grrr

[raspberryhunter]

Last week I wrote the first draft my story for rarewomen and was very pleased with it. Then I let it sit for a week.

Last night I looked at it again, and it's a piece of crap. I think maybe half of it is salvageable; the other half will have to be completely rewritten. Bah.

(...and this is why I usually need at least two months for any sort of fic thing...)

Comments

[ollipop]

Oh no! Also, I know that feeling. I got bogged down in source text and then started FOUR other ficlets in that 'verse, three of which I cannot even post because they are too close to my rarewomen target and I'll be spotted. The disadvantages of a small fandom.

Oh, festivals, why do we love you?

[raspberryhunter]

hee -- it's really okay, I'll fix it and it will be fine. I do actually like fic exchanges because they force me to take that extra polishing step because I'm wracked by guilt at not making it as good as possible (and also because I have two months, so I might as well :) ), and I'm usually happier with the result. At least, I'll be happier in a month or so, if not right now :)

Can you post them all as rarewomen treats? It's annoying to have to wait a month for something you want to post now, though!

[ollipop]

They will be treats. One of them actually is kind of a planned treat for my recipient, since the fic itself is going to be so damn dark. But to think about posting them implies that there is some kind of coherent narrative structure. And, no.

[raspberryhunter]

hee. Well, maybe someday? :) I've got the coherent structure, more or less, I just haven't gotten Anything Else, bah.

[ase]

Le sigh. It is the way of the world. Need someone to bounce a draft off?

[raspberryhunter]

umm... maybe so. It's kind of at the stage where I know WHAT is going wrong, I just don't know what the heck to DO about it, except maybe to acknowledge that I'm no good at writing this kind of thing. I'm gonna try to go through one more draft and then we'll see..

Vaguely related, have you read Cherryh's short story "The Unshadowed Land"? (Reading Cherryh -- and Bujold, and I'm sure a bunch of other people I just haven't picked up really recently -- makes me despair of ever writing anything. Bah.)

[ase]

Feel free to hit me up if you need a sounding board or second pair of eyes. My agenda this week is pretty open.

Vaguely related, have you read Cherryh's short story "The Unshadowed Land"?

I did, several years ago, it's mostly evaporated. Should I reread it?

(Reading Cherryh -- and Bujold, and I'm sure a bunch of other people I just haven't picked up really recently -- makes me despair of ever writing anything. Bah.)

Everyone starts somewhere. (Cherryh? Ohhh, reactions?)

[raspberryhunter]

Should I reread it?

Maaaaybe? It's not strictly relevant, but there's this feel that she gets in that story, effortlessly, that I'm looking for but that is taking me a lot of effort not to get right.

So I guess we never talked about this, surprisingly! -- I often have problems getting through Cherryh's novels, because they take sustained effort (and I'm really bad at that these days, although this year I've been doing a bit better, so maybe I should go back and try Cyteen) but I think her short stories are marvelous. Well, okay, some are better than others, but the ones I like, I like very much indeed.

[ase]

I think we did talk about it! Mostly in the context of the novels, less the short stories. Do you remember which ones you particularly liked?

[raspberryhunter]

Besides "Unshadowed Land," I particularly like "Pots." Both of these I read in other anthologies. I also have the Collected Short Fiction, and I remember liking quite a few stories from there, but they have all kind of fused together in my head :)