(no subject)

[katallison]

OK, the dS Match reveals are now up, and on Monday I'll post on my website a copy of my story, hopefully with the goddamned typos fixed (apologies to all readers for not leaving myself enough time to get the frickin' thing beta'd). Just to reiterate the prefatory note, this story is a present for pearl_o, with big love and admiration. She'd requested it over a year ago, and when the Team Angst opportunity I came up, I knew that that was the perfect occasion for getting myself to finish and post this upbeat, heartwarming little bit o' fluff. (*g*)

When I'd finished the story, I put up a rather overwrought LJ post about how unhappy I was with it; in the fullness of time, I've gotten a better grip on what my distress was all about, and though I don't think any of this is necessarily of general interest, I thought I'd type up a few thoughts.

The first is kind of a technical/mechanical thing: here, more even than in past stories, I hit the wall with my ability to COPE WITH having to write in all the fiddly business that is necessary to break up dialogue stretches. You know, all the Fraser-picked-up-his-cup and Ray-paced-around-the-room and Kowalski-scooped-up-another-pile-of-dogshit stuff. The issue was sharper in this story because it was another one of those goddamned ones to which I am apparently fatally drawn in which nothing whatsoever happens except lots of conversations and the having of emotions. So unless I was going to do the damn thing in screenplay format (which believe me, was an idea that had its appeal) I felt the need to keep interpolating stuff of this nature, to keep the prose balanced and the narrative ball rolling. (It is borne in upon me that I need to spend some time studying writers who manage to write fiction that has lots of long dialogue blocks with minimal business-tags or longwinded emotional exposition.) (The problem here is that this one was from Vecchio POV and Vecchio is not exactly a Raymond Carver kind of guy. Whatever.)

The second issue goes back to something the ever-wonderful flambeau posted quite a while ago about how her writing has evolved over time; she said, in effect, that her earlier stories had "worn their hearts on their sleeves" and that she'd been working to make the emotional stories in her fiction more subtle, less overt. This is something I wish to god I could attain; I tend to wildly overwrite the emotional stuff in early drafts, and then, given enough time, energy and brainpower, try to go back and edit a lot of it out, but I didn't have a lot of t., e., or b.p. in this case. Now on the one hand this isn't entirely a bad thing, in the context of this challenge, since the point was to BRING THE ANGST, and from reader comments I gather the story succeeded at that. But ... the thing is, I really dislike emotional manipulation. Don't like experiencing it, don't like doing it, and yet I felt like that was what I was up to in this story--I was sort of telling readers how OMG painful! the whole situation was, rather than just sketching in the situation, in a low-key way, and letting readers figure it out for themselves.

Then the third issue--and this is the biggest one for me--is that there are really three stories going on in this thing. There's Fraser's story, which is about a man contemplating his impending death, trying to come to terms with it, trying to deal with the grief and pain this is causing people who love him. There's Vecchio's story, which is about a guy who went through some dark places and found his happy ending, who's living the good life, and who's bushwhacked by this sudden piece of very bad news that reconnects him with someone he'd basically considered part of his past but who turns out to be very much a part of his present--reconnects with him just in time to lose him again. And then there's Kowalski's story, which is about the guy who's moved on from his own past, re-made himself, built a whole new life, and now is finding one of the foundation stones of that new life crumbling away underneath him.

I have--believe me--miles and miles of stuff written in my head for each of these stories, and yet, in a sub-10,000-word piece, I was only able to touch glancingly on each of them. Given such constraints, every scene, every conversation, every description and bit of business, needs to carry a lot of freight and should (ideally) be chosen so as to do the best possible job of illuminating each of those sub-stories. Let me just say that I don't feel like I accomplished this throughout, and by far the biggest part of my dissatisfaction with the story is that I just didn't have the time or energy to do more with, oh, Kowalski's relationship with the dogs, and Vecchio's relationship with Stella, and how Fraser is dealing with the concept of leaving Kowalski alone in a fairly unfriendly community, and so many many other things. I *wanted* to get those in, just -- couldn't fit them, and so when I read over what did get written, I feel their absence. Acutely.

It was very comforting to hear from readers that the story did succeed in its primary task of conveying a convincing emotional state, and I'm profoundly grateful to everyone who left comments (which I will get replies to, promise!). And as for all the things I feel like I wasn't able to pull off here -- well, that's why one keeps on writing, eh?

And many, many bows of admiration and gratitude to the fabulous organizers, china_shop and sageness; to nos4a2no9, our indefatigable Team Angst captain; and to all the writers for both teams. *Wow,* did this challenge produce some fantastic stories, which I now need to go comment on.

Comments

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

Okay, I am going to argue with you over your own issues. XD

But ... the thing is, I really dislike emotional manipulation. Don't like experiencing it, don't like doing it, and yet I felt like that was what I was up to in this story

See, no. There's no way to avoid emotional 'manipulation' with deathfic or impending-deathfic. It's a topic that is emotional to everybody. If we didn't feel emotional about this, then we don't love the characters (which is a given, considering that this is a FANDOM) or we are robots. I demand that you don't feel guilty about writing an emotional topic well, dammit.

And, as I tried to say in my first comment, one of the things that I did glom onto was how much Kowalski had changed, and that it was being with Fraser that had changed him, and with Fraser gone what would happen to him? So while you think you have 10,000 words of that story to tell and didn't get to tell any of it, I disagree. I got what you were trying to do there, and I don't know if you *need* to write 10,000 words on that. Maybe 2,000 or 5,000, but tomes the size of War and Peace are out of fashion. ;) (In seriousnes, write however much you need to write, but don't beat yourself up about it.)

[nestra.livejournal.com]

I adore you, and I'm glad you're posting and writing again, but HMOG, that story sounds depressing and I'm not going to read it. So, you know, nothing truly useful to say. But I suspect you're being harder on yourself than anyone else would be.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

So, I read it and I was forewarned and all but you know - no one was breaking up, they were just dying, so I felt I was up for it.

Emotionally, I felt like I went through the wringer - it didn't trigger the *same* kind of response "End of the Road" did at all - the scene at the garage with the cheeseburgers remains burned in my brain as just a vivid moment when my own internal sensors kicked in and forced me to take a break - literally get up and get out of my house. I can only think of one other time fiction has hit me like that, at least in the past few years, and that was reading "The Lovely Bones."

This just really depressed me. I wanted to leave feedback when I first read it last night but I was just too *sad* to even tell you. I was too sad to comment! I was so worried about Ray - what is it going to be like for him? and about Fraser - God, Fraser is actually mortal? Are you really really sure? Fraser's *body* shouldn't fail him and the hints of the indignities of illness that you hinted at, just really... well it stuck with me all day today. So, yeah - a lot of things do feel unfinished but to me that just played into the entire injustice of it all - no one has a finished life, but then it is over.

And I was SO GLAD we got out of there before the very end.

[reginagiraffe]

All I have to say is, that looking-at-the-ceiling thing? Doesn't work for shit.

I can see where you're coming from with the whole emotional manipulation thing, but I think your Fraser is the saving grace. He's the rock on which the other two break.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Wow -- I just read the story and am blown away (and, er, glad that I didn't read it when it was posted, no offense!). I understand your concerns, though I think you do a better job of handling these issues than you give yourself credit for, truly. (Remember that study that showed, iirc, that people who are mediocre at things tend to think they're really good at them, while people who are really good tend to think they're mediocre?)

I came away from it with the feeling (which I'm pretty sure you intended) that each of the three men is experiencing what's going on in a way that is intensely private, that can't be shared or perhaps even understood by the others; your stories often seem to argue that full communication is impossible, that we can only ever approach one another -- and sometimes come very close indeed, as witness Kowalski and Fraser in the bed together -- but never touch; or if we do touch, we can't maintain the contact for long. Even that scene of them in the bed, we experience it through Vecchio, who is isolated from it, alien to it: "he was on the outside, just hearing the sounds," which aren't even language at all, to him. He sees them as together, "one single big lump," but we don't know whether Kowalski and Fraser themselves feel that way, in that moment.

I'm not sure how to interpret Vecchio's realization at the end, that he'd carried an imagined Fraser in his head all those years and will continue to do so through all the years to come, in the light of the passage early on in which he realizes that the imagined Kowalski he'd similarly carried around was ludicrously wrong, inaccurate. Can his Fraser-construct be truer, can it have been truer, than his Kowalski-construct? If it is helpful, leading him "to his beautiful wife and his clean white house on the water and his good life," does its truth or falsity matter? And since he'll probably never see either Fraser or Kowalski again, he'll never even know if his imaginings are true or false.

[qe2.livejournal.com]

I am reading your story in pieces, as I can bear it. Heartbreak cuts a little close to the bone (or the heart, or, hell, the liver - close to irreplaceable shit, anyway) for me right now - and I suspect that insofar as I'm known at all, I'm known as a diehard happy-ender even in less parlous times. But it's your story, that, and I cannot not read it, because...because it's necessary. So I am. And I thank you. (I am not a woman of many words, but I thank y-- oh, hell, who are we kidding, of course I am, but the thanks are no less crackedheartfelt for all that.)

also:

[qe2.livejournal.com]

why are you so far away? WTF, universe? Unfair.

[bertybertle.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if I left a comment.... there were so many stories out there, and I could only scratch the surface... but I did read your story, and at no point did I feel manipulated into an emotional response. If you had made Kowalski a tragic figure, if you had had Vecchio licking his wounds from a failed realtionship, if you'd had Fraser anything but stoic and positive, then I might have felt an angst overload, but you did none of those things. Your Kowalski was scratchy, tough, bordering on unlovable. Your Vecchio was awkward and inappropriate. Your Fraser was so quietly dignified. All of these are real characteristics showing the falability of people faced with a terrible situation. And spot on IMO.

Also, the snippets of past history and other plots thing? I often think that - I could have done so much with this throw away line or that tiny plot device, but I think this is where pace has to assert itself and keep you focussed. It pains me every time I have a sparkly idea that I have to pare down to a glancing mention, but I think it's necessary in order to bring in a fic under 100,000 words! :-)

Hi! Actually, you don't know me at all and I sloped over here from nos4a2no9's LJ. But I was just chucking in my two penneth worth! Hope you don't mind.