Buncha perverts...

[brainofck]

This whole writing experience has been weird and wonderful.

As most of you probably know, I had never written any fiction, ever, really, until Dark Muse hit me like a ton of bricks two days before SB's birthday in April, 2004. Just a little over a year ago.

Now, though I suffer from bouts of "everything I write is the same" type self criticism (Did you realize that Possession really IS Arena, after all, and also, that Arena is just the Dark Muse scenario sneaking up on you slowly, with a big, bloody sword? Stupid brain.), I can't imagine NOT writing, even though there are days when I really, really do wish for the brain-ectomy.

Anyway, that's the weirdness.

The wonderfulness is y'all.

Thoughtful comments that cause me to rethink where my plots are going. People who are enjoying my story so much that they come up with their own ideas about plot and character. Long, delighted feedback and short supportive comments (or squeeful ones). People who beg for more.

And I believe my favorite quote to come out of this experience to date was angiepen's comment on the last chapter of Possession:

"Oh, good grief. [facepalm] I know a little snake who needs a time-out. :P"

That has been running around my head all weekend. Just one of those funny, glowy things.

I call myself an attention whore, but there are reasons I've become so addicted to it!

The Husband once, a long time ago, referred to my friends on LJ as "your loyal perverts." I hope you are not offended that I have come to think of you all very fondly under that title.

And last, but not least, thank you so much, alpha_strike for your help with the naming problem. I didn't go with Seekay, but rather Seejay, much to my own amusement - and her's. :)

Comments

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling, re: the "everything I write is the same" thing. I've been fighting to come up with something new for my Palace!Johnny story; after everything I've done so far, lots of dark drama and high-intensity story arcs, doing something like Johnny and Christian disagreeing about where to go on vacation just comes across as really, well, lame. It's like the story's over, but I don't want it to be over, but anything we do after all the previous stuff has to be at least as dramatically strong as what's gone on before, and that's kind of tough. :/ I have a couple of loose villains running around who could grab Johnny and do nasty things to him, but, well, I've done stories like that. [headdesk] Is it totally lame that I can't think of a really strong, dramatic storyline that doesn't involve rape and torture? [more headdesking] It's like I'm in this huge rut, but I like my rut. [pout]

Anyway. [cough] Yeah, been there.

If it helps, though, I think Possession is sufficiently different from Dark Muse that it's not a problem. They're similar, yes, but the character dynamics are completely different. Viggo was the one who was forced to rape Sean, but Jack wasn't the one raping Daniel. The Birthday Girl in DM was playing puppeteer from a distance, while Jack's snake takes over directly. It might not sound like a huge difference, but when you consider who's actually doing what to whom and how that impacts the characters and their relationships, it's major. I didn't read Arena [duck] 'cause gladiators aren't my thing, so I can't comment on that, but the other two are different enough that IMO you shouldn't worry.

I'm glad that comment made you smile. :D

And yeah, I'm definitely with you on comment-whoredom. [facepalm] I mean, if we don't enjoy the writing in and of itself, then there's no reason to do it. But while I can deal with writing something to send out and getting no feedback except the eventual xoxed form rejection, and rejoicing over the occasional hand-scribbled comments on said xoxed form rejection or even (gasp!) the rare and ever-prized non-form rejection, if I do publish something online then I want feedback. :/ I think maybe it's that we've got this huge audience on LJ, or whatever service or archive we're posting to, and hearing from like one percent of the audience feels like abject failure. When you're sending stuff to editors, you get one response per reading, unless the editor's completely ignoring the slush pile in which case you just don't send anything else to that market, but still, one tends to expect pretty much a 100% response rate, even if all you get is a "Thanks but we can't use this right now" note that's been xoxed five times. It's still a response, right? So when you post something to a community with 500 members and forty-eight hours later you've gotten two responses, that sort of sucks. I'm like, does everyone hate it or what? Is it that bad? Should I post more or is everyone just skipping over it?

It's like you write all these pages and then throw them down a well, and don't even get an echo back.

So yeah, it's good to get feedback, even if they're just the generic, "Hey, good story!" kind. Details are nice, concrit is gold, but just a "Yeah, I read it," will do, you know? :)

Angie, CK's Loyal Pervert :P

Various

[brainofck.livejournal.com]

In the interest of sharing the porn, Arena loses most of it's gladiator character in this chapter (http://www.livejournal.com/users/brainofck/14152.html) and moves fairly quickly into something resembling Palace territory. :p

Which is why Possession is Arena. In Arena SB eventually lands in sexual bondage, comes to some final realizations about his relationship with Viggo, which is ultimately consummated within the context of his forced servitude.

*waves to snakeboy*

What annoys me is how it kinda sneaks up on me. Throw Away and Double Lotus are not this story though. *clings*

Regarding feedback, or rather the lack of it, I read LOTR_RPS, the yahoo list, 8 to 10 hours a week for a year and never sent a single feedback e-mail. This was before I was writing, and I totally didn't understand the brain chemistry of a writer. I would love stories. Recommend them to friends. Go back and read them over and over. But the idea of sending a stranger an e-mail seemed very rude. Why should I junk up their e-mail box? They don't know me. It would be like spam! *rolls eyes at self* In fact, I finally got an LJ account because I stumbled onto The Orange Grove at Rugbytackle and loved it so much I finally just couldn't stop myself from e-mailing Cinzia.

What I take away from this? If even half the readers out there behave like that, you can safely figure that a lot more people read your story than commented. *shrugs*

Anyway, enough with the self-criticism. So you are one of the fab writers who got SUCKED in by Palace, hmmmm. You know people mutter behind their hands about that phenomenon. :)

Re: Various

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Hey, if you'd like to join our phenom, just say so. :D Also feel free to pass on any comments; Palace gets even less feedback than a regular story, by a couple of orders of magnitude. [rueful smile] I'm Johnny, Liam and Michael (Praed), with occasional appearances by Alan Rickman and Judith Tarr, plus a cast of about 75 NPCs. [duck] New writers are always welcome, though, so if you'd like to give it a try we'd be happy to have you.

LOL! about the spam thing. :P I was never quite that bad -- I started out in the online writing thing in a service sort of like AOL (but lots better of course ;) ) where you posted a story and got feedback right there, or in e-mail if you were writing something smutty and folks were too shy to comment in public. But I started out knowing that writers love comments. When I came to LJ I read a lot of back-posts, in the journals of writers who became my favorites, and some of the coms, and at first I didn't post comments on really old stories, like a year or more, figuring the writer would just be kind of annoyed or something.... Actually I don't know what I was thinking. :P Maybe I was just shy or something, but I finally rented myself a clue and started commenting on whatever struck me as commentable.

It's funny, though -- I've always just assumed that anyone who posts a story in public welcomes comments. Heck, I've always just assumed that anyone who posts anything in public welcomes comments from anyone who might read it. I mean, if you don't want random strangers wandering by and maybe commenting, then why is it public, right? Well, isiscolo did a survey and 31 people (18.3%) said that they "get weirded out when someone not on my flist comments in my journal." [blinkblink] I'll grant you it's less than twenty percent, but still, the fact that it's that high just weirded me out. I guess it's like people getting angry when someone friends their journal without begging permission -- I always thought that one was strange too.

And yeah, I've heard the stats on how many people actually speak up about something. One in ten, or one in a hundred, whichever it is. The thing is, I can look at my two comments and tell myself that twenty or two hundred people actually read it and liked it, but that doesn't make my gut feel any better. [wry smile]

Thanks for the link -- I'll go check out Arena, since it's not actually about gladiators. :D

Angie

Re: Various

[brainofck.livejournal.com]

It's the price you pay for RPG action. The funny thing to me is that Palace was SO popular when it was being posted at Rugbytackle. It's interesting that she chose to convert it to game play, rather than to continue writing it as a "real" story.

I can't do game stuff, because of my time constraints. Writing Possession demolished the rest of my RL. It was wake up, write Possession, be Mommy, go to work, come home, be wifey, be Mommy, write Possession, go to bed. On weekends, get up when the cat yowls (about 6:15am) write Possession til Husband yowls (anout 10 am), then chores, Mommy duties, wife duties, bed. No reading. No exercise. Minimal Stargate watching. No other self-selected television. Not even music in the car (because that interferes with writing brain).

I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I tried to write in a group where people were depending on me and the play was constant. I know what it has done to uisgich. I just don't have that kind of time on my hands.

Arena is about as much about gladiators as Possession was a normal Stargate episode. :) I mean, there's a link there, but it's just an excuse for the porn...

Yeah, I'm with you on that whole thing about posting in a public place. And I have also never been sure why people ask to friend you. But I figure, an excess of politeness can't be a bad thing.

I was thinking of a "did you read this" poll at the end of my next chapters of Throw Away and Arena, just out of curiosity - to try to get a census.

Re: Various

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I asked Raven (we're hanging out in YM right now) and she said, "Because I was done." [grin] Can't have a better answer than that, right?

Palace has its ups and downs, intensity-wise. But yeah, you can't really dictate when the crunch periods come. I haven't posted anything in Palace in a few days, but there've been times when I ate, slept and breathed Palace for a week or two. If you have kids and all then you probably wouldn't want to get involved on a regular basis. Although because Palace is what it is, we have an option for people to come in and just play a client as a one-shot thing. Come in, make an appointment, do a PWP, and wander off again. :) Practically speaking, you post in the chat com here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/palace_rpg/) and say you want to play a client. I definitely understand if you're too busy with your own stuff and your husband and kids, though.

And I've been reading Arena, around chatting with Raven. I'm on "Last." Good stuff so far. And actually, I'm not all that sorry I didn't read it before, 'cause now I have this huge slew of stuff to wade into. [beam]

No, an excess of politeness is never bad, although it can be rather bemusing at times. What's bad is when folks get all sniffy when someone friends them without asking, or posts a comment without being on The List. I've seen it happen. I just never imagined the attitude was quite so prevalent as shown in Isis's survey. Here's a link to it, if you're interested:

Isis's survey (http://www.livejournal.com/users/isiscolo/207941.html?nc=77)

Angie