Insufficiently entertaining
Oct. 29th, 2004 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ksmithThat's how I feel when I check my Friends list for whatever reason and find that someone has un-Friended me. I know this is a big place, and folks skip around for whatever reason. But I feel like I'm holding forth at a party only to find people yawning and checking their watches. Thank you thank you. 'preciate it. Words are my life, after all.
Some people can write quite good posts containing litcrit or discussions about writing, drawing out the conversation and keeping it flowing. Beyond the occasional word count or character-based mutter, I don't think you'll find much of that here. I'm not particularly good at criticism, or about explaining how I write or what type of writer I am. I admire the folks who can boil down methods or styles to a few facile sentences--the ability to define succinctly is a gift. I just write--it Happens. Bubbles up in the backbrain and downloads, usually early in the morning. If I had to consciously think out all the things I've written, I don't think I'd have finished one book, much less four. And the fact that I can't readily define what I do or how I do it makes me feel as though it's something outside me, beyond my control, and therefore not really mine. This conflicts quite nicely with the feeling that I'm not really a pro if I can't turn it off and on like a faucet. After all, it's a job, isn't it? Writing, as has been driven into all our heads with 40-lb sledges over the past however many years, is a Business. Product is Consumed by the Marketplace at a rapid clip, and my job is to kick out more product in a timely (more or less) manner.
So here I sit, wrestling with that which isn't really mine, trying to control that which does as it damned well pleases. Talking about crabapples really is simpler.
Some people can write quite good posts containing litcrit or discussions about writing, drawing out the conversation and keeping it flowing. Beyond the occasional word count or character-based mutter, I don't think you'll find much of that here. I'm not particularly good at criticism, or about explaining how I write or what type of writer I am. I admire the folks who can boil down methods or styles to a few facile sentences--the ability to define succinctly is a gift. I just write--it Happens. Bubbles up in the backbrain and downloads, usually early in the morning. If I had to consciously think out all the things I've written, I don't think I'd have finished one book, much less four. And the fact that I can't readily define what I do or how I do it makes me feel as though it's something outside me, beyond my control, and therefore not really mine. This conflicts quite nicely with the feeling that I'm not really a pro if I can't turn it off and on like a faucet. After all, it's a job, isn't it? Writing, as has been driven into all our heads with 40-lb sledges over the past however many years, is a Business. Product is Consumed by the Marketplace at a rapid clip, and my job is to kick out more product in a timely (more or less) manner.
So here I sit, wrestling with that which isn't really mine, trying to control that which does as it damned well pleases. Talking about crabapples really is simpler.
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Date: 2004-10-29 08:31 pm (UTC)I remind myself that I'm doing the journal for me, and my purpose is not to be entertaining, really. It's not really even to be part of a community, although I feel as though I am, at this point, for some people. I find that I don't spend time reading the analytical stuff (aside from some of msagara's).
Self-identity . . . hmmm . . .
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:15 pm (UTC)One thing I'm looking forward to with these new crabapples is the possibility of useful fruit. The old tree is afflicted with rust, which will be treated in the Spring but has in the meantime affected the fruit production. The Louisa dwarf is supposed to produce golden fruit. The PF, I'm not sure. I see one bright red berry-like thing hanging from a branch, andam wondering if that's all I'll get for the first few years.
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There were always crabapple trees in our neighborhood and the nearby countryside (as well as plumtree groves and chokecherry bushes). We always enjoyed the ripe fruit, come fall.
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Date: 2004-10-29 09:00 pm (UTC)Puppies is better!
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:17 pm (UTC)Puppies is good.
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Date: 2004-10-29 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-30 06:24 pm (UTC)Part of the reason things dwindle is my fault. I find that I tend to lose interest in online conversations rather quickly. I'll consider responding to someone's post either here or on SFFNet, and just as I get to around the middle of the thing, I figure "hell with it" and delete it. I have written the occasional lengthy response, but my usual feeling is that if I'm going to put out this much effort, I should be getting paid. Which isn't always proper. I'm here to have fun, after all.
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:51 pm (UTC)I do that, too, but usually it's because I'm just too damned tired to bother. Either that, or someone else already said pretty much what I was going to say, and I hate leaving responses like "what she said" or "word".
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Date: 2004-10-29 10:04 pm (UTC)And you know, writing is a job, but it's also first and foremost (in my head, anyway) an art and a craft. The craft carries me through when the art isn't firing, but I still think, sometimes, that when one gets a little too facile at turning it on and off easily, it maybe means one isn't bleeding on the page quite as one used to.
I don't pretend this applies to anyone else, but if I'm not sweating, I'm never sure I'm working up to my potential.
And Product is all very nice, but I also think it's oversold as a be-all and end-all.
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:32 pm (UTC)I have bled on the page, though. The recovery time is significant.
I'm not saying that it isn't worth it or that at times it isn't necessary. I just think that in this as in most things, there has to be a happy medium.
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:41 pm (UTC)Oh, heck yeah. I'm not into the whole tortured artiste thing; too much like high school. What I'm saying is just agreement that it *can't* always be treated as just a job, despite what we're told. Because it's also a craft.
To friend or un-friend, is occasionally the question
Date: 2004-10-30 04:47 pm (UTC)1) LJ is a journal, nothing more, nothing less. It should be what you want it to be.
2) People look for different things in our journal voyeurism. Some want hot bi-sexual drama, so want political activism, some just search out matches off their interests lists.
3) You'll get friended and unfriended. The journal needs to meet YOUR needs. I catch up friends and relatives on my life. Personal, life-changing, intimate stuff doesn't go in my LJ, it goes in my paper journal. YMMV.
4) People must do friends pogroms at a point. Mine is over 25 people and if they all started posting at once I'd have to trim. Luckily my folks are like me and post in cycles.
I picked you up because I respect your writing and have never "known" an author. (Take that back, never known a SCIFI author; Lloyd Kropp wrote Egyptian Mysteries). I wondered what your life is like... and it looks pretty much inside "normal" parameters. I continue to read you because you seem nice (counts for much in my estimation), I'd like to know you better, and some day get a chance to meet you at a Con and buy you dinner (platonic). (True Fan (TM) "swoon music" plays in the background.)
Perhaps those rotten people who dumped you were looking for the "wild side" of SCIFI? Maybe they want some drama or romance or orgies or such (they should follow Burning Man posters if they do, but that's another tale). You could write them, I suppose, but wouldn't that feel... craven?
BTW, I'm the proud owner of CoC in hard back now!!! YIPEE. Picked it up in a nice local book seller's in Yellow Springs, OH. Pristine condition, with plastic covered dust jacket. I can't make WindyCON, but am SO jonnesing for a chance to get you to autograph this baby!
Re: To friend or un-friend, is occasionally the question
Date: 2004-10-30 06:35 pm (UTC)Ah, that's the SF Book Club edition. I wish they'd have bought the rest of the series, but it wasn't to be.
CoC also came out in hard cover in Russia--my only foreign sale so far. Nifty cover, which I had posted on my website.
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Date: 2004-10-30 05:46 pm (UTC)Gotta buy you a drink the next time we're in the same state. It's been way too long.
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:37 pm (UTC)Yeah, only no Vulcan Death Grips.
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Date: 2004-10-30 07:42 pm (UTC)Maybe a nice single malt. :-)
Re: Libraries Forever
Date: 2004-10-30 11:48 pm (UTC)Re: Libraries Forever
Date: 2004-10-31 12:47 am (UTC):-(
Sorry bout that.
I don't know how to do posts via email. Maybe I should look into that.
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:37 pm (UTC)On Other Topics,
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Date: 2004-10-30 06:42 pm (UTC)I should check out some of these...
On Other Topics, tappu and I are probably going to hit Chicago early afternoon on the 12th. You going to be out there, then, or coming after work?
I'll be taking the day off, and getting in late morning/early afternoon. Need to recheck the schedule to see when my first thing is. I know I have a reading. I could read the J5 first chapter that I wrote at Wiscon. I'd like to see the reactions of folks who are familiar with the books.
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Date: 2004-10-30 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-30 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-01 03:07 pm (UTC)Always nursed a crush on David McCallum.
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Date: 2004-11-01 03:23 pm (UTC)Ah, my unholy obsession with all things UNCLE. *g* I suppose it's harmless, in the long run.
*g* He's got a new series, yanno. "NCIS," where he plays a forensic pathologist...
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/ncis/characters/david_mccallum_char.shtml
It's a terrible show, but Mark Harmon, Paulet Perette, and of course McCallum make it almost watchable. The man's got a portrait of Dick Clark in his attic, I swear.
(Vaughn has a series going in the UK--Hustle--which may be the best thing currently on television in the English language.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hustle/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/09_september/16/hustle_vaughn.shtml
Just brilliant--stylish and a little bit edgy and thoughtful series about a band of modern-day Merry Men.
There's also a livejournal community --
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Date: 2004-11-01 04:48 am (UTC)People friend and unfriend me as well; I check periodically. I tend to assume that people who aren't reading me want a more manageable reading list, and as I tend to be so specific in the type of posts I write -- as opposed to what I read -- I assume that I'm just not writing what they want to read at the moment.
And as, in an odd sort of way, the point of a lot of the mundane business aspects is to be informative, it doesn't bother me; I guess I feel less like I'm at a party and more like I've hogged all the space at the lecturn <wry g>.
When I first started on LJ, I didn't intend to post anything of my own; I just wanted to reply to other people's posts. My use of LJ has evolved over time. Whoever said, upstream, that your LJ is supposed to be whatever you want it to be said it best.
I like reading about half of what anyone else writes, with a couple of exceptions; I'm probably going to cull my reading list soon because people don't use LJ cut tags enough.
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Date: 2004-11-01 05:52 pm (UTC)I always try to remember to use those if the post runs to more than a paragraph.
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Date: 2004-11-01 07:08 pm (UTC)Back on GEnie, my topic was kind of quiet. I adored GEnie, and I added to other discussions -- but I just didn't feel I had much of interest to say on my own :/. I didn't want to talk about my personal life -- which would probably have bored everyone -- and I didn't know what to say about writing life, either. So I was mostly quiet in my topic. I talked a lot in Alis Rasmussen's topic, though, and in one or two others, and still felt connected to the community that way -- but GEnie didn't have a "friends" list. You could only tell who was reading by who was posting, which is to say, lurking was easier, and you couldn't tell when people stopped.
I think it's a better approach in some ways.
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Date: 2004-11-02 12:45 am (UTC)It's like SFFNet newsgroups--you can't tell who's lurking there, either.
I think non-LJers read my journal on the website, though. I receive the occasional anonymous comment.
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Date: 2004-11-01 05:59 pm (UTC)