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The weekend's half over, and already I'm tired.
Back from Free Comic Book Day.
I think this may be the last time I'm going to do a signing until I have something new to sell that isn't Raven's Children. I find it extraordinarily difficult to switch back into RC mode, since it isn't what I'm writing and thinking about right now. Not that I won't still be selling RC, and not that I'm ashamed of it ... well, all right, I actually *am* ashamed of certain aspects of it, or maybe ashamed isn't the right word -- I just know I can do better and I hate the thought of people judging my work by something I drew five years ago. But thinking about it, talking about it, to the exclusion of the stories I like better ... it's just a little bit weird. Probably the best example I can come up with is one from fandom -- it's like being a huge fan of some TV show or movie, getting involved in all the fannish communities and living, breathing, sleeping it for months. Then, several years later, you've gotten out of it, and while you may still look back fondly on that period in your life, you also can't really figure out what it was about that particular movie/show/book that made you fall so madly in love with it. When you once knew the characters' genealogies back three generations, now you can't even remember half their names. And then you attend a convention for that show and are suddenly trying to reconnect with whatever it was that once made you love it, and you can't quite find it, and it's ... weird.
Speaking of fandom, here's a positive essay on fan fiction that was linked from one of the mailing lists I'm on: In Defense of Fanfic. It pretty much touches upon everything I believe about fan fiction, and provides excellent counterpoints to most of the commonly raised arguments against fanfic, such as authorial intent and the relationship of fanfic to "authorized" spin-offs. It's also interesting to read the comments, which raise some more good points.
The funny thing is that, as weird as this sounds, I don't feel as if you've really succeeded as a writer until people have the desire to start writing fanfic about your creations -- that the point where you know you've truly made your characters talk and dance and sing inside someone else's head is when they feel that compulsion to go ahead and write their own adventures for your characters -- to make your characters live on after the last page is read. That's when your story makes the leap from simply being an engaging little story you wrote for yourself, to truly becoming part of our cultural mythology. If you haven't made that connection with your readers, then are you really engaging them and could you be doing better? I'm pathetically flattered by the tiny handful of Raven's Children and Kismet fanfic that I have received, and I wish there was more. C'mon, Kismet fans -- you KNOW you want to! I can't seem to write it right now; at least *somebody* should be doing it!
No, seriously, I think I'm actually past the worst of my writer's block, and I'm penciling the next page tonight. I think I'm back up on the horse and ready to ride on.
I think this may be the last time I'm going to do a signing until I have something new to sell that isn't Raven's Children. I find it extraordinarily difficult to switch back into RC mode, since it isn't what I'm writing and thinking about right now. Not that I won't still be selling RC, and not that I'm ashamed of it ... well, all right, I actually *am* ashamed of certain aspects of it, or maybe ashamed isn't the right word -- I just know I can do better and I hate the thought of people judging my work by something I drew five years ago. But thinking about it, talking about it, to the exclusion of the stories I like better ... it's just a little bit weird. Probably the best example I can come up with is one from fandom -- it's like being a huge fan of some TV show or movie, getting involved in all the fannish communities and living, breathing, sleeping it for months. Then, several years later, you've gotten out of it, and while you may still look back fondly on that period in your life, you also can't really figure out what it was about that particular movie/show/book that made you fall so madly in love with it. When you once knew the characters' genealogies back three generations, now you can't even remember half their names. And then you attend a convention for that show and are suddenly trying to reconnect with whatever it was that once made you love it, and you can't quite find it, and it's ... weird.
Speaking of fandom, here's a positive essay on fan fiction that was linked from one of the mailing lists I'm on: In Defense of Fanfic. It pretty much touches upon everything I believe about fan fiction, and provides excellent counterpoints to most of the commonly raised arguments against fanfic, such as authorial intent and the relationship of fanfic to "authorized" spin-offs. It's also interesting to read the comments, which raise some more good points.
The funny thing is that, as weird as this sounds, I don't feel as if you've really succeeded as a writer until people have the desire to start writing fanfic about your creations -- that the point where you know you've truly made your characters talk and dance and sing inside someone else's head is when they feel that compulsion to go ahead and write their own adventures for your characters -- to make your characters live on after the last page is read. That's when your story makes the leap from simply being an engaging little story you wrote for yourself, to truly becoming part of our cultural mythology. If you haven't made that connection with your readers, then are you really engaging them and could you be doing better? I'm pathetically flattered by the tiny handful of Raven's Children and Kismet fanfic that I have received, and I wish there was more. C'mon, Kismet fans -- you KNOW you want to! I can't seem to write it right now; at least *somebody* should be doing it!
No, seriously, I think I'm actually past the worst of my writer's block, and I'm penciling the next page tonight. I think I'm back up on the horse and ready to ride on.
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"I think I have a wedgie."
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But so true.
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I doubt anyone's gonna write fanfic of my comic strip...
...in fairness, its a parody to begin with. ^_^