I hope you do address this at another time in your LJ. Because, of course, it's a process question, and I find process fascinating.
I will -- I'm thinking of little else these days. It's just such a new revelation for me that I don't really know how to address it. Though having a specific person sincerely request that I finish a specific original piece because they want to read it seems to work as a temporary kludge, at least for short stuff.
I find writing to an existing audience vastly more constraining and more stressful.
Wow, we couldn't be more different, could we? That's another thing that makes sense now that you say it but I wouldn't have thought of on my own. I'm learning a lot from this conversation.
but it's not an audience that I can easily quantify.
*nods* I'm still at the stage where I can name a fair fraction of my readers. I don't necessarily know what they want, or predict what they would like, but I do know who they are. Although really I just need one. Everyone else is gravy.
The audience that exists for, say, Buffy or Valdemar, has expectations of a work -- and with some reason -- that places the onus on me, as the writer, to get it right. To get the tone right for the audience, as opposed to for the story; I don't have the latitude to shift tone hugely, to change the way characters talk or think, to let them grow organically.
The first and last wouldn't be true for fanfic, BTW -- tone changes are part of what people look for in fanfic because they aren't getting them from canon, and letting them grow organically is the whole point. But I understand that it's not possible in the official stuff. The "can't change the way characters talk or think" is still the same, at least in theory.
Communication being what it is, there's no guarantee of success; I can't objectively look at anything I write and say "this works for this audience". Any certainty I have, I gain after the fact, when, in fact, nothing can be revised or changed .
*nodsnodsnods* I get that.
I have no idea who my audience is when I write my West novels. I truly don't.
And you find that freeing, yes? I would like to get to that place. Right now I find it paralysing -- like being slapped in the face with my own presumption. This is also where writing process crosses over into therapy process, to my frustration and embarassment.
This ignorance on my part gives me the freedom to be true only to the story itself. The world can twist and events can change and characters can die as the story demands -- and there is no part of me that stops to think "this will offend the audience"
That's funny -- I never think that, even when I'm writing Spike and Buffy in the library with the candlestick to Jane Doe's specifications. They set the parameters, and I just go from there.
I do worry about out of character because I didn't invent these characters and I do need to color in the lines. But I don't really worry about other people's opinions of it, just mine.
I have a freedom in that that probably is egotistical; it's me I have to satisfy first.
I don't think it's egotistical, I think it's healthy. Unfortunately I'm unhealthy enough that when it comes to me it feels egotistical. *wry grin* I still have to satisfy myself first as to whether it's good enough, but in order to write it at all I need to know that someone else wants to read it.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-21 07:04 am (UTC)I will -- I'm thinking of little else these days. It's just such a new revelation for me that I don't really know how to address it. Though having a specific person sincerely request that I finish a specific original piece because they want to read it seems to work as a temporary kludge, at least for short stuff.
I find writing to an existing audience vastly more constraining and more stressful.
Wow, we couldn't be more different, could we? That's another thing that makes sense now that you say it but I wouldn't have thought of on my own. I'm learning a lot from this conversation.
but it's not an audience that I can easily quantify.
*nods* I'm still at the stage where I can name a fair fraction of my readers. I don't necessarily know what they want, or predict what they would like, but I do know who they are. Although really I just need one. Everyone else is gravy.
The audience that exists for, say, Buffy or Valdemar, has expectations of a work -- and with some reason -- that places the onus on me, as the writer, to get it right. To get the tone right for the audience, as opposed to for the story; I don't have the latitude to shift tone hugely, to change the way characters talk or think, to let them grow organically.
The first and last wouldn't be true for fanfic, BTW -- tone changes are part of what people look for in fanfic because they aren't getting them from canon, and letting them grow organically is the whole point. But I understand that it's not possible in the official stuff. The "can't change the way characters talk or think" is still the same, at least in theory.
Communication being what it is, there's no guarantee of success; I can't objectively look at anything I write and say "this works for this audience". Any certainty I have, I gain after the fact, when, in fact, nothing can be revised or changed .
*nodsnodsnods* I get that.
I have no idea who my audience is when I write my West novels. I truly don't.
And you find that freeing, yes? I would like to get to that place. Right now I find it paralysing -- like being slapped in the face with my own presumption. This is also where writing process crosses over into therapy process, to my frustration and embarassment.
This ignorance on my part gives me the freedom to be true only to the story itself. The world can twist and events can change and characters can die as the story demands -- and there is no part of me that stops to think "this will offend the audience"
That's funny -- I never think that, even when I'm writing Spike and Buffy in the library with the candlestick to Jane Doe's specifications. They set the parameters, and I just go from there.
I do worry about out of character because I didn't invent these characters and I do need to color in the lines. But I don't really worry about other people's opinions of it, just mine.
I have a freedom in that that probably is egotistical; it's me I have to satisfy first.
I don't think it's egotistical, I think it's healthy. Unfortunately I'm unhealthy enough that when it comes to me it feels egotistical. *wry grin* I still have to satisfy myself first as to whether it's good enough, but in order to write it at all I need to know that someone else wants to read it.