#i have a couple more from acitymadeofsong but i could do all of these... i'm sure

[aikainkauna]

More meme answers

Right, so Big Dave asked me these, still from this meme:

10: What’s your biggest writer pet-peeve?

I like how this comes from someone who knows I consist of 97% pet peeves, and that pet peeves hold my skeleton together. Others’ bodies run on ATP; my cells burn pet peeves.

Right. I don't even know where to start; there are SO MANY. But I guess my number one would be all the anti-romance and anti-poetry bullshit that gets touted as good writing advice. It all stinks of (often unconscious) misogyny to me, because it's... well, it's the same thing as with frills and ornament and emotions (which are all deemed GIRLY and FRIVOLOUS), just in writing form. It's just covert machismo. I do understand that in the zine era, fanfiction suffered from *so* much bad purple prose, but not all poetry is purple prose. In fact, the whole concept of purple prose is so flawed that it should be torched--it's such an easy stamp to slap on anything that dares describe something in poetic, romantic terms. It's a hatred of beauty, with echoes of Protestant puritanism as well and just... everything I loathe. What the actual fuck do these people think is wrong about deriving aesthetic, even ecstatic beauty from the things you see and feel? What's wrong with that? Who does ornament harm? No one. It's one of those basic human instincts, a need for beauty. The human imagination is so enormous and our capacity for all kinds of crazy experiences (often shoved into the realm of religion and therefore devalued by so-called rationalists), ecstasies, the dreams we dream at night... no, to cut that out would be to try and erase our humanity and to make us into machines. So I will have none of that.

Bad writing is bad writing. Azure orbs and limpid pools are crap because they've been *overused* and because people use them without putting *thought* into them. Bad metaphors become bad because people just use them as shorthand. And while shorthand does have its place (you can't write without it), you have to always use metaphors *consciously* instead of just writing on automatic, and the poetry should make some sort of sense in context (even if it's an intuitive, emotional, dream-logic). If you described just a normal swaggering guy walking like a panther, it wouldn't be that interesting an image--but once you link that to talkie era Conrad Veidt specifically, *then* it starts to get colour, starts to resonate, starts to acquire some "wow"--because it's a fucking *heureka* experience, an insight. Because he really *is* of a panther's nature, Connie. And if you just use "impalement" in the context of sex as shorthand--like, "he impaled him on his cock, then came inside of him, the end" it's not evocative of much. But if you go into the experience of the recipient, have him thinking of how he feels "as if it's never going to go in, and oh fuck, now he expands on the inside and his guts are being pushed up, fuck, it's like impalement..." it starts to work because it ties that to the context of that specific character and situation. So so much of it depends on context.

And once you take away the poetry, you take away the soul. Prose without poetry is like taking vitamin tablets and amino acid powders instead of having a great, nourishing meal with all its scents and tastes. Poetry is like love, like imagination, spirituality--that which makes us happy and fulfilled.

13: What’s your favorite writing quote?

That Angela Carter thing, relating to the above.

37: What’s your oldest WIP?

You are peeking into eldritch abominations here, my friend... I have an unfinished Devil of Winterborne fic from 1997 on a floppy disc somewhere. And a Clarice/Hannibal poem from 2000. Those will never see the light of day, I don't think. As for the ones I do intend to finish (insallah), meaning the ones with Connie characters in--I think I have one little ficlet from Ahmad’s POV that I haven’t posted yet. But it’s kind of inconsequential, so I haven’t felt it’s that important a fic--it’s just one of those fics that describes a little moment. In this case, he sees Jaffar and Yassamin making love in the crystal and decides to go off with Abu instead, and that’s *all* there is to it. The oldest Jaffar/Pwinzezz ones that I do look forward to actually finishing are ones where there are Wild Shipboard Ravishments (because we really have not had enough of those) and then I’ve toyed with an idea of a Jaffar resurrection fic for years, now. Where he does get shot in the head at the end of the movie, but in good fantasy/mythological tradition, he’s stored a copy of his soul into his amber pendant or his crystal pendant and Halima finds it and, according to his instructions (because he was prepared for this), brings him back to life. Mostly because he has blackmailed her into it somehow, and this all ties in with the fate of a woman Halima loves, and only Jaffar knows how to get her back together with Halima, and they have a very fraught relationship while she nurses him back to health, shall we say. But I haven’t really had any more ideas beyond that for the story--where to take it, or at least any ideas I’d be that interested in pursuing.

Aaand then there is potentially Falcon 3, towards the end of their lives, because I want them to die together so that one won’t be miserable and heartbroken after the other half of her/his soul has left this Earth. But it’s not time for that yet.

The one I’m likeliest to finish next (after Roses 23) is another cabinfic, and/or maybe some more Veidtbone RPS. That’s about it--I don’t, thankfully, have that many WIPs because I hate the idea of never finishing a story. So I only start on ones where I (usually) feel like I can finish them, too. All of my nature rebels against the idea of abandonfic, and I never, ever start posting a fic until it’s finished--I couldn’t do that to my readers (or myself). I’ve got a stubborn honesty/duty fetish that way.