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ravenI have writers' block.
I'm pretty sure lots of people out there think this is a wanky concept, notably Terry Pratchett, but I can't help that. I'm not a professional writer, I'm an overworked undergraduate; so when I don't have the inclination to write it quietly drops off my mental priorities list, and without noticing I find weeks have gone by since I last opened up a blank text document. I don't know what's causing it this time. Last term I wondered if Oxford in general had this effect, but I did write a bit during Michaelmas - two or three baby!Doctor Prydonian fics, and more importantly, Another Horsedreamer's Blues. I'm still quite proud of that fic; it may well remain my sole effort in Firefly fandom, which sadly makes it ineligible for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
remixredux, but I'm still pleased with how real the characters became. I think that's the mark of good source material, actually; if the canon characters are consistent and well-realised, the fic about them should be better.
So, writers' block. I had a brief idea for another Firefly fic, and while the basic idesa is sound the fic keeps self-destructing after the first two paragraphs, which I then delete in disgust. I also have an absolutely stellar beginning for a fic - two pages of girl!Doctor mayhem that I'm absurdly pleased with - that then just stops. Boom. I have no idea what to do with it.
So perhaps now is not the time to sign up for a ficathon, butremixredux is my Fandom Event of the year. I know that for some people it's ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide, but I can never write fic through the busiest time of year (that is, October and November, which are far busier for me than Christmas is), and so I've never signed up for that. Remix is different, because it's original, it's a different type of creativity, and reading a remix of your fic by a really, really good author is perhaps one of the greatest joys in life. I'd never heard of casirafics before she remixed Making Moony Laugh, but even then I knew Mapmakers was probably going to be an eternal classic. Which it is, because it's just that good, but more so for me, because I think that if I'd been a little older (when writing MML, I was only fifteen and I hadn't been in fandom for more than a year or so) and with more vision, that fic might have been something far better. And the remix sort of showed me what to aim at, so to speak. The year after, angelgazing remixed A Sequence of Ghosts. I was just re-reading Oleander Silence and remembering why I liked it so much; it's a beautiful piece, and again, far better than the story it's based on.
Mmm. I didn't really plan to write a remix retrospective, but now I've got this far I might as well mention the remixes I've written myself. I didn't post either of them here, or anywhere else on the web, because I wasn't fond of either of them. The first one, particularly - it wasn't entirely my fault, as my assigned author wrote mainly Harry/Draco porn, something I would take Voltaire's advice in spending my life opposing - because it was pretty bad, but the second one could have been better. The problem there, I think, is thatamchau was my assigned author. This was good in one way - I spent two months gleefully lying to her about everything to do with the remix, and had a glorious reveal when the anonymity was lifted - but not in another, because it's a quite different thing, remixing a stranger's fics, to remixing fics you know almost as well as you know your own. Am-Chau claims she didn't guess who had written her remix story before she found out, but that it seemed obvious in retrospect. Which is, I guess, the effect I was going for.
Anyway, enough blather. I have been to a lecture today - shock horror! - and now the plan is to have a look at that dreadful French essay, take soup to Claire, who is stricken with some sort of terrible lurgy, go to tute, return from tute and sleep for the rest of the day.
Edited to add: Regarding dreadful French essay - anyone know if you can use "schism" as a verb?
I'm pretty sure lots of people out there think this is a wanky concept, notably Terry Pratchett, but I can't help that. I'm not a professional writer, I'm an overworked undergraduate; so when I don't have the inclination to write it quietly drops off my mental priorities list, and without noticing I find weeks have gone by since I last opened up a blank text document. I don't know what's causing it this time. Last term I wondered if Oxford in general had this effect, but I did write a bit during Michaelmas - two or three baby!Doctor Prydonian fics, and more importantly, Another Horsedreamer's Blues. I'm still quite proud of that fic; it may well remain my sole effort in Firefly fandom, which sadly makes it ineligible for
remixredux, but I'm still pleased with how real the characters became. I think that's the mark of good source material, actually; if the canon characters are consistent and well-realised, the fic about them should be better.So, writers' block. I had a brief idea for another Firefly fic, and while the basic idesa is sound the fic keeps self-destructing after the first two paragraphs, which I then delete in disgust. I also have an absolutely stellar beginning for a fic - two pages of girl!Doctor mayhem that I'm absurdly pleased with - that then just stops. Boom. I have no idea what to do with it.
So perhaps now is not the time to sign up for a ficathon, but
remixredux is my Fandom Event of the year. I know that for some people it's yuletide, but I can never write fic through the busiest time of year (that is, October and November, which are far busier for me than Christmas is), and so I've never signed up for that. Remix is different, because it's original, it's a different type of creativity, and reading a remix of your fic by a really, really good author is perhaps one of the greatest joys in life. I'd never heard of casirafics before she remixed Making Moony Laugh, but even then I knew Mapmakers was probably going to be an eternal classic. Which it is, because it's just that good, but more so for me, because I think that if I'd been a little older (when writing MML, I was only fifteen and I hadn't been in fandom for more than a year or so) and with more vision, that fic might have been something far better. And the remix sort of showed me what to aim at, so to speak. The year after, angelgazing remixed A Sequence of Ghosts. I was just re-reading Oleander Silence and remembering why I liked it so much; it's a beautiful piece, and again, far better than the story it's based on.Mmm. I didn't really plan to write a remix retrospective, but now I've got this far I might as well mention the remixes I've written myself. I didn't post either of them here, or anywhere else on the web, because I wasn't fond of either of them. The first one, particularly - it wasn't entirely my fault, as my assigned author wrote mainly Harry/Draco porn, something I would take Voltaire's advice in spending my life opposing - because it was pretty bad, but the second one could have been better. The problem there, I think, is that
amchau was my assigned author. This was good in one way - I spent two months gleefully lying to her about everything to do with the remix, and had a glorious reveal when the anonymity was lifted - but not in another, because it's a quite different thing, remixing a stranger's fics, to remixing fics you know almost as well as you know your own. Am-Chau claims she didn't guess who had written her remix story before she found out, but that it seemed obvious in retrospect. Which is, I guess, the effect I was going for.Anyway, enough blather. I have been to a lecture today - shock horror! - and now the plan is to have a look at that dreadful French essay, take soup to Claire, who is stricken with some sort of terrible lurgy, go to tute, return from tute and sleep for the rest of the day.
Edited to add: Regarding dreadful French essay - anyone know if you can use "schism" as a verb?
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no subject
on 2006-02-03 12:53 pm (UTC)I don't call it writers block though
I just figure my brain has only so many words it can play with at once, and if they're all going into essays then the fic gets to wait a while
no subject
on 2006-02-03 01:06 pm (UTC)I'm going to remixredux this year. That is, if I can pull the 800 words of partially written fic I have together before say... 11:45 tonight, which will give me time to sign up. I am VERY excited. Which is probably your doing. Indirectly. ;)
Blather is good. I don't know if you can use schism as a verb, but that school you go to? It has this multi-volume book that first came out ohh... some time at the beginning of the twentieth century I think but is now published in handy "concise" editions that should tell you exactly what you need to know.
*dodges blows* I'm teasing! Love!
no subject
on 2006-02-03 07:29 pm (UTC)Heh, very funny. *g* Consulting said volume involves a) trekking to OUCS to find out why my subscription services don't like me any more, or b) going to the library. Both involve going outside on the coldest day of the year!
no subject
on 2006-02-04 05:26 am (UTC)*dances* I made it in just under the wire! I'm going to remix, baby! I'm going to remix!
no subject
on 2006-02-03 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-02-03 02:17 pm (UTC)schism, v.
Obs. rare.
intr. To separate schismatically.
1604 H. JACOB Reasons taken out 77 He that differeth from the Gospell ioyneth not to the Church, but schismeth from it. 1610 J. ROBINSON Justif. Separation Wks. 1851 II. 293 It is necessary that he which thinks it a true church return unto it, from which he hath wickedly schismed. 1645 KIFFEN in R. Baillie Anabaptism (1647) 69 The notorious guilt of schisming from Rome.
So it's not unknown, as long as you're willing to defend it as a seventeenth century usuage. Probably safer to go with "separating" or "splitting" or "causing a schism", though!
no subject
on 2006-02-03 07:31 pm (UTC)"but schismeth from it" is my new favourite phrase. Thank you!
no subject
on 2006-02-03 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-02-03 01:57 pm (UTC)p.s. i got your note (and may or may not have physically jumped around the lodge, because it is love, but the porters already know i'm odd, so never mind) and i meant to pidge you as soon as i could but somehow i always seem to be going in the opposite direction. so this is an interim notice until you get a stray piece of paper from me trying to articulate just how much wonderfulness it is, and how much i love you for it, and just how much it helped. :D
no subject
on 2006-02-03 07:34 pm (UTC)*g* Glad you liked. Apologise for three am handwriting.
no subject
on 2006-02-03 06:36 pm (UTC)Since Edinburgh I've been like that. There again, 2 months after getting to uni my laptop did die and lose several months worth of fiction, so I probably didn't have it in me for a while.
But now I'm knackered all the time, I kinda can't be bothered. Except I signed up for several bzillion things last week. Which didn't help.
xx