Today's Post is About Lesbian Vampires
Dec. 17th, 2013 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kI am 200% in favour of lesbian vampires.
No. Today's post is about writing and about my bumbling, baby attempts at writing something original. The reasonfitz_y asked me to talk about lesbian vampires is that when I went to visit her in Germany over the summer I woke up one morning and announced "I've got an idea for a novella about lesbian vampires". You know, as one does. And when you're in Berlin, in a heatwave, drinking a beer by the river, chatting up a group of Australian lads about this novel you're writing (still a lesbian, just wanted to know that I could...) you feel like you could write anything, you feel like you could write Crime and fucking Punishment.
The other thing I found super-inspiring about being in Germany was being able to talk tofitz_y and H about writing. Because I generally don't. Not about fanfiction, not out of a sense embarrassment, well, maybe a little out of embarrassment. A few months ago I was watching The Hobbit on DVD with a crowd of folk, and somebody mentioned fanfic, not in a condescending type way, just in a I know this exists type way, and my immediate reaction was: stare into your drink, stare into your drink, don't make eye contact with anybody. And even mentioning that you write original stuff only prompts a bunch of questions, to which nobody is interested in any answer that doesn't end with you being the next JK Rowling and all of us going to live in a house made entirely out of fifty pound notes, so why bother.
Basically, I'm not sure what my family and friends think I'm always doing on my laptop; they either think I play hell of a lot of words with friends, or watch a hell of a lot of porn.
I've always made up stories and written them down. I have a friend, actually, who's a very talented pianist, and who was accepted into a really good music academy after we left school, and he emerged after a year looking like bloody Gollum, and saying he was going to jack it in because having to do it all day every day was ruining the piano for him, it was making him hate this thing which had been a source of great joy in his life. He's in traffic management now. Anyway, aside from the traffic management thing, that's pretty much how I feel about writing.
Anyway, I came back to Scotland with this idea for a group of all female old school vampires (proper Dracula, Carmilla types) failing to negotiate life in modern day Edinburgh. I know Glasgow better, but you can just imagine vampires in Edinburgh, can't you? And it's been a source of great amusement to me to work out the mythology and build up the characters, and I've been having great fun going through sets of writing exercises writing snippets in that universe.
But the other thing I'm learning is that fanfic and original fic are two entirely different skill sets. For one thing you need a plot, and I've spent many years learning to write in the gaps in other people's plots. Not to sound arrogant, but I think I'm a pretty good fanfic writer, and if nothing else I've carved out a niche which suits me, and I feel like I could write decent enough fanfic about the world and characters that I've created -- but there's no overarching plot, nothing coherent tying it together, which was why my attempt to actually write some of it for NaNo faltered on, like, day two.
Hopefully, something will come to me someday, but even if it doesn't, and it just lives in my "snips, snails, and puppy dog tails" folder, then it's still made me happy, and like writing fanfic or playing the piano, if something makes you happy and it doesn't hurt anybody then you should do it.
No. Today's post is about writing and about my bumbling, baby attempts at writing something original. The reason
fitz_y asked me to talk about lesbian vampires is that when I went to visit her in Germany over the summer I woke up one morning and announced "I've got an idea for a novella about lesbian vampires". You know, as one does. And when you're in Berlin, in a heatwave, drinking a beer by the river, chatting up a group of Australian lads about this novel you're writing (still a lesbian, just wanted to know that I could...) you feel like you could write anything, you feel like you could write Crime and fucking Punishment. The other thing I found super-inspiring about being in Germany was being able to talk to
fitz_y and H about writing. Because I generally don't. Not about fanfiction, not out of a sense embarrassment, well, maybe a little out of embarrassment. A few months ago I was watching The Hobbit on DVD with a crowd of folk, and somebody mentioned fanfic, not in a condescending type way, just in a I know this exists type way, and my immediate reaction was: stare into your drink, stare into your drink, don't make eye contact with anybody. And even mentioning that you write original stuff only prompts a bunch of questions, to which nobody is interested in any answer that doesn't end with you being the next JK Rowling and all of us going to live in a house made entirely out of fifty pound notes, so why bother.Basically, I'm not sure what my family and friends think I'm always doing on my laptop; they either think I play hell of a lot of words with friends, or watch a hell of a lot of porn.
I've always made up stories and written them down. I have a friend, actually, who's a very talented pianist, and who was accepted into a really good music academy after we left school, and he emerged after a year looking like bloody Gollum, and saying he was going to jack it in because having to do it all day every day was ruining the piano for him, it was making him hate this thing which had been a source of great joy in his life. He's in traffic management now. Anyway, aside from the traffic management thing, that's pretty much how I feel about writing.
Anyway, I came back to Scotland with this idea for a group of all female old school vampires (proper Dracula, Carmilla types) failing to negotiate life in modern day Edinburgh. I know Glasgow better, but you can just imagine vampires in Edinburgh, can't you? And it's been a source of great amusement to me to work out the mythology and build up the characters, and I've been having great fun going through sets of writing exercises writing snippets in that universe.
But the other thing I'm learning is that fanfic and original fic are two entirely different skill sets. For one thing you need a plot, and I've spent many years learning to write in the gaps in other people's plots. Not to sound arrogant, but I think I'm a pretty good fanfic writer, and if nothing else I've carved out a niche which suits me, and I feel like I could write decent enough fanfic about the world and characters that I've created -- but there's no overarching plot, nothing coherent tying it together, which was why my attempt to actually write some of it for NaNo faltered on, like, day two.
Hopefully, something will come to me someday, but even if it doesn't, and it just lives in my "snips, snails, and puppy dog tails" folder, then it's still made me happy, and like writing fanfic or playing the piano, if something makes you happy and it doesn't hurt anybody then you should do it.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-19 06:09 am (UTC)This is the tag-set for it: The Bearbrass Inmate. You're on the access list, but there's no obligation to read or comment or anything. I just needed an audience to make me keep hitting wordcount.
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Date: 2013-12-19 01:52 pm (UTC)I appreciate the warning, honestly! You should see my first draft of space vampires. It's TERRIBLY rough, with vast chunks missing that I still need to fill in, and a possession plot where I couldn't actually figure out how the characters were possessed until just recently, partway into draft two.
Elle's not-quite-girlfriend Naomi gets possessed by a space telepath, you see, and Elle has to somehow save her (and Naomi's boyfriend too) without revealing to everyone that they're vampires. You wouldn't believe the ridiculous rationalization I came up with for telepaths.