(There's a meta essay or two waiting to be written in here, but I'm too frelling tired for anything like that today, after my first day on the new job.)
Of course the Maya fic isn't my best work. It doesn't need to be. I'm fine with writing something merely 'decent' on occasion. This is emphatically not 'selling myself short', at least not by my definition. It's the equivalent of deciding to just have fun playing in the sandbox for a little while.
I somewhat object to the classification of 'Normal' as emotion porn, btw, or perhaps rather to the comparison of the Maya fic with 'Normal'. They're very different animals. 'Normal' was the expression and culmination of everything I loved most about Farscape and John Crichton. It's the result of an enormous process of distillation that lasted considerably longer than the three years it took me to write the actual fic.
(Also, it was written from John's POV, which necessitated a certain style and a certain attitude and so on - essentially, a certain voice. That wasn't *my* voice. Neither is the one I'm using in the Maya fic, of course, though it's closer to 'my' voice than the one I used in 'Normal', I think. But a lot of the 'voice' in that fic is down to Maya, not me, even though it's not a first person fic.)
Now, the Maya fic is essentially fluff, popcorn (slightly angst flavoured), mental masturbation - and I'm saying that with a great deal of respect and love for these things, because I think they're a large part of what fanfic is about. This may be the/a part of fanfiction that you are uncomfortable with, I think. It's the 'easy' and artistically kind of pointless part, the part that marks it as a literature meant to be used and - possibly - discarded, a close relation to porn. If the Maya fic can be compared to anything else I've written it's 'Together', which is nearly identical not just in structure but also in purpose.
I continue to think/feel that the Maya fic does exactly what it's supposed to do (well, within limits, of course - it *is* unfinished, after all), in a way that is quite satisfying to me. 'Feel' is probably a more pertinent word in this context than 'think' - I know that when I reread what I have so far of that fic, and especially when I reread the beginning, I get exactly the kind of emotion I want to achieve. It conforms very much to the aesthetics of fanfic. It's not exactly paint-by-numbers, but it does stick closely to the rules of the genre. But it's a genre I love.
Okay, becoming incoherent here (brain falling asleep), so I'm signing off now. Sorry for the self-centred ramblings...
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Short note (really tired, hence the shortness)
Date: 2007-02-13 01:13 am (UTC)Of course the Maya fic isn't my best work. It doesn't need to be. I'm fine with writing something merely 'decent' on occasion. This is emphatically not 'selling myself short', at least not by my definition. It's the equivalent of deciding to just have fun playing in the sandbox for a little while.
I somewhat object to the classification of 'Normal' as emotion porn, btw, or perhaps rather to the comparison of the Maya fic with 'Normal'. They're very different animals. 'Normal' was the expression and culmination of everything I loved most about Farscape and John Crichton. It's the result of an enormous process of distillation that lasted considerably longer than the three years it took me to write the actual fic.
(Also, it was written from John's POV, which necessitated a certain style and a certain attitude and so on - essentially, a certain voice. That wasn't *my* voice. Neither is the one I'm using in the Maya fic, of course, though it's closer to 'my' voice than the one I used in 'Normal', I think. But a lot of the 'voice' in that fic is down to Maya, not me, even though it's not a first person fic.)
Now, the Maya fic is essentially fluff, popcorn (slightly angst flavoured), mental masturbation - and I'm saying that with a great deal of respect and love for these things, because I think they're a large part of what fanfic is about. This may be the/a part of fanfiction that you are uncomfortable with, I think. It's the 'easy' and artistically kind of pointless part, the part that marks it as a literature meant to be used and - possibly - discarded, a close relation to porn. If the Maya fic can be compared to anything else I've written it's 'Together', which is nearly identical not just in structure but also in purpose.
I continue to think/feel that the Maya fic does exactly what it's supposed to do (well, within limits, of course - it *is* unfinished, after all), in a way that is quite satisfying to me. 'Feel' is probably a more pertinent word in this context than 'think' - I know that when I reread what I have so far of that fic, and especially when I reread the beginning, I get exactly the kind of emotion I want to achieve. It conforms very much to the aesthetics of fanfic. It's not exactly paint-by-numbers, but it does stick closely to the rules of the genre. But it's a genre I love.
Okay, becoming incoherent here (brain falling asleep), so I'm signing off now. Sorry for the self-centred ramblings...