thoughts on a rant - writerly divisions

[permetaform]

Rant on fandom by gwyn_r

I love this whole discussion if but for this comment by morgandown alone:

"We care. But we care like the trippy hippies cared. Like the butterflies care as they float on the breeze. You don't think a butterfly does *not* care if it flies into a spider's web? It does, but until it does, it is perfectly happy floating..... and when it finds itself stuck, with Shelob inching its way closer, the butterfly says: look, there is another butterfly. Oh and a bee....we're all trapped together in this web. Well, that's not so bad, is it? I am after all a butterfly and butterflies are happy."

::wry giggles:: so true::

Though, dude, some of the comments there...::hugs Saiyuki fandom:: stay cool, yes?

Interesting thought occured from reading one of the comments by stakebait: there might be two types of writers (with a huge spectrum of grey area), the kind that can map out a story, whole, in their head, and the kind that has to write their story to be able to see the full story 'cause it changes with the move from head to paper or digital text...and I *think* this might be the dividing distinction between people who "write for fans" and people who "write for themselves".

Or rather, that the people who tends towards "write for themselves" are almost forced to produce the artwork that appears in their head 'cause they wanna know what happens next, or what the vid would look like completed, say. Therefore, posting it is comparatively little effort.

However, if one tends towards being able to visualize the entire product, then the effort of recreating the artwork in physical form for post is entirely "for fans"...which means that such a fan would theoretically be more community orientated and be somewhat more feedback hungry because the cost is producing the artwork and the benefit is knowing that people read it.

Whereas for people who tend to be more that they can't fully visualize the end-product, the cost of producing the artwork is allayed (subsidized?) by their being entertained during the production of the art itself, and therefore feedback is viewed slightly more as icing on cake than would a person who writes "for fans", who would then view it more as payment, or rather, the cake itself.

Huh.

Or, I could be completely off the mark. ::wry grin::

[edit] more clarifications (in a thread in the original post)

Comments

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking this is a little more complicated for me. There's the knowing the full story (which I can know, if it's short enough), the writing of it (which I may need to do to get to the complete story, as I don't know what the heck is happening until that first draft is done), the identification of a target audience (oh, this person is going to love this story if I do it this way!), the betaing of the story (did I get anything right, and where did I fuck up?), the final acceptance (I guess this is the best I can do with this right now), Posting (oh, god, no one will read it and it's all horrible anyway so no one will ever, ever like it at all every and all of my work will have been for nothing), and reception (Yay! It got read. Someone read my story! and even better, my person liked it!)

So theres all sorts of things in this beyond the creation of the story itself. There's affirmation of myself by others, my acceptance as a member of the community, and that sort of stuff *along with* the creative endeavor.

[wildelamassu.livejournal.com]

I think your comment is lovely, but the entire purpose of this one is to fangirl your icon.

(Consider it fangirled. ^^)

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Lol! Cool. Glad you like it.

reposted for clarity

[permetaform]

There's the knowing the full story (which I can know, if it's short enough), the writing of it (which I may need to do to get to the complete story, as I don't know what the heck is happening until that first draft is done)

But see, with the first two lines of the comment I take it to mean that you might tend towards the "write for fans" side for short-fic and the "write for self" side for long-fic. I think there's a gradient of that dichotomy (a grayscale?) which everyone slides on, for how much they weight feedback in the production of the final product.

In my post, I was attempting to look at the writing like a cost-benefit analysis; and I'm assuming that the "target audience" step, the "beta" step, "the final acceptance" step, and the "posting" step are all wrapped up under the cost of writing a fic.

I'm suggesting that for people who *tend* to discover the plot/story/syntax along the way, are (in the process of writing the fic itself) being entertained by the story as it slowly appears through the creative process. Thus, being entertained, this benefit allays the cost (or perhaps subsidizes the cost) of writing a fic, the steps of which you've mentioned.

And I'm also suggesting that for people to *tend* to have full and entire stories leap into their heads that this part:

There's affirmation of myself by others, my acceptance as a member of the community,

...is fully carrying the weight of having to allay the cost of writing the story.

Therefore, feedback (and other forms of affirmation by a community) carries more weight for people who tend to have full stories appear in their heads, because they don't have (or have *less*) the benefit of being surprised by the story as it unfolds.

Re: reposted for clarity

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree on the grayscale, but for me, I would flip the two sides. I would say that I wrote short-fic for me -- I can conceptualize it, I can 'see' the outline and feel my way to an ending pretty okay, and feel pretty confident about the story, so I can affirm for myself that the story is good and I did okay with it. Wheras with long stories...not so much. So I need more reassurance with a long story, rather than less; the cost is more to me in this instance, so I want more out of it. And that seems to be the flip-side of what's proposed, but maybe that's just me.