January Posting Meme: Writing

[gwenfrankenstien]

for ilthit , a day late because I am somewhat unstuck from time!

I often see people talk about the difference between the way fanart and fic are treated in fandom in terms like "well, anyone can write fic, not everyone can draw" and I'm always left kind of ???????????? by that because... No! I can't! I can't write fiction to save my life! I have a lot of plot ideas but I have no idea how one takes a story concept out of their brain and makes it into a functioning piece of literature and I am in endless awe of people who can do that thing, and do it well! The craft of fiction is basically wizardry to me!

I'm currently working on my second graduate degree, though, so obviously I can write non-fiction, but more often than not it's like wringing blood out of a stone. I basically have to do all my writing stream-of-consciousness, write the section of the paper I can currently get the ADHD brain to pay attention to, and then organise the resulting paragraphs once I reach the required word count. The end result is usually pretty good, which has led many people over the course of my life to assume that I enjoy writing. But I don't, it's hard and it's stressful and I would much prefer to talk my ideas out loud. I've come to actually love giving presentations, which would greatly shock my child and teen past selves, especially if you got me young enough that I hadn't figured out yet that writing was definitely not my ideal form of expression.

(For the record, I'm pretty sure my ideal form of expression is vids)

Comments

[language_escapes]

There are a lot of discussions around fanart v. fanfic (and I really feel like the "v." is meant, because they get contentious FAST) that completely baffle me. COMPLETELY. Especially since I see a lot of folks get prickly, and argue that their form of fandom expression is superior to others? Which... what happened to the great posts of old, where people talked about how ALL forms of fandom expression are awesome, including beta'ing and commenting and cheerleading and archiving, etc, the forms that are less visible but nonetheless very important.

I've been on the very fringes of fandom for the past few years, so I get that I haven't seen a lot of the shifts, but it's such a change, for me, to see the arguments.

Also, your vids are awesome, so go you with your ideal form of expression.

[ilthit]

Thank you for the post!

Allllso, people who don't draw and act like THAT is some kinda god-given gift kinda rub me the wrong way. It's a lot of effort to get decent at it, so you need to enjoy it to have the patience to keep at it, but it's really all there is to it, and every artist would be better if they just did it more. That conception of art as magic I think also leads to the idea that an artist can just go out and put together something beautiful or funny in a couple of hours. Maybe some people can but everybody's different, and it takes TIME, even if it takes only seconds to consume.