer.

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

Not only is the sound of the words a consolation just by itself (if you keep away from recent translations), when you google for the exact quote- and discover the authorities are divided on whether it's 'sorrow' or 'trouble'- you also find people making unusable teapots and charging $1400 for them while attributing the line to Homer. Needless to say, this is immensely cheering.

The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

However, I *will* moan, try-and-stop-me.

I can't write. Or rather, I can write- with difficulty- but there's no point in writing because I don't like what I write. When neither process nor product gives any satisfaction, why bother?

Because I hate not-writing. I hate being a consumer, everything in, nothing out. It's such a television way of doing things: I sit and wait to be entertained and don't engage actively with what I'm reading /watching/ whatever. There's a reason TV depresses me, and the quality of the shows is only a small part of it.

The common writing wisdom is that you must write to write, but it hasn't worked at all this year. I try to console myself that the uninspired stuff I hated writing from '04 to '06 now reads very consolingly. I want more of it and can only have more by slogging through the uninspired stuff I churn out now. Maybe in time that dross metal will transmute to gold the way my '04 stories did. I just don't believe it will: if only because the stuff I wrote when I was properly inspired is so much better.

Another common wisdom thing is, if you don't like a story don't keep on with it in the vain hope that someone else will. I used to think that one was flat wrong, because the one story I didn't like myself, the one I only finished from stubbornness and still regarded as a failure, was the one everyone else loved and squeed over. In fact, as I only realized years later, common wisdom is right. I didn't like my story because it didn't have the ambiance of the source work; it seemed to be happening in another world entirely from the manga or the doujinshi. The reason everyone else liked it was /because/ it didn't recall a weird manga series: because it was realistic and congenial to western tastes: briefly, because it was slash, not yaoi. And slash depresses the hell out of me, earnest doleful horse-faced flat-footed woe-child that it is.

Dou shiyou? Had I but world enough and time I suppose I'd keep on slogging, just because there's nothing else to do. But I'm actually quite busy just now. I resent the time spent staring at the screen while beads of blood form on my forehead. I shall go read manga instead, and wish I had a story I wanted to write.

Comments

[kickinpants.livejournal.com]

Sometime summer is great for writing- it's like the sweat pours words out of you- hot and sticky- but there. And you couldn't help it- you just had to get them down. To cool off, to get them out, etc. Sometimes it doesn't though. Don't stress. (Fall is also great for writing. Something about burnt air and colored trees and the heavy feeling that something is coming...But then, winter is also great for writing...) :) Don't stress. Things sometimes hit you when you're looking at other things- like manga or a teabag half-dunked in water.

Like yesterday, I was looking at this past June's WA (I have a package to send out this week...), at this one pic of Kou, one shot, and it just got me thinking, of him in his shop and Kasai stopping by...and things just move on from there. I was standing in them middle of the copy center thinking of this. It just happens. Don't stress.

Uninspiring is the last word I would use to describe your stuff, no matter what the year. :P I would describe it like water- cool, refreshing, inviting, enveloping, and when its heated up and you're soaking in it, its both relaxing and invigorating, and for the time you're in there, however brief, there's no other place you'd rather be, and after, with the last drops still on your skin, and the lingering images and words in your mind, you make a mental note to go back later and do that again. :)

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...let me try to console you. *pets* there, there. Even if you can't console yourself. (It is difficult to do, but that is what everyone else is for.)

Whatever you may think of your writing from whenever ... We all love your work...I think I speak for many on your f-list on that.

... (For good or not whichever way you choose to look at it) You are one of the reasons I am here enjoying all sorts of privileges. Whether it be in the form of translations, writing or literary discourse.

But wait, look! It's September! September usually brings good things. The humidity and mugginess may disappear with the changing season. ^__^ Who knows? All those wonderful colours, green turning yellow, gold and brown, ALl the red and orange tints. It could be worse, you could be stuck here with perpetual green n rain, green n hot and always humid.

Enjoy your manga. I can sympathise with you on a lot of counts so we can wallow together even if consolation cannot be found!

*hugs*

Errr...well it is also late/early and the brain doesn't work properly so I tend to ramble and not make sense and .... *yes zan quit while you can* -

Goodnight. ^_~

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I don't usually slog. If I slog I hate what comes out.
Hang in there! You have intelligent and beautiful things to say and I have every confidence they will be said.

*hugs*

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

You have the nicest way with words, you know that? Thanks, sweetie. And I hope Kou and Sakai goes somewhere; there needs to be more ossan love. (Kou nags at me. It's not just a VA thing; it really does feel like he's an Akino character who wandered into a hardboiled series where, naturally, he looks quite different than in his genial home genre. I do so want to see more of him.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

All I really want when I'm in these moods is for people to go pet-pet there-there, so thank you. (Well, I also want the stories to come fresh and newly-minted and exciting, but you can't have everything.) Yes, autumn's on the way, and sometimes it's amazing. And sometimes it's just muggy and mould-filled, but hey- it's not the tropics. (Yet.) So I am consoled.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thanks, love.

I hate what comes out when I slog too, but often enough I look at it six months later and think Not bad. I have to remind myself that my favourite among my own stories was an utter bitch to write, and it turned out OK. So, yeah-- it's kind of a balance of pains: if it hurts less to write without inspiration than not to write at all, I write. Since, yanno, I don't have the option of drawing instead. ^_^

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Huh. You know . . . if you really want to be mean to yourself, I've found that nothing works better than guilt. So, like, arrange it so that you owe it to someone to write whatever the hell it is. Set a deadline even, such that the person will be horribly disappointed in you (personally!) if you don't kick it out on schedule. You can even announce it in public so that everyone in the vicinity will be expecting it and will know if you don't deliver the goods.

That seems to be the underlying principle of blog meme culture as well as umpteen challenges. (So sure, other bizarre psychological issues inevitably result, but hey. ^^)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Mhhhrrrmmmmm.... But what's the difference between not producing the promised fic and producing utter garbage, which is another form of not producing the promised fic? The second is much more painful than the first, and the very thought of it produces instant writer's block. Is why I can't do Yuletide.

I've occasionally written stories 'for' people, usually without telling them it was for them so that they wouldn't feel obligated to say nice things through gritted teeth, and the result has generally been that the person has then said nothing at all, which isn't encouraging. (Then there was the one time I flat out asked the person in question if she'd got the story and what did she think of it, and she told me she loathed it.)

So umm no, writing for others doesn't work that well for me.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

But what's the difference between not producing the promised fic and producing utter garbage, which is another form of not producing the promised fic?

Good? Is more important to produce by deadline. Good is a secondary consideration. In the realm of practicality, the point is to write something rather than nothing at all.

the result has generally been that the person has then said nothing at all, which isn't encouraging.

Hmm. I think . . . you should make up your mind about this whole feedback thing. You've heavily implied hereabouts in the past that you prefer it when nobody says a word. Which leads to a curious dilemma for your peanut gallery. See, an ordinary interest in comments does not make one a Feedback Hoor.

(Then there was the one time I flat out asked the person in question if she'd got the story and what did she think of it, and she told me she loathed it.)

Ha, I only wish I had so much gift fic being tossed at my feet daily that I could send the unworthy away. Except even then I wouldn't.

So this seems like a pretty weird thing to have happened. Most people would acknowledge the thought, effort, money, whatever, if not the result thereof. Which leads me to wonder whether this was one of those situations where you didn't actually tell the person that you'd written it for him/her. I mean, when you hold that bit of information back as part of some funky scheme to elicit undiluted opinion, you're in danger of getting what you're shopping for.

I can't think of any writer -- pro, fanfic, film -- whom I love sans reservation. They all turn out things I like, things I hate. In the same way, I don't like all of your fic either, but they're balanced out by the ones that I do like.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Is more important to produce by deadline. Good is a secondary consideration.

Well, but. An editor *would* say that. Not all the world agrees. 'I've decided to write you a fic so as to give myself a deadline. Here's your fic-' hands over high school AU rapefic. 'Oh thank you! What a lovely thought! And you finished it on time, how wonderful!'

Is an awful thing to do to your friends.

My experiences of gift-ficcing were mostly with people who didn't know the story was written for them, didn't know that I'm antsy about feedback (usually because they were the people who made me so), and were in the habit of giving it effusively otherwise. Those who *did* know it was written for them, as in challenges, also knew that response is considered etiquette. Nonresponse under those various circs says something quite definite about the quality of the story. Bolstered by that 'What did you think of it?' 'Well since you make me say it, I hated it- and I hated this and this and this and this and this specifically.'

you're in danger of getting what you're shopping for.

Is why I now discourage people from responding: those who do respond will be telling the truth if they squee, and won't reinforce my conviction that the thing left them cold if they're silent.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Is an awful thing to do to your friends.

I cling to my crazy idea that any fic is better than no fic. (Hey, I'm willing to be sold on your high-school AU rapefic. I've eclectic tastes. :)

Nonresponse under those various circs says something quite definite about the quality of the story.

Well, no. It could say several things, none of which have anything to do with quality.

A, fanfic is like any other sort of writing -- reader subjectivity is the order of the day. I mean, how many times have I found some widely lauded fanfic to be Oh-God-Yuck? Many, many, many . . . So does that mean it's badfic? No, it just means *I* don't like it.

B, it could mean that s/he simply didn't see it. (Which is usually the case with people like me. I get lost in my own flist.)

Re: shopping

My default mode with fanfic feedback is None. And it doesn't matter who wrote it.

Fanfic-related call-and-response exchanges make me feel dumb. So I only comment under a limited set of circumstances. Which I will not go into because they're, uh, eccentric, but happy squee usually isn't one of them.

E.g., I read a fanfic last night that made me feel a bit sick afterward, I'd been laughing so hard. It was that funny, and clever, and all things good. And yet, no feedback from me . . .