(no subject)

[katallison]

It rained all night, and it's still raining this morning, a steady heavy cold rain with a big wind lashing it around. Which is fine, because there's a ton of stuff I need to do indoors today. Laundry! Great foetid heaps of laundry! And vacuuming, and blah blah boringness.

I also need to finish the new short piece and get it posted. I am feeling a bit buffaloed, though, by a beta comment I got. Not by the comment itself--it's perfectly clear and well-stated--but by trying to figure out whether, or to what extent, I should adopt the change suggested. I don't in general have any problem setting aside beta recommendations that I feel sure aren't quite right for the story I'm trying to tell, but I don't have that sureness here. Partly it's that I know making the change suggested would lead me into writing the story that maybe this one really *should* be, but that story would be quite a bit longer and more complicated, and I'm just not up to it at this point (which makes me feel all Bad writer! No cookie!).

Maybe it's that I don't have my usual degree of emotional investment in this story; it was undertaken in part to see if I could just sort of toss something off, something short and flashfictiony, without all the long-term fucking *painful* emotional enmeshment that End of the Road entailed. Except that I feel like less of a writer for going at things that way, like I'm letting the side down or something. *g*

Though I don't really think I'm a lazy writer, when I look through my old stuff I can always see a zillion places where I fell short of what I *could* have done, didn't carry things through as I might have, took the easy way out, whatever. I try to frame this as "We live, we learn, we try to do better the next time." But that brings with it a certain mission to in fact *try* to do better the next time, not to get slapdash and slack and start tossing stuff out just because it's sort of done.

On the other hand (there's *always* another hand, right?) I think there's something to be said for just doing, just posting, moving against my tendency toward inertia.

So...I dunno. I think I'll probably just send this one out in its imperfect state, and tuck away the story I might have written in the back of my head. Maybe I'll come back to it later. Hell, maybe somebody *else* will be inspired to pick it up and run with it. *g* And maybe I just need to stop obsessing about all this so much.

Comments

[destina.livejournal.com]

Partly it's that I know making the change suggested would lead me into writing the story that maybe this one really *should* be, but that story would be quite a bit longer and more complicated, and I'm just not up to it at this point

My goodness, this sounds so familiar. *sigh* I wish I could just toss something off, too, but it seems less and less likely to happen. So, I feel for you.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

I think there's something to be said for just doing, just posting, moving against my tendency toward inertia.

I support that. A lot. There is no possible universe in which you are a shoddy writer or a careless person -- you're just not. You might be too much of a perfectionist, though, which is why it's such a good idea to just write things and get them out there, sometimes. ::grins::

On the one hand, I respect good craftsmanship, which you've got in spades. And I understand the desire to make things really good before posting them, because once they're out there, they can feel carved in stone. OTOH, it's impossible to get a story quite as perfect as one's mental image of how the story ought to be -- I think that's just the human condition or something -- and sometimes the need to buff a story to a perfect glossy shine can turn into a paralyzing inertia. And inertia drives me bugfuck crazy, so I support methods for getting beyond it.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I recommend the last thing:

And maybe I just need to stop obsessing about all this so much.

(:

Post away. It's lovely just as it is.