Akamatsuverse Post-Fanfic Blues
- Thread starter Terdwilicker
- Start date
If you want to take over that fic, then you have my blessing.
I have too many other ideas to work on right now and I'm sure that people are demanding more for what ever fic of mine they like best, whether it be Seed of Tomorrow, Alcohol, MRFD, ENA, Shota Sundae or what ever.
Having completed two stories, I understand exactly how you feel. I recommend taking a few days or even a fortnight off from writing.
Of course, if ideas come to you, write them down for you to look over when you feel suitably recharged.
I have too many other ideas to work on right now and I'm sure that people are demanding more for what ever fic of mine they like best, whether it be Seed of Tomorrow, Alcohol, MRFD, ENA, Shota Sundae or what ever.
Having completed two stories, I understand exactly how you feel. I recommend taking a few days or even a fortnight off from writing.
Of course, if ideas come to you, write them down for you to look over when you feel suitably recharged.
Hm, well...
*sheepish laugh*
It's been about three years and a week since I last finished a fic, so I can hardly remember the feelings involved anymore.
I do seem to recall a certain sense of acomplishment, however.
I also remember on occation feeling the urge to rewrite the entire thing. Heck, "First Flight" which was the first thing I ever put online, I started revising before I even posted it. Some of them, I've been pretty satisfied with the way they were, but on occation I've looked back on them after posting and felt an urge to revise the shit outta them.
Also, after finishing a fic, or sometimes even after merely finishing a chapter of a fic, I also tend to get a burst of new insane ideas for fics.
Exhaustion, or something like exhaustion, usually doesn't come until the next day for me. Right after finishing, I feel nearly bursting with energy and create a bunch of new files for all the weird ideas I get. But the day after, it's usually like creativity has just decided to head south for a bit of vaccation and it's tough as hell to get anything at all written for days, sometimes even weeks, afterwards.
*sheepish laugh*
It's been about three years and a week since I last finished a fic, so I can hardly remember the feelings involved anymore.
I do seem to recall a certain sense of acomplishment, however.
I also remember on occation feeling the urge to rewrite the entire thing. Heck, "First Flight" which was the first thing I ever put online, I started revising before I even posted it. Some of them, I've been pretty satisfied with the way they were, but on occation I've looked back on them after posting and felt an urge to revise the shit outta them.
Also, after finishing a fic, or sometimes even after merely finishing a chapter of a fic, I also tend to get a burst of new insane ideas for fics.
Exhaustion, or something like exhaustion, usually doesn't come until the next day for me. Right after finishing, I feel nearly bursting with energy and create a bunch of new files for all the weird ideas I get. But the day after, it's usually like creativity has just decided to head south for a bit of vaccation and it's tough as hell to get anything at all written for days, sometimes even weeks, afterwards.
Well, I have the first 3 pages of my sequel up. Its called Fallout. More is being written too. It just flows out nicely.
Of course, this isn't my serious work. This is play. My serious stuff I'm still mulling but I'm getting closer to figuring out the right structure for the story and the characters. Its kinda dark, a scifi which has never been done before, Living Future History, I suppose you could call it. Its about living in a near future environment under circumstances which plague ordinary people, which anyone could identify with. For some reason, nobody writes this. Most scifi is.. egocentric fantasy. I don't see myself weilding light sabers or marrying a flock of hot alien chicks. I do see myself struggling to pay rent, and finding satisfaction in growing enough good tomatoes to waste some on spaghetti sauce. I also see myself dealing with electric scooters, passenger steam trains, carbon fiber cargo sailing ships, and paying $15 for a chocolate bar. The future looks very interesting in a just a few years time, less than 10. I wanted to immerse the reader in this world where energy is expensive enough to change how people treat it at every level of western culture. It has always been so plentiful and cheap that we take it for granted, but that is coming to an end.
Of course, this isn't my serious work. This is play. My serious stuff I'm still mulling but I'm getting closer to figuring out the right structure for the story and the characters. Its kinda dark, a scifi which has never been done before, Living Future History, I suppose you could call it. Its about living in a near future environment under circumstances which plague ordinary people, which anyone could identify with. For some reason, nobody writes this. Most scifi is.. egocentric fantasy. I don't see myself weilding light sabers or marrying a flock of hot alien chicks. I do see myself struggling to pay rent, and finding satisfaction in growing enough good tomatoes to waste some on spaghetti sauce. I also see myself dealing with electric scooters, passenger steam trains, carbon fiber cargo sailing ships, and paying $15 for a chocolate bar. The future looks very interesting in a just a few years time, less than 10. I wanted to immerse the reader in this world where energy is expensive enough to change how people treat it at every level of western culture. It has always been so plentiful and cheap that we take it for granted, but that is coming to an end.
Well, either come to an end, or reluctance against nuclear power will suddenly lessen rather dramatically and alakazam, we're suddenly seeing new nuclear power plants popping up here'n there.
The majority of the population here in Sweden have been rather anti-nuclear, but as electricity prices go up, resistance is dying out.
And we still have comparatively cheap electricity here! 1 kWh probably costs around $0.12-$0.14 now. Unless something has changed dramatically since I went on my vaccation and stopped caring about the energy business. Granted, it's nearly ten times as much as it cost ten years ago, but it's still cheap compared to much of the rest of the continent.
But with nuclear power plants shutting down due to political decisions taken twenty years ago when nuclear resistance was still solid, this will change. Seeing as how the people in charge are also gunning for a joint european energy market, we'll soon have european prices instead of merely a nordic one like we have now, I imagine we'll wind up somewhere around $0.25-$0.30. For a country that depends so much on electricity to make our homes habitable as we do here in Sweden, that'll make life quite hard for a whole lot of people.
What happens at that point, will be rather interesting. Either we'll see energy-saving efforts of a never before seen scale or Sweden will soon be sporting some newly built nuclear power plants and/or some old ones re-opened.
Our dependence on oil will also cause some rather interesting changes in the near future, what we see today is nothing compared to how things will be in five years. Or ten years. Comming or already present tax reductions for green cars and rising gasoline prices will almost certainly force changes in how we use cars and what sort of cars we'll be driving, which will also force a marked change in our mass transit infrastructure. I think buying all those stocks in bus lines and railroad lines will turn out to be a rather good decision in ten years, even if they're worth less today then when I bought them.
Oil prices going up will also affect other things, oil-based heating is already now going out of style and I can only see our lessened dependence on this increasing. Which results in having to replace this with something else.
Commercial traffic and freight will also be severely affected by this. All those cargo freighters going across oceans will have to fork out a whole lot more to cross those oceans, which will raise the prices of whatever they're freighting or necessitate an engine that doesn't run on oil-based fuel. Today we have nuclear submarines, in ten years, the fruit we eat, the coffee we drink and the cocoa beans for the chocolate we snack on may come to us via nuclear-powered freight ships.
Air travel is also an issue, of course. If engines cannot be made to be more fuel-efficient or an alternative power source can be found, prices for flying somewhere will go through the roof.
So, yeah. There's no need to go a hundred or two hundred years into the future. The next 10-20 years will be interesting enough on their own...
The majority of the population here in Sweden have been rather anti-nuclear, but as electricity prices go up, resistance is dying out.
And we still have comparatively cheap electricity here! 1 kWh probably costs around $0.12-$0.14 now. Unless something has changed dramatically since I went on my vaccation and stopped caring about the energy business.
Granted, it's nearly ten times as much as it cost ten years ago, but it's still cheap compared to much of the rest of the continent.But with nuclear power plants shutting down due to political decisions taken twenty years ago when nuclear resistance was still solid, this will change. Seeing as how the people in charge are also gunning for a joint european energy market, we'll soon have european prices instead of merely a nordic one like we have now, I imagine we'll wind up somewhere around $0.25-$0.30. For a country that depends so much on electricity to make our homes habitable as we do here in Sweden, that'll make life quite hard for a whole lot of people.
What happens at that point, will be rather interesting. Either we'll see energy-saving efforts of a never before seen scale or Sweden will soon be sporting some newly built nuclear power plants and/or some old ones re-opened.
Our dependence on oil will also cause some rather interesting changes in the near future, what we see today is nothing compared to how things will be in five years. Or ten years. Comming or already present tax reductions for green cars and rising gasoline prices will almost certainly force changes in how we use cars and what sort of cars we'll be driving, which will also force a marked change in our mass transit infrastructure. I think buying all those stocks in bus lines and railroad lines will turn out to be a rather good decision in ten years, even if they're worth less today then when I bought them.
Oil prices going up will also affect other things, oil-based heating is already now going out of style and I can only see our lessened dependence on this increasing. Which results in having to replace this with something else.
Commercial traffic and freight will also be severely affected by this. All those cargo freighters going across oceans will have to fork out a whole lot more to cross those oceans, which will raise the prices of whatever they're freighting or necessitate an engine that doesn't run on oil-based fuel. Today we have nuclear submarines, in ten years, the fruit we eat, the coffee we drink and the cocoa beans for the chocolate we snack on may come to us via nuclear-powered freight ships.
Air travel is also an issue, of course. If engines cannot be made to be more fuel-efficient or an alternative power source can be found, prices for flying somewhere will go through the roof.
So, yeah. There's no need to go a hundred or two hundred years into the future. The next 10-20 years will be interesting enough on their own...
Yah, hawk's got that right, oh and Terdwilicker, ever heard of a book called 'A Scanner Darkly' by Philip K. Dick or its movie adaptation that recently came out in theatres that was directed by Richard Linklater? That's the exact sort of realistic scifi thing that you're talking about. If you like that sort of thing I'd suggest checking it out.
Also, on the original topic, believe it or not I have finished a few fics (even if they've never seen the light of day because I do not believe them fit for public consumption) and generally afterwards I usually feel somewhat drained and mostly dissapointed, the dissapointment stemming half form the fact that it's over and half from the fact that it isn't as good as I wanted it to be or the story that I wanted it to be period. This is not an effect that happens with 'some' of my stories or 'most' of my stories, this happens with 'all' of my stories, regardless of what I have written I will be dissapointed with it after it's completion, talk about a vicious cylce.
Also, on the original topic, believe it or not I have finished a few fics (even if they've never seen the light of day because I do not believe them fit for public consumption) and generally afterwards I usually feel somewhat drained and mostly dissapointed, the dissapointment stemming half form the fact that it's over and half from the fact that it isn't as good as I wanted it to be or the story that I wanted it to be period. This is not an effect that happens with 'some' of my stories or 'most' of my stories, this happens with 'all' of my stories, regardless of what I have written I will be dissapointed with it after it's completion, talk about a vicious cylce.
I read Scanner Darkly a dozen years ago. I wouldn't say it was entirely near future scifi, but it was less fantasy than his usual work, though his paranoia wouldn't allow his hero to be less than the center of the universe, a factor I generally dislike in my own work. Otherwise, I liked it for its honesty, as PK Dick admitted that his drug abuse had killed him. He refuted his life in that book, even as the cancer ate away at his guts and his other famous book was being made into a movie an hour away in San Francisco, a little picture called "Blade Runner" though the original story was pretty different, called "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" the first of his books I read.
PK Dick was a very prolific author, with a couple dozen titles to his name. The thing is, they all follow a certain pattern of paranoia and if you read more than seven of his works without being able to predict him, you're not paying attention. Since he died, quite a few of his stories and novels have become movies. The best one was Minority Report, which really captured the serious essence of his work without demeaning it with vulgar displays as his most prolific director tended towards. At the time PK Dick died, he was practically a neighbor, living in rehab a couple valleys east of me. His friends in Scifi threw a con for him in my hometown, which I couldn't afford to attend and had no transportation to reach, so I never met him myself. I also missed the last chance to meet Robert Heinlein at that con but I managed to run into Frank Herbert at a coffee shop a dozen miles north one Sunday morning. My home was crawling with authors, even though most of them called LA their home. That's one of my minor superpowers. I run into famous people in weird places. Sharon Stone likes alpine lakes. Don't ask how I know. I think they like being treated in an ordinary way, and prefer not to be recognized if they have any self esteem.
The kind of fiction I'm aiming for isn't a paranoid place like PK Dick wrote about. Its more like a broken utopia, or a paused dystopia, like a combination of 1910 and your favorite internet fantasy. Laptops and windmill driven well pumps. Electric cars and bicycles. Canning bees, victory gardens, trading preserves across the fenceline, Works Projects Agency, biodiesel racecar exhibition, Worlds Fair, pocket watches, steam electric hybrid trains, carbon fiber horse buggies... sort of like Steampunk, but less dirty, more solar and laptops, less revolvers and dirty coal soot. We're moving into a very strange time, unlike any time in our history as a species. Previously, we suffered civilization collapse due to loss of food or other crucial resource. This time we still have enough food, but we're facing collapse over energy because we can't maintain unlimited growth, the constant on which the world economy is based. Once the economy went global, collapse became that much more dangerous because it will take out the whole world, not just a few countries. As a Peak Oil guru, I'm working to figure out a worldview where the public can adjust to a lifestyle where lower energy seems acceptable socially and possibly a romantic improvement over the old days of unlimited energy and unlimited consumption. The best way I can do that is by writing fiction, and since my strongest gift is in realist settings, that's what I'm working towards. I just hope I can get some of it written soon and get people reading it. So far, Mediaminer is working well. I've gotten 300x the exposure my prior website got in only 4 days of operation. I'm pleased. If I can bring more attention to myself, I can write and publish my Peak Oil stories and get people thinking about it for their own lives rather than some absurd survivalist fantasy.
PK Dick was a very prolific author, with a couple dozen titles to his name. The thing is, they all follow a certain pattern of paranoia and if you read more than seven of his works without being able to predict him, you're not paying attention. Since he died, quite a few of his stories and novels have become movies. The best one was Minority Report, which really captured the serious essence of his work without demeaning it with vulgar displays as his most prolific director tended towards. At the time PK Dick died, he was practically a neighbor, living in rehab a couple valleys east of me. His friends in Scifi threw a con for him in my hometown, which I couldn't afford to attend and had no transportation to reach, so I never met him myself. I also missed the last chance to meet Robert Heinlein at that con but I managed to run into Frank Herbert at a coffee shop a dozen miles north one Sunday morning. My home was crawling with authors, even though most of them called LA their home. That's one of my minor superpowers. I run into famous people in weird places. Sharon Stone likes alpine lakes. Don't ask how I know. I think they like being treated in an ordinary way, and prefer not to be recognized if they have any self esteem.
The kind of fiction I'm aiming for isn't a paranoid place like PK Dick wrote about. Its more like a broken utopia, or a paused dystopia, like a combination of 1910 and your favorite internet fantasy. Laptops and windmill driven well pumps. Electric cars and bicycles. Canning bees, victory gardens, trading preserves across the fenceline, Works Projects Agency, biodiesel racecar exhibition, Worlds Fair, pocket watches, steam electric hybrid trains, carbon fiber horse buggies... sort of like Steampunk, but less dirty, more solar and laptops, less revolvers and dirty coal soot. We're moving into a very strange time, unlike any time in our history as a species. Previously, we suffered civilization collapse due to loss of food or other crucial resource. This time we still have enough food, but we're facing collapse over energy because we can't maintain unlimited growth, the constant on which the world economy is based. Once the economy went global, collapse became that much more dangerous because it will take out the whole world, not just a few countries. As a Peak Oil guru, I'm working to figure out a worldview where the public can adjust to a lifestyle where lower energy seems acceptable socially and possibly a romantic improvement over the old days of unlimited energy and unlimited consumption. The best way I can do that is by writing fiction, and since my strongest gift is in realist settings, that's what I'm working towards. I just hope I can get some of it written soon and get people reading it. So far, Mediaminer is working well. I've gotten 300x the exposure my prior website got in only 4 days of operation. I'm pleased. If I can bring more attention to myself, I can write and publish my Peak Oil stories and get people thinking about it for their own lives rather than some absurd survivalist fantasy.
Ahh, see, and there's the difference between the two of us, in most things that I read and assuredly everything that I write, the main character will be 'the center of the universe' as far as the story goes, while I do occasionally enjoy movies such as 'Magnolia' or things like that with multiple main characters and no specific lead I always prefer the former type in my own work, read into my character all you want but when I write something I write it to tell the story of one person and their experiences, this is why I prefer to write in the first person as well, even though it's annoying as hell at times, I prefer first person because when I write something I want to really get into my characters head and to do this affectively everything else in their world must be seen as they would see it through their eyes, thus making it near impossible for me to do a third person omniscient type of thing and get any personality in the whatsoever. Not to mention, inner monologue is one of my favorite tools and I love using it, in my opinion a book needs only one character essentially, and sometimes not even that, you can have more, but I'm saying that the base requirement in number of characters isn't two or more; one character can carry an entire story by himself. I'm actually writing something with this ideology in mind currently in which throughout the whole story we never see or hear another human being aside from the main character; it's been a very interesting writing experiment so far.
Anyway, I digress, getting back to PKD, I heavily enjoy that paranoid atmosphere that his books provide and that's one of the major reasons that I enjoy and continue to read them. This style of writing is one of my favorite types which is why I enjoy other writers who write along the same lines (not necessarily in setting but in the feel of the story or the flow of it) such as William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, or Jack Kerouac.
As for why you write, I think that is a good cause and am glad that someoneÆs striving to inform people of the coming problems our planet will face, but frankly, I'm mostly glad there are people like you to write these things because I never could. I write solely for myself and as en expression of myself, nothing in my writing is done for anyone besides myself, and everything I write is written to express a certain emotion or ideology, such as rage, jealousy, exhaustion, thirst for knowledge, depression, will power, a hunger for strength, and...Well mostly rage and variants thereof, it seems to be my favorite topic, that and jealousy and revenge, which I consider to be correlated to rage. So yah, I doubt I would ever be able to write something that would be even slightly informative to the populace of the world besides telling them of my own psychosis.
Anyway, I digress, getting back to PKD, I heavily enjoy that paranoid atmosphere that his books provide and that's one of the major reasons that I enjoy and continue to read them. This style of writing is one of my favorite types which is why I enjoy other writers who write along the same lines (not necessarily in setting but in the feel of the story or the flow of it) such as William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, or Jack Kerouac.
As for why you write, I think that is a good cause and am glad that someoneÆs striving to inform people of the coming problems our planet will face, but frankly, I'm mostly glad there are people like you to write these things because I never could. I write solely for myself and as en expression of myself, nothing in my writing is done for anyone besides myself, and everything I write is written to express a certain emotion or ideology, such as rage, jealousy, exhaustion, thirst for knowledge, depression, will power, a hunger for strength, and...Well mostly rage and variants thereof, it seems to be my favorite topic, that and jealousy and revenge, which I consider to be correlated to rage. So yah, I doubt I would ever be able to write something that would be even slightly informative to the populace of the world besides telling them of my own psychosis.
Don't let me mislead you: I enjoy writing. I just have enough talent to pull off bigger pictures in the background of my story. My big struggle has been writing good characters, and I've finally gotten that down, at least copying characters from Love Hina, anyway. It remains to be seen if I can pull that off with my own characters, and give them enough fullness and detail so people would want to know them as real people rather than cardboard cutouts.
Oh! I've finished a story again! Just a short one-shot for Toby's ELC3 contest, but still...
*does the happy dance*
...
*stops as realization strikes that the happy dance looks extremly silly*
Hrm, well.
Feels rather good, I must admit. Though that sense that I want to revise the shit outta it is certainly still present. Don't feel as many odd ideas creeping up upon me as I recall there being, however. Instead I feel a great urge to write a sequel to it.
Which is tempting, never really liked oneshots m'self. I prefer something a bit more meaty.
Then again, I do have that old half-finished entry for Toby's last lemon contest. I could use some of this naughty writing urges I feel at the moment to take that sucker on.
Well, that or getting some *way* overdue lunch and head on out for todays bout of jogging.
Considering that all I've got at home to make that lunch with, is fries and chicken, which I'll probably just toss straight into the fryer because I only just now realized just how fucking hungry I am, I think it'll be eating and jogging, writing later.
*does the happy dance*
...
*stops as realization strikes that the happy dance looks extremly silly*
Hrm, well.
Feels rather good, I must admit. Though that sense that I want to revise the shit outta it is certainly still present. Don't feel as many odd ideas creeping up upon me as I recall there being, however. Instead I feel a great urge to write a sequel to it.
Which is tempting, never really liked oneshots m'self. I prefer something a bit more meaty.
Then again, I do have that old half-finished entry for Toby's last lemon contest. I could use some of this naughty writing urges I feel at the moment to take that sucker on.
Well, that or getting some *way* overdue lunch and head on out for todays bout of jogging.
Considering that all I've got at home to make that lunch with, is fries and chicken, which I'll probably just toss straight into the fryer because I only just now realized just how fucking hungry I am, I think it'll be eating and jogging, writing later.