I write. Or, I try to.

Why I wrote it BINGO (transcript under the cut)

So, there's really only a few responses a reader can have when reading an author's negative statement about their own work. One, if it is at that start of a a work, they take it a face value and do not read. Two, it subconsciously primes the reader to notice that mistake pointed out by the author more than usually would. Three, the reader does not care and/or is now prepared to assure you that you're a good writer. Four, the reader now feels self-conscious if they enjoyed your work because if you think it is bad what does it say about them if they enjoyed it.

In most of these cases, in writing that comment, you've already implicitly decided for the reader how they should read the work - to view it in the light of something bad. Isn't that awfully convenient to the awful voice in your head? To help it color the world in a unflattering light?

A guy at church once told me, after I’d set a plate of cookies down on a table and said, ‘I used too much salt and the chocolate is a little bitter,’ “Why do you always insult your baking? You just make me afraid to eat it, even though your baking is always great. Set the cookies down and let me make up my own mind.”

because you, the author, presented it to me with positivity and excitement.

Mary Shelley: Were you a goth, prep, nerd, or jock in school?

Zora Neale Hurston: Do you write in your free time? If so, then what do you write?

J.D. Salinger: What was the last movie you watched?

Alice Walker: What was the first “adult” book you ever read?

Bram Stoker: Do you prefer suspenseful horror movies, gore, or jump scares?

Oscar Wilde: What book have you read more than once?

Beatrix Potter: Do you like reading inside or outside?

Ann Radcliffe: What’s something you’re known for among your friends or family?

Lord Byron: What’s a negative quality that you can admit to having?

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Do you have a favorite poem or one you can recite?

Jane Austen: Have you ever fallen in love?

Langston Hughes: If you could be part of a literary era, which one?

Emily Dickinson: What’s the last book you were reading?

John William Polidori: What was the last book you finished?

Stendhal: Have you ever hid a book you were reading because you were embarrassed? 

Charles Dickens: What book are you currently reading?

Thomas Hardy: Are you a city or country person?

Virginia Woolf: What book has been on your TBR longer than a year?

he said, “you have to stop doing that.”

“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.

but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.” 

i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”

as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck. 

“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”

your writing is great

your writing is great

YOUR WRITING IS GREAT

your writing is great

YOUR WRITING IS GREAT

YOUR WRITING IS GREAT