alanajoli | Audience

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Audience

One of the things I love about blogging is that it's writing tailored for a particular audience. That audience may grow and shift, but it's easy enough to touch base with who it is that's reading what you have to say. It's instant gratification writing.

One of the things I struggle with in writing my fiction is that, with a few exceptions, I'm the only one reading it. (Volunteer readers have busy lives; I've been in the volunteer reader position myself, and I acknowledge that I'm actually quite bad at responding in a timely fashion. Or at all.) While I certainly write to tell stories that I'm interested in, I don't write just for myself. I'm miserable at keeping a serious journal.

I'm interested in hearing how other people get over that hump--particularly any NaNo-ers who are on this list. How do you balance the writing process with the desire for an audience? I know some people like to play close to their chests when they're writing, not showing anyone any part of it until it's finished. If that's you--what benefit does that particular style of writing offer?

I've finally started "Good Company" (the vampire story) today, in snippets, and I'm considering sending it to people who are already familiar with the character via e-mail, as I write, to see if the idea of the serial actually works for my writing process. (

banana_pants and

niliphim, this means you, so if you think it's a horrible idea, please, by all means, stop me.) I'll let you know if I decide to do so (and if it works!).

For those of you keeping track, I haven't finished "Rodeo." I'm only a scene or two from the end. Somehow my momentum on that one took a nose dive--but I'm hoping to get back to it next week.

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I'm always desperate for an audience! But I'm also afraid of jinxing things. With stories, if I'm going to send them out and try to get them published, I mainly *don't* share them. Sometimes I send them to a few people--and when I do, I get helpful feedback (so maybe I should do it more often...)

I satisfy the urge for public storytelling by putting up tiny, unrelated things on LJ. That's **very** gratifying.

I did NaNo one year, and was lucky enough to have three or four people who read the resulting novel and offered feedback and constructive criticism. I need to revise the end of that novel and haven't gotten around to it. I wrote another novel that I only showed a couple of people; that one is out looking for an agent right now.

I love it when my LJ friends post snippets of stuff. Sometimes I miss things (if I'm away from LJ for a while and so someone posts but newer things have knocked it off my friends page), but if I see snippets, I tend to read them, and if I'm not super pressed for time, I like to comment. I **love** LJ for supplying me with interesting reading material!

"I'm always desperate for an audience! But I'm also afraid of jinxing things."

I completely empathize! It's such a hard thing to balance, getting the audience vs. putting together a story that's its whole self. The way you're dividing your work (for-publication vs. not-for-publication) is intriguing to me, since these days I hardly think of any of the pieces I'm writing without also thinking what market it belongs in.

I wonder if that means I've become too mercenary... ;)

I don't think you're being mercenary at all. Thinking about publication means you're thinking, realistically, about reaching out to people. I can perform a play in my backyard, but the audience will be limited to my kids, squirrels, and my uneasy neighbors. And that's what my putting up writing on LJ is like--although at least my cyber neighbors are supportive rather than uneasy.

I guess putting things on LJ represents my pessimism about my chances of success with publishing. Things may change if I start having more successes!

Hee hee, I love my cyber neighbors! :)

By the way, I am still wending my way through the Coyote Wild issue that made us not just cyber neighbors, but cyber co-workers (or something like that!), and I very much enjoyed "The Oracle"--particularly the way the narrator took matters into her own hands. (I won't comment more, even though the likelihood of someone reading a spoiler here is pretty slim--but you never know! If there's a safe discussion entry over on your blog, I'll poke over there and share more thoughts, if you're interested.) At any rate, I think you ought to be a bit more optimistic than you are. :)

Oh, that's great that you took a look at it! Thanks :-)

You can send a message via the LJ messaging system. If you go to my profile, there should be a contact link over on the right (of the new, horrible LJ profile layout...)

That'll come just to me.

That's actually a good question. I think, looking back, the first draft is very personal. It's very rough and not 'ready for prime time', so I don't show anybody.

The second or third drafts; by then I've started to lose that initial steam, I'm doing actual WORK as opposed to just blurting out this story that needs to come out of me, and at this point I usually try to show somebody just so I can get some feedback and by extension a reason to keep working.

The tough part is that Legacy of Olympus has received very little feedback, so I've been working blind. I don't know how bad a sign this is, but I've been working on it for so long that to stop now seems like a dismal failure on my part, because I know the story works. I just need to polish it off and give it the ending it deserves. But it can be disheartening to be writing to an empty room. I'm hoping to finish my NaNo quicker, do a second or third drafts but no more than that. But I also aimed for a quicker, faster-paced, less complicated story with NaNo in terms of world-building. I'm setting it in Harrisburg (my city), modern day, and making it more like a traditional Urban Fantasy. We'll see how that works.

"so I've been working blind..."

*nods* I get to a point on some pieces where I'm so close to it, I can't see the story any more. That's when I know I've got to put it away. I think it's brilliant that you're working on a NaNo piece to give yourself some space from Legacy of Olympus--maybe it'll help you come back to it fresh!

Yep, that's the plan anyway. I always come back to Legacy, for better or worse it's become part of my life. I may never finish it, but I think part of me is almost okay with it to a point. Even if I do finish it, it may never see the printed page. But it's definitely been a learning experience and it's gotten me through some tough times. I'll definitely treasure it for that alone.

But once I'm done with NaNo (tentatively titled Gypsy Fiddle), I'll go back to it, pick it up where I left off.

I think it's a great idea. What kind of feedback do you want though?

I'm not sure I even want feedback--I just want someone to "listen," as it were. I figure I talk about the main character of "Good Company" enough with you and

niliphim and

violetwhisper that adding a written component is just a natural growth of the thing. :)

I used to be a total feedback junkie -- especially with short stories, I'd get into a conversation with one of my dedicated readers about the story, send them what I had so far, and get real-time, blow by blow feedback. I had two or three volunteer readers who were really quick to reply, and they got everything.

Post-Clarion, I've been a lot more hesitant to do that. Possibly that's a result of the trauma of finishing a story and sending it out 10 minutes later, because you're at deadline for the next day, and realizing half an hour later that everyone is going to be *critiquing* you on that plot hole that you knew about but didn't have time to fix, and you're going to look like such an idiot...

My first drafts are always really messy. I'm a good enough editor that I can clean the mess up, and I need to start doing that before I shop things around.

I'll tell people about plot outlines, or characters, or worlds I'm working on developing if I need to feel like I have an audience. But I'm starting to do that less, as well.

You went to Clarion! I'm deliciously jealous. But yes, that kind of feedback sounds frightful--much more stressful than regular thesis meetings. (Those were some of my very favorite feedback sessions. I would have Jamie tell me what he thought I was saying in a story and then would take down all his notes, but not tell him what I was actually saying--because if it wasn't coming through, then I needed to fix it until it did, and telling him would defeat the whole process.)

I believe that you're in the midst of thesising right now (if I remember your year correctly)--do you think that is impacting the way you talk to people about your writing? Or is it an independent process?

I did! I had Kelly Link, Jim Kelly, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Neil Gaiman, Geoff Ryman and Nalo Hopkinson -- it was *amazing*. (And I think 5 out of my 17 classmates have already made their first pro sale, which is insane.)

I'm writing a psychology thesis, so it's a totally different process from my fiction writing. But I think it is making fiction more difficult in a lot of ways, which is probably influencing my talking/not talking to people about it. It's hard to sort out what's causing what at this point.

My jealousy continues. :) When I found out that Neil Gaiman was teaching, I was sorely tempted to apply--but think I would have been late on it, anyway. It would have been fun to be your classmate! Maybe one of these years I'll take the plunge.

I suspect any time you're working on a large writing project that takes time away from fiction, it gets harder to focus on the fiction writing. I suspect that's a lot of what happens to me with my freelance work. I haven't yet discovered a remedy to that, but I'll keep trying!

You could include me in the feedback for Good Company, if that might help; just let me know what you would want to receive as thoughts in return.

Now that I know who this ID belongs to... of course! :)

I'm mostly a close-to-the-chest writer, and I write more for myself than for any audience or feedback. Yes, even though I do this for a living. I actually get a minor panic attack just before the release of a book because it strikes me that, yikes, people are going to be reading it now.

I've found that getting real feedback while I'm writing can almost derail me from writing at all. I used to discuss my ideas with my agent, and while she gave me good feedback, they no longer felt like my ideas and I no longer had any interest in the story. Now I go off into my little cave and write something, then when I've thoroughly revised it and have it solid in my own head, I'll send it to my agent.

The night before my first novel came out, I was nearly sick to my stomach, I was so nervous. The second one released with such a whisper that I didn't have time to feel nervous, because I hardly even knew it had been published. :)

I feel the same way about talking about my work as you're saying about getting feedback. Once I've talked the idea over too much, it doesn't seem like my idea any more, and my motivation to finish the story seems to drizzle. After all, I've already told it once, haven't I? But I can't seem to work very well from my cave, either. What a conundrum! I suppose for me it will be a matter of seeking balance.

I actually never try to get feedback during the writing process - at least until the story I am working on is done. Of course, once it is complete, I have to admit to be ing a total feedback junkie. But what keeps me going in the interim is the desire to see where it leads. When I write stories, I only have a vague notion of where things are going. I don't plan it out. So, I get excited to see what will happen next. That's what meeps me going.

I keep going back and forth about that--I didn't start out as a plotter, and some of my best stuff hasn't had a concrete beginning and end when I started it. But the more I work with word counts, the more I want to have a plan going into the thing. It does seem to take some of the magic out of it, I think, so I may have to just launch into a not-for-publication-sprawling-epic and see where it takes me. (In my copious spare time, of course!) :)

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