The Cloven Hoof
This topic contains 915 replies, has 42 voices, and was last updated by 
-
AuthorPosts
-
3 January 2015 at 01:36 #36855
Woke up this morning to the urgent buzz of water bombers overhead. The fire has turned south now and is endangering numerous towns and suburbs. The wind is erratic and I cannot begin to imagine just what hell it must be for the firefighters on the ground. From looking at the maps it appears to have got within a kilometre of Patrick’s friend’s place before it turned so hopefully their house has survived but plenty of others not so lucky. As I said on the Guardian, I just wish all those world leaders who are sitting on their bums doing nothing about Global Warming and the denialists could be dumped down into South Australia today, given CFS uniforms and put to work with hoses, right on the front line. Let them experience the heat.
@blenkinsopthebrave and @arbutus Canada sounds very appealing right now. Better stockpile the Jammy Dodgers. Soon S.A’ population will be turned into climate refugees.
@barbaralefty Give me snow any day over 44+ temperatures. I can even drive on snow. Kids can put on snow suits and go tabogganing or build snow men. Here one sits in front of the air con watching the garden shrivel outside, powerless to save it, listening to the buzzing of water bomb planes overheard.
@purofilion thanks. We are about as safe as it is possible to be. Makes me grateful for not having a pretty view out of the windows. It is nice to be a few minutes drive from the country, close enough to enjoy without the dangers.
Cheers
Janette
3 January 2015 at 02:38 #36856@Janette – Good luck with the fire storm. You live in a part of the world similar to where I live
it seems. [I’m in California] I took a peak on Google maps at the Adelaide area which looks
really nice to me. The suburbs look just like here, the plants all look the same down to the
Eucalyptus trees which are beautiful trees and the downtown reminds of New Orleans with all the
awnings and terraced buildings. I guess its more humid maybe but otherwise I think that it
has a lot of appeal! We also get the fire hazards and the past few years some worrisome
drought conditions too but this winter we had some decent rain and I hope you have some rain
coming soon to help put the fire down. About the snow– I grew up with snow in a northern snow
state and I don’t miss it . I much rather visit it and then be able to say bye.
I hope that you and all your neighbors and communities wont have to sustain a lot of lose!
Best wishes!3 January 2015 at 03:59 #36865Glad you’re out of the direct line of fire (so to speak), hope your friend stays safe too.
Extremes of weather at both ends are awful. I should be grateful for the UK’s tendecy towards a homogenous grey dampness (not all the time, but we don’t get the real differentiation of the seasons so much). And for not living at the bottom of a hill 🙂
3 January 2015 at 09:29 #36872@lisa when my SO was in California he was very impressed by the eucalypts. Apparantly they are much healthier over there than they are here which is no doubt a factor in this fire as most of the native trees in the hills are diseased. Fire bombers have been urgently buzzing overhead all day, not a good sound. We live near a gliding club so are used to the gentle drone of light planes. Today has been like living by a military airfield during a major war. We have had some rain, (not that you Brits would call the sprinklings we get “rain”) and things seem to have quietened down at last.
@scaryb You have springs and autums which are wonderful seasons and though brief I think there is nothing lovelier than a British summer.
Cheers
Janette
3 January 2015 at 10:07 #36874@janetteb really hope you are OK. Sounds truly terrifying. As @scaryb says our weather is largely slightly bad rather than bad, so even snow here rarely comes to anything. I’m totally OK with that, rather that than fires 🙁
Also @craig, @phaseshift, we seems to have a bit of spam on the pub door mat this morning
3 January 2015 at 10:12 #36876Urgh. Hate it when people can’t read the “no junk mail” stickers.
Cheers
Janette
3 January 2015 at 10:20 #36877Oh @janetteb looks terrible on the news :-\
3 January 2015 at 19:29 #36892@janetteb I too have been looking at some photo and video stories. Fire is really frightening, and so horrible for the people whose lives have been altered (hopefully not lost!). They have fairly big forest fires in the interior of British Columbia and what is particularly scary is when the wind gets up and the fire can change directions in no time. Hopefully if the weather cools a bit they will have a chance to get things under control.
4 January 2015 at 06:47 #36917Fires are now under control but south of us the sky is all smoke and the fire bombers are still buzzing urgently overhead. Looking at the most recent map it looks as though the fires encircled Patrick’s friend’s house so fingers crossed for them but others are not so fortunate. The natival animal shelter and a pet boarding kennels were lost which is heartbreaking news.
cheers
Janette
4 January 2015 at 08:43 #36918@janetteb So sorry to hear about the animal shelter and kennels xx
How scary for you. Glad the fires are under control now. I hope your town all supports one another.
Take care – solidarity!
4 January 2015 at 09:15 #36919@janetteb so glad you and you friends and neighbours are safe, but horrible news about the animals. Hope everything continues safe for your this summer x
4 January 2015 at 09:29 #36920Anonymous @
@janetteb that’s awful! Those poor creatures. As you say, you’re safe but others are not. I recall the smell of those fires as a kid and it never leaves you.
Regardez-vous, puro.
22 January 2015 at 17:40 #37472I know, I know, every now and again, up pops the newbie saying, I want to write stuff for Doctor Who and then they disappear quickly as the challenges associated with not being an established writer with a body of work, or indeed being any kind of writer with an understanding of editing, or rewrites, or rejection, or committing to something you might fail at, or y’know, work, emerge. But at least some of those people must have gone away, and found other writers, and started writing their own stuff, and got feedback, and discovered ways of writing which worked for them, which is to say, I bet there are writers here. And I know this is a specific forum, but hey, we like specific things. So does anyone fancy talking about writing sometimes? Just occasionally…
@ichabod etc apologies to any *actual* writers who might get enough of this elsewhere
22 January 2015 at 18:48 #3747322 January 2015 at 18:50 #37474@pedant allergic to fanfic. Brings me out in hives.
Got a wee original thing on the go, light drama
The should of a story bothers me sometimes. Particularly in the sort of story where you have some good characters and aplot that inteeests you, and it ends that because they are interesting you go somewhere you didn’t expect you go, usually politics or religion for me and end up worrying about being respectful or otherwise to real people. Well that’s cryptic. Nothing even vaguely Who here, it’s just a question that bothers me cos invariably I can’t leave issues alone and end up unpeeling them all the way..
22 January 2015 at 19:03 #37475Geez. Typos :-\ which is to say, are there things we shouldn’t write about?
22 January 2015 at 19:11 #37476Well, I’ve had my laugh of the day now.
https://twitter.com/NicFildes/status/558298910465466368/photo/1
22 January 2015 at 19:23 #37477@barbaralefty I write as well. There are definitely others here who do. Bring it on, I say. 🙂
I take it you mean in the context of a story, ideas are expressed that might offend someone? I’m not sure that you can avoid it, if you want to express anything valid or interesting. Certainly fiction doesn’t have to be respectful of everyone’s viewpoint, that’s not what it is for. (In my opinion, anyway.)
22 January 2015 at 19:28 #37478Exactly @arbutus. I think I was concluding that, but on the other hand, no bad thing to take a moment before crashing straight on.
The question then becomes who is the audience, and consequently, is your story that must be told one that anyone cares about 😉
If I might be so noisy, what do you guys write?
I’m mainly poetry, short stories and the odd, radio/screenplay, all just for fun until i work myself up a bit. Mostly fun stuff like environmental degradation, politics and depression. Been told the poetry isn’t too bad by a pretty or two.
22 January 2015 at 19:31 #37480@barbaralefty Agreed. There are an awful lot of readers out there, and its probably fair to say that if you care about the story you are telling, then someone else probably will as well. The trick is getting to them!
22 January 2015 at 19:34 #37481That is indeed a trick @arbutus. Haven’t really tackled that bit yet!
Argh autocorrect – poet or two
22 January 2015 at 19:44 #37482@barbaralefty and @arbutus as well as some of the other Who-sters on the forum — just want to say
that I can tell you are writers by the level of sophistication in your posts and can I say that its
a treat to read them! I’m not a writer but I am definitely a reader. I suppose this is the case cause
if I have had a occasional idea usually when I cant sleep I’m too lazy to get up and write.
Or it may happen when I’m driving but no dedication to pulling over– So there ya go.
What I will do instead is leave an occasional comment on political you tube vids and on a few forums.
I will definitely read anything either of you have written – post it here !!22 January 2015 at 19:49 #37483Lol, @lisa, I think there are some beautiful wordsmiths on here. Tbh, it was insomnia and being a bit down that got me going originally. But I just got to get it down! Whether it comes to anything is a different story, as it were 😉
22 January 2015 at 20:41 #37484Seriously, I’m so ‘not out there’, that I’ve never encountered fan-fic. It sounds like something bought at a hardware store. What is it, specifically?
22 January 2015 at 20:57 #37485Haha! Another wordsmith to the party! Howdy @purofilion, wondered if we would see you 🙂
Does @pedant have a word on fanfic? Strictly, it is fiction, written by fans, but there are a few trends that make it frequently disturbing. It does tend to be bad, although there are doubtless exceptions. It tends to contravene in universe (whatever that universe is) rules and have poor characterisation because people have not learned to write, something that they may yet succeed at. But the most heinous, common crime is the world of the ship. Short for RelationSHIP, it takes any, and Lordy, I do mean any, “pairing” of characters in a universe, and well, I’ll leave it to your imagination, although they would never do you that courtesy. Seriously. Nothing is sacred. Someone, I can’t remember who, once said something about wanting to claw out their minds eye. That applies.
22 January 2015 at 21:11 #37486@arbutus, your clipping, what the heck was that an autocorrect of?!?
22 January 2015 at 21:25 #37487@barbaralefty I am dropping in to defend the honour of fan fiction!
I think it is a wonderful, creative gift economy, where people (mostly women) write stories for free for one another. Sure, there are sexual stories, and some of them are really well done in fact. But by no means all fan fiction is erotic. Yes, the quality of writing varies greatly, but I’ve read some excellent fan fiction. Fan fiction and its writers, readers and editors, functions as a space of play and community and shared passion and I think that’s delightful.
Really when you think about it, the recent BBC Sherlock production is actually a tv version of Arthur Conan Doyle fan fiction (Moffat and Gatiss being huge Sherlock Holmes fans).
@purofilion If you want to discover the world of fan fiction, visit A Teaspoon and an Open Mind which is a Doctor Who fan fiction dedicated space http://www.whofic.com/
22 January 2015 at 21:31 #37488@juniperfish, bizarrely, the Sherlock thing was a conversation I was just having with Mr Lefty, also a defender 😉 I did feel the need to qualify, as I am aware there is good writing that is fanfic, so I submit graciously to your staunch defence.
Oh dear. I’m going to have to go have a look now aren’t I?
22 January 2015 at 21:36 #37489@barbaralefty Thank yip! Sorry, trying to ‘say’ a short and clipped ‘thank you’ meaning “I got it”. Film, we need film here!
Until last year, I had no idea what ‘shipping’ was. A forum member kindly taught me. In fact, whilst I didn’t mention ‘shipping’ in the other blog (where I just placed a comment about Buffy), I recall it discussed as a pretty irritating feature in certain series -I don’t know which writer of Buffy spoke about it; may well have been David Fury or even Doug Petrie.
Forgive me if I’m going out on a strange limb, but I’m still in the process of working out who the story editor is as well as the different names of writers ‘owning’ particular episodes in Buffy (and obviously Who) -and the directors. Whilst I understand their roles, I forget who ‘did what’.
As for writing, I teach absolutely nothing to do with writing -except to 16-17 yr olds in Senior High School ‘when’ they study History. I occasionally teach a Year 10 class -this year, in fact, to write a ‘proper paragraph.’ (that I’m no kind of writer is pretty evident).
So: 15 year old year 10s? Kill me now 🙂
At university, it’s done and dusted -music students truly believe they are above writing sentences of any kind. Yet, when they analyse music, they need to be able to find the correct ‘language’. They never ever do. Reading their attempts at a discography -and I mean 5th year students here- is laughable and disheartening. 🙁
Well, it’s bucketing down and we’re up for another flood. Buckle up, house!
Regards all, puro.
22 January 2015 at 21:38 #37490@barbaralefty I think they were going for aubergines! 🙂
As to what I write, I have a blog which is mostly about travel and always sadly out of date, as the balance between being the primary homemaker and chauffeur/cheerleader for a teenage son, and my own artistic endeavours is a constant challenge for me. As my son would say, the struggle is real! I also have several unfinished novels of different genres which I hope to finish one of these days (no sci-fi, though). Many weeks, coming on here and composing a few paragraphs about the nature of the Doctor, or whatever, is the most writing I get to!
@lisa Thanks for the kind word. I think almost everyone on this forum has loads of interesting ideas to contribute, which is what prompted me to break forum silence for the first time. Great fun altogether!
22 January 2015 at 21:49 #37491@purofilion I would argue that you are a great kind of writer… relaxed about it, and very eloquent! I so agree about the uni students. As an undergrad, it was my job one year to correct the papers of the first year music history students for composition as opposed to content, and some of them were so horrific that there was no simple way to explain what was wrong about their sentences without just rewriting them properly. Unbelievable. The problem at my school was that School of Music students were excused from most of the interdisciplinary stuff that the Arts Majors were required to take, so no English survey, no “Moons for Goons”, etc.
Out of interest, what do you tell the Year 10’s who argue that there’s no need to learn how to write a proper bib, as no one looks up information in encyclopedias or books anymore anyway? (Referencing a recent conversation with the 15-year-old in my house!)
22 January 2015 at 21:52 #37492@purofilion you play with words and have the most distinctive style which I love!
I think you might be on to something with the Buffy ships. On occasion the “fandom” want something so bad, and the team give them something else, and a proportion of the fans decide they knew better and that they don’t like their show anymore. I kind of love it when it is obvious the fan base is being trolled. We should be honoured we have writers smart and involved enough to do it.
With you on the production/writing etc people.Need a chart.
So actually what I dislike is character contravention without appropriate development, forced situations and when fans give themselves an excuse to hate the things they love.
@
22 January 2015 at 21:53 #37493@purofilion
Once you’ve reached the end of your Buffy and Angel watch, you can have a look at my fanfic novel, if you like. 😳
Once you’ve reached the end, though, because it’s set after the end of the television series.
Yes, everyone has a fanfic inside them. 😉 Though, truthfully, the difference between the best ‘fanfic’ and ‘professional writing’ is often rather like the difference between amateur and professional actors.
Namely, the one is doing it for fun, the other gets paid.
22 January 2015 at 21:55 #37494@arbutus. Amen to that although Mr Lefty may disagree with me characterising myself as the primary homemaker.
22 January 2015 at 22:03 #37495@purofilion
There are two main types of fanfic (fiction about a ‘verse written by fans).
1. Written by people who are intrigued enough (*cough* obsessed enough*cough*) by the characters and universe to want to play games of what if.. or what happened next. These are mostly harmless, but you learn very quickly that most people can’t write. SF author Theodore Sturgeon said “90% of everything is crud” – and that’s just the stuff that gets published. ‘Cos it turns out that writing is really hard if you, in any way, aspire to being any good at it. Yes, some people have an aptitude for it, but these not only listen attentively to critique, but also tend to write their own ideas.
The tendency not to know how to place tongue in cheek is also a rather pervasive. My all time favourite piece of fanfic was a 100 worder on Usenet that chronicles the adventures of Miss Kitty Fantastico. You will understand further down the road.
And the absence of tongue-in-cheek is most evident among shippers. We can come back to this a bit more further along your Buffy road trip, but suffice to say I would not normally approve of burning people at the stake, but in the case of shippers I am willing to make an exception (there is also slash, which is shipper fanfic porn, as often as not implausibly gay).
2. Those who think they can correct Joss Whedon (or Moff, or RTD or Sorkin etc etc ). The ones who declare that Joss Failed Us (that’s the Royal “Us”, obv). Sadly, as is evident in most fannish places, these tedious fuckwits tend to shout loudest, as well as writing their crappy “corrections”.
Of course, it is well worth noting that one of the finest episodes of BtVS -a way down the road for you yet – was a debut episode first submitted to Joss as a piece of fanfic (but those are the writers words – in reality he sent in a spec script that was dripping with awesome).
22 January 2015 at 22:07 #37496@bluesqueakpip, really like that. Me personally, I think the difference is deciding you are a writer 😉
22 January 2015 at 22:09 #37497what do you tell the Year 10′s who argue that there’s no need to learn how to write a proper bib
That – without a bibliography – you will FAIL the first essay you write at university? 😈
Automatically. Thems the regs. So it’s best to learn now.
22 January 2015 at 22:23 #37498Thanks for the articulation @pedant 😉 Tend to agree, but again it is all tendencies. I think the main issue with the second type, the Corrector, is that they don’t enjoy writing as a process, just as a way to get stuff out of their heads and onto paper, so don’t get that it is A Good Thing to burn bad ideas or characters or plots.
But that is a thing that can be learnt.
Slash usually equals character contravention for me, if there is no in ‘verse justification, so just doesn’t sit well or convince. And that’s the worst crime 😉
23 January 2015 at 01:32 #37501barbaralefty@ et al —
I write fantasy, SF, and horror, was first published in 1974, and haven’t published anything for a few years now (health matters at home, no time, no energy). Which is kind of okay, I guess, since I’m part of the Old Guard now, and while some keep rolling right to the end (the late Fred Pohl, for instance), others fade quietly away — which may be what I’m doing; not sure yet. The Old Guard when I stepped into that unique genre world was Ted Sturgeon, Arthur Clarke, Naiomi Mitchison, Evangeline — damn, lost it, but she wrote well known fantasy based on the Mabinogion — Judy Merrill (not yet that old, really), etc.
Most of my stuff is still in print, both paper and e-book, and it pottles along pretty well these days, but if I hadn’t married I couldn’t have kept writing, would have done teaching instead (which I loved, but there just wasn’t enough energy to go round for doing both). Anyone who’s interested in taking a look can go look up the most popular piece I’ve ever done (a novel called The Vampire Tapestry), and that can connect you with the other work.
Like a surprising number of my cohort, I dared to write a book and try to get it published directly because of a single novel (among the many that I was scarfing up at the time), Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Its success persuaded me that if she could do that, maybe I could do — something, and get it out there.
However: my first novel (I never wrote short form til well after that book came out) began as — fanfic, sort of, but not in the genre at all; and by the time it was published, no one would ever have known how it started if I hadn’t blabbed it, and everybody forgot immediately anyway because the original provocation wasn’t SF etc. So I have a soft spot for fanfic, am still checking it out from time to time to see what particular work is pushing what particular buttons on the console of the Culture/Gender Wars, and experiencing everything from unexpected regard for an good piece to recoiling from something that *really* is not my thing. A famous feminist author of the seventies, Joanna Russ, used to read and write Star Trek Slash (as well as some classics in SF), and had some interesting things to say about its reason for being. There’s at least one good published analysis of fanfic more than a decade old now — by Jenkins? I dunno, Google will turn it up; probably newer stuff as well.
That said, most of it suffers from the faults you get from writing essentially for yourself and anybody exactly like you (or close enough), and rarely (as far as I know) being seriously critiqued. This is often very personal material that the writers are only willing to release into a safe space, and I can’t say I blame them; but there is a price to pay for that same safety. That’s my take on it. But I am not a fanfic insider, and nothing that I say about it comes from anything remotely resembling the horse’s mouth.
As for enjoying writing as a process — well . . . that depends. A lot. Yakking too much, but happy to discuss.
23 January 2015 at 02:09 #37502I am a writer too though you probably wouldn’t have though so from my usually incoherent, and invariably misspelled comments on here. In fact @arbutus self description so well applies to me that I am quoting,
, as the balance between being the primary homemaker and chauffeur/cheerleader for a teenage son, and my own artistic endeavours is a constant challenge for me. As my son would say, the struggle is real! I also have several unfinished novels of different genres which I hope to finish one of these days (no sci-fi, though). Many weeks, coming on here and composing a few paragraphs about the nature of the Doctor, or whatever, is the most writing I get to!
(change “a teenage son” to three teenage sons and I that is me.) I don’t have a blog but am planning doing one about food oddly enough given that I neither cook nor eat.
I have only attempted one piece of fan fiction which has not g0t beyond the paper it was originally scribbled on. As I have difficulty reading my own writing it is never likely to come to life in digital form. That was an ending to North and South, (the novel), because I felt the more recent BBC TV adaptation was badly let down by the incongruous ending. I have often though of writing a “what became of Susan” story but have not yet found the time or sorted out my own ideas on that. @jimthefish has written some excellent Who stories which he put up as blogs last year and I will link I promise.
I wonder if there is a link between writing and forum posting. On other forums I have been active on many of those more active members were also writers. I guess forums are very much about the written word hence the appeal to writers. (I hate FB and Twitter because I find them shallow. Only forums allow for depth of expression and real discussion IMHO.)
Cheers
Janette
23 January 2015 at 02:26 #37503@Ichobod I have just”googled” the book. Sounds fascinating. I will buy a copy. Of course only males read Sci Fi when it was written exclusively for males. I was put off most sci fi as a teenager by the lack of female characters. It is thanks to writers such as you persisting that that is finally changing.
@barbaralefty. I have the same concerns as you re’ my strident views which seep inevitably into all my writing putting off potential readers. I recently sold, (my first real sale!!) a copy of one of my books to a lady in my writing group rather reluctantly as I was concerned that the comments on religion would be offensive to her. I know she will sympathise with the politics though.
Cheers
Janette
23 January 2015 at 02:45 #37504@Janette– I know exactly what you are referring to about Facebook and I totally agree except
strangely I find it a useful resource! The way I use it is by liking all the pages that refer
to specific subjects such as food or in my case gardening or history or whatever topics
you might be interested in. Then you will get a ‘feed’ page which you can follow that will
have all sorts of goodies. So the pages I ‘liked’ have their own pages that they like and that is
how I grew a ‘like’ list. The Nourished Kitchen page led me to the Fine Dining page which led me
to local farmer markets and local favorite restaurants I didn’t know about otherwise.
Anyway, this is how I use Facebook totally unrelated to how most folks I suppose would use it.
I thought it may help to inspire you a little with your food blog? So go for it with that blog and
good luck!23 January 2015 at 07:09 #37506@ichabod. Left hand of darkness is my single favourite book. I was a huge reader of scifi classics like Asimov, but was not aware of any missing female perspective until I read Le Guin. It was a real eye opener, and showed me that there was something unique and important to be said that was not typically said by men. I feel the same way about Margaret Atwood. Thanks for sharing, will get your book.
@janetteb, also thanks. I find the demands of family life and a full time job take up almost all the resources I would like to devote to writing and I become a very selfish person when I need to write! Also spelling schmelling. I like posting here as one does get to waffle a bit, but like trying to get poems on twitter as a kind of challenge
I knew I would regret my fanfic flippancy, but I’ll suck it up in the interests of provoking a good debate 😉 I can be a bit of a snob, probably due to rather rigid ideas of what is correct, and almost invariably find it is a barrier to some sort of development. I’d blame being Scottish, but I’ll get short shrift here 😉
23 January 2015 at 07:38 #37507Unrelated, at breakfast, discussing the nature of God with a seven year old, as you do, she says, “I don’t think he could’ve done the Big Bang because nothing existed. Unless, he did it with the power of his will. Y’know, like Omega..”
23 January 2015 at 08:11 #37508@pedant thank you for that clear definition of fan-fic: in some circles, it’s not highly respected I suppose. And yet in others….
@arbutus thank you for your comment and @Barbaralefty also. I echo @bluesqueakpip in her appraisal of bibliographies.
Two years ago, most schools in Oz created an unbelievable system called Consistency. All teachers in, say, the Humanities, demonstrate a consistent method of referencing. When I was growing up (she says with deep-voiced authority), we used footnotes and a bibliography consisting of as many books as possible. Now, we use an in-text citation method (and there are so many different descriptions of this: Harvard, IdiotVersion 2.1) which breaks up the text causing children to vomit out spectacularly unoriginal thoughts.
But, getting to what you’re suggesting @arbutus, I’d say without a bibliography, and referenced quotations from a variety of sources, a year 10 student will provide a rambling jumble of incoherence stolen from every author under the sun -if we let ’em.
In History (and Music) one works with hypotheses and ‘proof’. The references support and back up your original thesis. We start this as early as Grade 4 – age 9. If done meticulously it works. However, it’s different in English where creative writing is losing its edge. Also, it was mandated we teach “how to read and analyse a text message”. I believe I wrote a nasty little polemic to the editor about the English Curriculum back in 2004.
I bemoan the fact that a typical student of English studies one novel per year.
And no, they don’t then study a play. The novel/play/short story is the ONE thing! Go figure why we’re all so dumb.
I’m totally fine writing that. I spent nine hours today ‘showing’ teachers how to write paragraphs with a topic sentence. Afterwards: the pub.
@bluesqueakpip I will definitely read your fanfic. I am so thrilled to see people engaged in writing. Literate writing, not shit.
@janetteb I didn’t know that about you! I should have: you demonstrate a degree of clarity that is either beautifully practised or somehow encoded in your DNA. Wonderful! With teenage children, how do you do that??
Now, we have at least one forum member (who I’ve mentioned but I won’t point at) who helps people write cleverly. Every time they write it’s spritely, witty and crisp as a new dollar bill. I sit up and pay attention. I’d add (except for this long ramble) that they’ve had an impact on the way I think. It’s jolly fun to spiral up and down like a faraway soprano; rarefied, relentless and self consciously formal, but where’s that gonna get you without the neat, shrewd and elegant? It’s a precarious balance.
One of my favs is The Student Conductor by Robert Ford. Not fan-fic. 🙂
Apologies for (my) feeble banter. Puro.
23 January 2015 at 09:09 #37509I think it was Jenkins who pointed out in his study of fanfic that fans who write (including My Little Porny — whoops, *slap*, carry on — “ship” pornography) don’t write for the wider audience, but for others on their own wavelength. And it’s more than just fun, for some. The “failure” that they want to compensate for with their writing is the failure of so much popular genre fiction to recognize and include LGBT characters, a multi-category that many fanfic authors identify with. They see themselves as adding their existence to the ‘verses the write in, as resistance to being culturally disappeared from these fictional worlds that they love. I think they have a point. That doesn’t mean that their fiction is great (and yes, 90% of everything *is* junk, but that goes for straight genre fiction as well, which is what Sturgeon meant, adding that 90% of mainstream fiction is junk, too). But it’s not all awful, either. Some professionals have come out of fanfic, or have branch out from pro writing to doing fanfic too. Like most creative landscapes, it’s a complicated one, and definitely not meant for everybody.
@barbaralefty et al –
I have plenty of respect for anyone who can write fiction at any level while raising a family. LeGuin has an essay somewhere about getting up at 5 a.m. or so to get in a couple of hours of writing before her normal day as spouse and mom began. And being Scottish is a *guid* thing, around here at least (my Dad and his family, as my middle name indicates, were of Scots descent).
On only boys reading SF — US SF took off with the rise of Popular Mechanics and other magazines meant for guys inventing stuff in their garages, and SF magazines were very nuts and bolts and space war/conquest for a long time. Girls read it anyway, looking for people like Marian Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, and Leigh Brackett (and anyway, females were used to reading stories with all-male casts though males would not read stories with female leads, which may be less true today). Massive numbers of women and girls watched Star Trek, because Uhuru was on the Bridge — a woman *and* black! So when Left Hand took prizes right and left, the tide of women already at the gates broke through as a number of new SF/F writers *and* a rapidly expanding and supportive readership of women and girls who had been waiting for SF to address issues from sociology and culture rather than mainly engineering or space war strategy and tactics. It was a perfect storm, and IMO it saved SF/F from dying out by bringing in huge new amounts of energy, interest, and talent. So that’s my potted (and super-simplified) history of SF in the US, anyway. At the moment, the best-selling SF/F is YA (Young Adult) fiction (Hunger Games, but also much better books and lots of ’em).
@purofilion
Shucks, I thought the worst educational theory destruction was going on here in the US; sorry to hear of the same crazy impulse to mess around with teaching has been ravaging Oz. It’s common knowledge (among those who keep track of such things) that the Finns seem to have developed the most successful Western educational model — but everybody else pretends it doesn’t exist, for fear of having to actually allocate public $ to build an adapted model, because high quality work with the minds of youngsters does not come cheap (surprise, surprise).
23 January 2015 at 14:50 #37510@ichobod sadly my exposure to Sci Fi as a teenager was limited to the books my brother read which were sheer dross. I loved Dr Who, Blakes 7 and the kind of Science fiction that the BBC served up. We lived in a provincial city and only received two tv stations, the local commercial which only had the worst of Australian and US offerings and the ABC which showed mostly British content with the occasional big budget Aussie production. I discovered Marion Zimmer Bradley while in the UK but it wasn’t until about two years ago that I read A Handmaid’s Tale. I am certain that there are a lot of other wonderful genre books out there that I don’t know about. I probably need at least another hundred years to read at least a tenth of what deserves to be read and another hundred on top of that to get all the stories in my head written down.
@purofilion I have been wondering why my sons have so few texts to study in English. When I was in Year 11 and 12 we did several novels, plays, poetry and film studies. They don’t even seem to do Shakespeare any more. While I understand that English studies need to be about so much more than text analysis surely an appreciation of literature should be the core of the subject. Also on looking through their text books I wonder if the curriculum is designed to make interesting subjects as dull as possible. I really feel sorry for teachers trying to make the leaden matter they are required to teach interesting. Australian history for instance, though brief, has many interesting quirky and colourful moments, all of which are excluded from the texts.
On the writing topic, the little writing group I am a member of just received a council grant to put on a writing festival later this year so we are all very excited. We have several guest speakers lined up, our favourite pub “on board” as venue and will be talking to the local paper next week.
Cheers
Janette
23 January 2015 at 16:09 #37511A very interesting conversation with lots of great points. Particularly the one from @barbaralefty that Sherlock is essentially fanfic of a kind. (I wonder if you could stretch the point to saying that Nu-Who is fanfic too. Probably not.)
I’d agree with @pedant that there’s a lot of awful out there and that the worst of it is an attempt to redress some imbalance they perceive in their show. (But as @ichabod says, sometimes these are imbalances that do need to be addressed.) But by and large the ‘make it better’ brigade do tend to be rubbish.
However, that’s not the whole story and I tend to think there’s room for the ‘make it different’ writers, the ones who want to play around with the alternatives, the roads not taken. With the blogs I put up last year, my starting point was the brief talk of a total reboot that was mooted a few years back. What might the show look like if such a thing were to happen? If you were using the source material of the first Hartnell stories and remaking them today, with a modern sensibility and the (partial) benefit of hindsight. That to me is an interesting and worthwhile avenue to explore.
23 January 2015 at 17:33 #37512Such fascinating conversation going on here! Where to begin? 🙂 (rubs hands together)
@bluesqueakpip Though, truthfully, the difference between the best ‘fanfic’ and ‘professional writing’ is often rather like the difference between amateur and professional actors. Namely, the one is doing it for fun, the other gets paid.
Case in point: PD James’ Pride and Prejudice sequel Death Comes to Pemberley. We don’t call that fanfic. But we do call Bluesqueakpip’s (no doubt excellent) Buffy novel fanfic. It may be that the label itself is unhelpful.
@ichabod also makes a great point about the writers of fanfic who write to fill the gaps, as it were: people whose own cultures and experiences are missing from the mainstream body of work.
23 January 2015 at 17:37 #37513@ichabod I will definitely look out some of your work! Kudos to you for getting it available in e-book format relatively early on. In my world, there is a definite place for both e-book and hard copies, and some writers/publishers have been terribly slow in getting on board. I find that the electronic option keeps our fairly small home from drowning in books! 🙂
@janetteb Three teenage sons! Dear heaven. Someone should give you a trophy!
I would read a food blog written by someone who neither cooks nor eats; it would probably be a nice change of perspective. I do both, and probably too much of the latter. 🙂
-
AuthorPosts
The topic ‘The Cloven Hoof’ is closed to new replies.
