saith

Have been reading a lot of excellent books lately, along with some literary criticism. I largely agree with the points raised by the books, but I do think I tend to prefer a more authorial flourish than the authors of these criticisms. Julia Armfield, Donna Tartt, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan... all authors who've been criticised for austentatious prose, but who I utterly adore. Yet at the same time, I feel like I need to whittle back some of the flourishes on my own works. When I reread back (even see the previous WIP post, which I've slashed away at!), I feel like my own sticky fingerprints obscure the text.

I think in the next few fanfictions I post, I'll try out a couple of different styles and see what I prefer. I've been posting writing online for over a decade, but only ventured into fanfiction over the last nine months. I think I'll use it as more of a sandbox to try out different styles: playing with more free indirect style, trying out  more elaborate prose, venturing into prose poetry. I'm going to start studying a Creative Writing and English Literature degree (just for fun!) in October, but in the interim I think AO3 could be a fun place to try some new things.

Another thing that I've been thinking about lately is the AO3 tagging system. I know fanfiction has a different culture around it to published literature and that most of us are writing for fun. I'm writing fic for fun as well, of course, but I do like to engage critically with my own writing, original, fanfic or otherwise. Evaluating and discussion of fic is an aspect of fandom I really enjoy, though I only do this privately as fanfiction culture and etiquette generally advises against unsolicited criticism. Which makes sense! It's totally fine to not want unsolicited feedback from total strangers on something that you just do for fun!

Anway, the reason I mention this is that increasingly engaging with literary criticism has kind of turned me off extensive tagging. AO3 has a fantastic tagging and filtering system with so many options, and I appreciate that there's already an option for me to hide the extra tags. But I don't love tagging my own work extensively. I like leaving ambiguity, showing the reader something and letting them draw their own conclusions. This is one of the funnest parts of reading for me, and sometimes tagging things like 'dubious consent' or 'unreliable narrator' makes debate and discussion impossible. By directly revealing plot twists or character traits, by choosing to explicitly define relationships or scenes, it removes the nuance and ambiguity that's so fun to discuss. Was this character meant to be morally grey? Or are we supposed to view them as a hero? I'd rather not define these answers - sometimes I don't even know myself.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, expect perhaps to say that from here on out, I'll likely strip back the tags in my work. I know that this will make my fics less visible and probably less accessible to those who prefer extensive taggings and warnings. And as usual, I'll provide extensive taggings and warnings to anyone who requests them offsite. But fanfiction is an indulgent hobby, and I want to indulge my own desires. If you can't write fic you enjoy, what's the point?

As mentioned in my previous post, I haven't really spent much time writing fic this month. I've read so little fic in general too! But I have been reading lots of my own writing, and lots of books whose style I'd like to emulate. That is, I really like the style and feel of their prose and I'd like my own work to have a similar atmosphere and flavour.

As I began to read less work in this style, my own writing style changed. It became a bit simpler, and while there's nothing wrong with that (and nothing worse than an overwritten paragraph of purple prose), it wasn't really the direction I wanted to take my prose. I feel like 《 风云突变 | vicissitudes》 and 《 馨 | a fragrance that carries 》 are closer to what I'd like my writing to be than say, 《 晚年惟好靜，萬事不關心 | Late in my life, I only care for quiet 》. And that's not to say that Late in my life, is a bad fic, by any means. But it seems a bit awkward to me, I don't particularly like present-tense writing, and has so many niggling little sentences in it that drive me up the wall. Though that last point could be said for the former two fics as well. Such is the nature of reading your own stuff, haha!

Moving forward, I'd like to be a bit more ruthless with my work to produce a more polished result. Fanfiction is just a small glimpse of the writing I do, and it's a hobby I pursue on my own time. While I don't think that hobbies have to be ‘useful’ and ‘productive’ (and indeed, I loathe the trend where every hobby needs to become a ‘side-hustle’ or a second graft), it would be nice to use fanfic as a no-pressure sandbox area to experiment more with my prose and style.

This was a lot of words to say nothing, but eh, it's my dreamwidth. What's the point of a blog if you can't just share your nonsense rambling?