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? :)
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Date: 2005-08-02 05:20 am (UTC)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