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I've spent the last several days rereading my old fanfic. It turns out I wrote over a million words of it, though the precise count is a little fuzzy because of some of the files being RP logs or setting notes or what not. But still.
It's a little unsettling to watch myself progress as a writer. The things that frustrate me about my work--wandering plots and lack of pacing, wordiness, shying away from letting my characters be hurt too much, and way too many temporizing adverbs--are all there in the early stuff. But...more so. I've gotten better about them! My plots are snappier, my pacing is better, my adverbs are more reasonable, my wordiness is a bit less...
...I've gotten worse about not wanting to beat up my characters, but then, In Nomine was always very good for applying non-permanent character trauma. I could have someone swap sides in the war, rip off pieces of their soul, get murdered a bit, lose magical powers, and still manage to keep on going and doing interesting things. I've always liked those sorts of settings; I'm more comfortable engaging in tragedy and melodrama when the possibility of repair exists.
Anyway. It makes me want to write fanfic again. Or put the old stuff up on AO3, maybe after a very light edit, to see if anyone else wants to read it. (It'd certainly be easy for my friends who might want to reread to find the stuff than hunting through ancient LJ entries.) But I have Serious Writing to do, so... I don't know. Maybe if I hit wordcount for the week, I can work on fanfic later in the week. That'd be fair, right?
Overall, it's an encouraging sort of thing to read through. This writing thing isn't shiny unmodifiable talent, it's skill, and working at it made me better. I must remember that when I'm tearing my hair out over some constant flaw I can't seem to get past in my current writing.
It's a little unsettling to watch myself progress as a writer. The things that frustrate me about my work--wandering plots and lack of pacing, wordiness, shying away from letting my characters be hurt too much, and way too many temporizing adverbs--are all there in the early stuff. But...more so. I've gotten better about them! My plots are snappier, my pacing is better, my adverbs are more reasonable, my wordiness is a bit less...
...I've gotten worse about not wanting to beat up my characters, but then, In Nomine was always very good for applying non-permanent character trauma. I could have someone swap sides in the war, rip off pieces of their soul, get murdered a bit, lose magical powers, and still manage to keep on going and doing interesting things. I've always liked those sorts of settings; I'm more comfortable engaging in tragedy and melodrama when the possibility of repair exists.
Anyway. It makes me want to write fanfic again. Or put the old stuff up on AO3, maybe after a very light edit, to see if anyone else wants to read it. (It'd certainly be easy for my friends who might want to reread to find the stuff than hunting through ancient LJ entries.) But I have Serious Writing to do, so... I don't know. Maybe if I hit wordcount for the week, I can work on fanfic later in the week. That'd be fair, right?
Overall, it's an encouraging sort of thing to read through. This writing thing isn't shiny unmodifiable talent, it's skill, and working at it made me better. I must remember that when I'm tearing my hair out over some constant flaw I can't seem to get past in my current writing.