reenka

of all the stupid things that come to my head when i'm avoiding other things... like, well, the rescribo fic refuses to coalesce into my brain, and i can't write for peanuts. i should shoot myself and get it over with, except that's entirely too melodramatic. i have reccer's angst, i think. i don't want to rec anything unless i can rec -everything-, and i can't rec everything until i -review- everything. it's a vicious cycle. i can't -review- everything 'cause i don't have the energy to -read- everything. i don't have the energy 'cause it's summer and i'm lazy in a different way from winter. i don't want to -do- anything except watch boys snog and drink cool liquids and possibly escape to barbados. except that makes me think of barbatos, the little demon from `books of magic'. i do so miss him.

anyway, the stupid thing that i can't believe i'm writing down is: the reason i'm a romantic and/or i cling to exclusive-relationship pairings in my head is, that i fall in love with the two of them, separately and together, and separately together. i mean, i love actual real people, too, but not the way i love characters, who never stop speaking to me, who're always there, making me -feel-, being -inside- me. it's such an intense, symbiotic relationship.

i'm so in love with them, and i rediscover it all the time, seriously i do. not just in love with love, or maybe it is, and one couldn't understand unless one has -lived- it for as long as one has been in love with anything. when i was little, i think i loved the idea of destiny. happily and perfectly and with lots of adventures. and it's not that i believe, necessarily, that it -has- to be just one person for every person or character, it's just that-- the way they're happy? the way they can't get enough of each other, the way they're lost in each other, the way they adore and hate and can never disentangle from each other? that's how i feel about them. i'm so vicarious that it's almost like their love is my love, and i could no more believe in them with anyone else than i could imagine they could stop their eternal kissing and fighting and needing to do homework, even though they -must-, i know that. you can't escape reality forever, i know that. most people wouldn't even -want- to. there's morning breath to contend with, and most people get tired of living in the clouds. one day, you wake up and you realize you're not willing to compromise anymore, and what seemed like an ideal to top all ideals seems like a cop-out, some pat answer you settled for without thinking. or maybe just thinking with your sex. and no, i can never decide what i think it means, love or reality or which way any of it should go. i think maybe i write and read it because i -don't- know, not because i do.

it's awful, it really is. i dislike fanaticism, blind faith, and this reminds me of that. but it's also love, horrid obsessive love, and that's even harder to reason with. sometimes it seems that everyone is searching for something to -make sense-, something to comfort them and reassure them that the world is as it should be, or it -could- be. i suppose people cling to religion and cynicism and pain and drugs and sex. i don't have religion, and i dislike pain and well, the sex would not be a sure bet, let's just leave it at that. there are all these other things to be in love with-- beauty and poetry and magic and writing and my own imagination. but it's only the fantasy of love that has that thrill, that combines it all-- sex & beauty & poetry & magic, that -kick-, the feeling like you're constantly -there-, in the flow of it, able to access with a thought.

i want that distance, i really do. the writer's distance. i feel near-sighted, almost blinded by my own desire, this horrible knowledge that i'll never be really -good- until i can detach myself, use my passion without having it use me. and i want to be really good. oh, i realize i'm -better- sometimes, better at wordcraft, better at rhythm, able to feel the flow of the words more than most. but it's not enough, really, and i get lost in dreams of what could be, but maybe nothing ever could be, and it's the discomfort that drives us all. who the hell knows, anyway -.-

i used to write for myself, and it was easy, but my focus was so narrow that i was practically writing on my own skin. and now, this awful knowledge of an audience, it's like a drug, and i want more, always more, always measuring myself now. it's not enough, and the voice in my head telling me i'm not good enough to get noticed, simply not good enough, is just so loud sometimes. and it's not just quality, obviously, because everything has flaws, sometimes obvious, gaping flaws, and people worship it. how did i get to this place where i crave being noticed while scoffing at others' ability to discern? it was always like this: wanting attention is a bitter pill to swallow when you're antisocial and jaded and elitist and just mainly grumpy.

i see it for what it is, too. it's jealousy and mostly insecurity, really, otherwise i simply wouldn't care. it's also the knowledge that i haven't done what i -had- to, which is my fault, i just have problems consistently completing stories, and even bigger problems writing plotted-out chaptered arcs, heavy on the plot, not so heavy on the symbolism and over-rich description. this is what the people want, and i'm not giving it to them, and it's my own damn fault. and on the short-and-deadly vignette front, well, i'm not skilled enough at polishing to have gotten far into the arthouse crowd, either. i'm just trapped between polarities, scribbling furiously and never actually having that much to show for it.

would i give it up? would i give up whatever native talent i have for the ability to churn out epics and 200 reviews and not respecting myself in the morning, or my reviewers for that matter? yes. maybe. no. yes. no. who am i kidding? shallow reviews reassure me i don't suck, but they don't make me really feel good. it's not enough. i want to be understood, i want to be seen through. i write for a narrow audience, and the others, the ones who tell me "good job, more smut", they can really go to hell, they really can.

calling me a genius brilliant wordsmith would make me scoff and not respect you, that's just the ugly truth (unless i trust you, in which case i'll smile indulgently and understand that you do have taste, just not restraint). anyone who calls anyone that with a straight face makes me wonder exactly how much more praise they'd heap on shakespeare or cummings, and whether it's all the same in the realm of brilliance and perfection. oh, this this the best story ever, ohhh, ohhhhhhh. gahd. the unwashed masses, the elitist bitch inside me seethes. shut the hell up, where's my aged champagne and crackers? do i really write for the graduate english students? YES, dammit, to hell with my populist pretentions-- for 5 minutes, and then they're back.

back when i had a sense of perspective, i could vaguely respect myself because i saw the line between Us and Them. they're the talented ones-- keats, cummings, dickinson, barth, balzac, and my own heroes-- gaiman, beagle, sturgeon, even ellison. the masters. -they- are the ones that i couldn't see through, whose prose is so polished and gleaming i could hear the squeak when i run my fingers against it. we, we are just the amateurs-- what do we know? so much less than is comfortable, no matter what we think. and i don't mean just the "fanfiction" aspect-- i mean-- in this little tidepool, in this little basin, it seems like the water reaches barely to one's knees, but Out There-- out there 99% of us would drown, drown, drown. where's the goddamn perfection in that?

there's not that much difference-- everyone starts out from the same place. no one's born A Writer or A Hack. it's all in the luck and the discipline, raw talent probably coming in third. but still.
    it's not pretention, really, because i never really thought of myself as a Writer, never thought i could -really- measure up even though i always assumed it was the only thing i could really -do-, in the end. if not that, then nothing. that's how my life is. if not what i love, then there's nothing, absolutely nothing.

i won't go on to become an accountant, a lawyer, a dentist, a biologist, a nurse, a programmer. i won't have some stupid job where i sit from 9 to 5 because i'm pretty much physically incapable of it, it would rot my brain and i'd forget to get out of the way of some car. i used to think i'd be a scientist, but i'm too wild, my mind shies away from enforced rigor like a colt on steroids.
    so i'm a writer, but it's not a badge of pride or anything. i write for other writers. i don't want praise, and yet i want it, i do, adulation isn't a bad thing. and yet it would rot me from the inside out, taunt me with complacency and entice me with the vision of myself stripped of the blemishes of reality.

i hate the inequality for good reasons and bad reasons. in a way, i want us all to be on the same level because we -are-, the ones who're serious anyway. maybe we're slightly ahead or slightly behind, but i know i could name some writers in the hp fandom and if they knew anything about each other, they'd recognize that basic kinship-- we're not ficcers, we're writers. and if one wrote something worthwhile, it'd be a pleasure, but of a different kind than the others experience when a popular fic gets updated. we can recognize the strings being pulled, feel the currents underneath, half-see the process, and that's part of the appreciation. i wish this -was- a writer's community, a circle, with no competition and only growth, but that's not it, because there's an -audience-, that's the attraction and the worm in the apple at the same time.

in a writer's circle, we -are- the audience, and that's a comfortable thing-- one's ego gets massaged but not too much one way or the other. there's some sort of balance still remaining, so that jealousy and competition are kept to a minimum and there's a sense of comraderie, hopefully.
    but in a -fandom-, there's always the -audience-, merely there to adore us. there are -fans-, -our- fans just as -we- are fans. i can understand, i myself am rather fannish, though not so much anymore, except with maya, silvia and amalin, who floor me so much i'm left gasping and it's just such a pleasure to read them i -cannot- restrain myself.

anyway, it's the audience that provides the inequality, but that's more real, now isn't it. in the real world, there's always an audience too, and we are part of it ourselves. in the real world, writer's equality only exists if there's a rough equivalency of audience, and this is sort of what happens in fandom-- big name writers associate with other big name writers, an association not of ability or dedication but of audience. and it's a new sort of writer's circle-- since there's a vague equivalency there, possible jealousy gets canceled out and you're left with the natural congregation of writers, communal creatures that we are, all hermitic myths to the contrary. and so, a new sort of Us and Them gets put into effect. the amateurs among the amateurs, the pyramid effect that one can never escape. the haves and the have-nots.

i guess it's just really hard to reconcile sometimes, this much yearned for commune of like-minded spirits of mine, and the competitive spirit involved in touting someone as so brilliant as to be godlike, far above us mere hack writers. but then, usually it's not -writers- giving this review, it's -readers-. and i realize i don't rec, review, or usually even react to stories as purely a reader. of course, -somewhat- as a reader, and i think there lies the secret to my speechlessness over DV or UL or any story i see as an old-fashioned -story-, i read at least partly for the (gasp!) plot, sometimes. i process it as a -reader-, and thus i have little so say. as soon as i speak however, i -think-, i can't help but -think-. and it's not -thinking- to call something perfect and amazing and brilliant, more brilliant than -anything-, just, the best ever.
    not-thinking, then, is quite easily an insult. i do it myself-- i swoon and faint and laugh and cry over stories-- but those are private, silent things. there's something embarrassing, almost shameless about pretending those are reviews, real -responses- to literature. and there i am, being awfully pretentious, but let's face it, i suppose i am.

and again, i realize a part of this is stupid pettiness that isn't really even -like- me and disgruntlement and a bewilderment at the idea of an audience, which i've never really been able to conceive of -having-, even though i -do- kind of. i have really -no clue- why i do, or why i don't have -more- of one, or why people actually -read-, since so many responses are "well, i don't quite get it, really", which isn't their fault, it's mine.
    i think i'll shut up and try writing now, even though i'm sleepy and so rambly as to be over-the-top even for me. but i guess i wanted to get some of this stuff of my chest. so yeah.