![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I suppose this is another one of those "Oops, haven't updated this stuff in ages" posts. Hello, people! I'm still around, more or less!
What have I been up to lately? Writing a lot of fanfic, and poking rather morosely at the type of fiction that is not based on someone else's setting. It's not so much that having the setting pre-made is easier (though it is) or that it's nice to be able to skip the exposition by knowing the readers are already on board (though that's true) or that I can relax a lot more when I don't have to make the setting make any sense (though that does make research a lot faster); it's just that fanfic has such lower expectations, I can just...finish things. Without worrying about editing them.
I am so miserably bad at editing, and find it so stressful, that "I'll fix it in the edit" has stopped being a helpful reminder to keep on writing, and instead some sort of threat. Everything I don't get right the first time will turn into a big fix-it project later, in which I have to intently concentrate on all the flaws in my writing and the ways in which it failed, while attempting desperately to patch things without tearing new holes in anything else.
I may have wandered off topic slightly.
Um. What else. Dog is fine (if still panicking about walks, sigh). Cat is fine. Spouse is fine (despite sleep schedule wonkiness, poor man). Roommate is fine. I am pretty much fine. Life is going pretty well! I'm only taking one class, and it's going just fine.
Well. Mostly fine. I am writing this entry right now instead of doing my Latin homework. Aheh. Um. Yes. Well. I should probably get to that soon.
It looks like I'm going to spend the summer failing to review Greek adequately, and the fall trying to take two difficult Greek classes and audit a difficult Latin class, so that should be...fun? We'll see.
What have I been up to lately? Writing a lot of fanfic, and poking rather morosely at the type of fiction that is not based on someone else's setting. It's not so much that having the setting pre-made is easier (though it is) or that it's nice to be able to skip the exposition by knowing the readers are already on board (though that's true) or that I can relax a lot more when I don't have to make the setting make any sense (though that does make research a lot faster); it's just that fanfic has such lower expectations, I can just...finish things. Without worrying about editing them.
I am so miserably bad at editing, and find it so stressful, that "I'll fix it in the edit" has stopped being a helpful reminder to keep on writing, and instead some sort of threat. Everything I don't get right the first time will turn into a big fix-it project later, in which I have to intently concentrate on all the flaws in my writing and the ways in which it failed, while attempting desperately to patch things without tearing new holes in anything else.
I may have wandered off topic slightly.
Um. What else. Dog is fine (if still panicking about walks, sigh). Cat is fine. Spouse is fine (despite sleep schedule wonkiness, poor man). Roommate is fine. I am pretty much fine. Life is going pretty well! I'm only taking one class, and it's going just fine.
Well. Mostly fine. I am writing this entry right now instead of doing my Latin homework. Aheh. Um. Yes. Well. I should probably get to that soon.
It looks like I'm going to spend the summer failing to review Greek adequately, and the fall trying to take two difficult Greek classes and audit a difficult Latin class, so that should be...fun? We'll see.
From:
no subject
This is not actually the reason why I generally get as much right the first time through as possible, but it's certainly a fringe benefit.
Pat Wrede makes the entirely valid point that editing is quite a different skill than writing -- and kind of by definition one has less practice at it. You have to write something to have something to edit, after all, and at that point you've got that much more practice at writing, and it can be jarring to find that your editing skill hasn't leveled up at the same time. So you're perpetually trying to make a story better with a skill that's less developed. No wonder it's frustrating.
Or possibly, editing just sucks. Yeah, I can get behind that one.
From:
no subject
...huh. I wonder if that means I should do some fanfic editing, just for the practice. I mean, there doesn't seem to be much point in it, because the fandom is so small that people either read the chapters right when they're posted or never at all. But that does take off some of the pressure, too. Even if it'd really just be line edits.
From:
no subject
(Incidentally, I've seen some of your fanfic, and if that's the unedited version, I don't think you have as much to worry about as you think you do.)
From:
no subject
Ironically! That's part of why I have so much trouble with editing. I'm used to doing a pretty clean first draft, but it means my brain is convinced only with great grudging that it's really worth going over it again, even when I know full well it needs more work.
From:
no subject
I tend to be very much of the "don't screw it up" school, myself. I mean, I'll revise if I have to, but I'd better really have to. And even then, I'll generally change as little as possible.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject