The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Glenn Hauman:

John, Teresa works for Van Holzbrinck. The Krauts can her.

You've never seen her basement, have you?

I also note that many writers have a natural writing length. Some people write brilliantly at 750 words and turgidly at 7500, others can't say anything at 7500 and require 75,000.

Other writers have a natural pace. Some require 50 words an idea, some 500, some 5000. Writers violate these at their peril-- "but when I do it, it'll work."

"Perhaps I should give up writing altogether..."

I am reminded of Aaron Sorkin saying "I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy, I'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like." And this is a guy whose TV show won the Best Drama Emmy four years running, every year it's been nominated. So it ain't just you, bubby.

P&T: if you want the remaining Buffy eps, I'm pretty sure you can lay hands on tapes. Somebody on the list must have them...

"The only executive that Heinlein gives us as an unalloyed positive figure is Johann Smith. Bonforte would be, as would Thorby, but we don't ever see them in that role."

Nope. I missed this one too until after I'd finished the Heinlein Women panel at Philcon two weeks back, but the unnamed president in "Over The Rainbow" is wonderful. Except for some reason, nowadays I see her in my mind as Oprah Winfrey.

Let's just see Mike Ford make a song about this query.

On the other, we have some very talented writers who choose to write fanfic that can92t be published. Why would someone with taste and talent97and many fanfic writers have both97choose to plant their roses in someone else92s garden?

Because there are times when one can't let the story go.

Peter David refers to this as "Useless Stories", ideas that come up because ideas happen to writers even when they don't want them to (quoting "City of Angels").

For all writers (well, almost all) there are stories which literally write themselves-- that spring full-blown into one's mind with a kind of "Eureka" finality, there-it-is, game-set-and-match.

But the simple act of writing a story down isn't sufficient, because the purpose of writing is communication. Putting the story down is only one half of a writer's job-- the rest is to get it out to an audience, to share the ideas.

So you have to find a marketplace or a means by which to get the story to readers. In my case, I have a number of directions I can explore-- comics, novels, short stories, screenplays-- all of these are avenues I can pursue, with varying degrees of success, in getting stories told. And every so often, I come up with a Useless Story. This is a story which, by its very nature, cannot possibly appear in any of the media stated above. It doesn't mean it's a bad story. It's just that no one could possibly buy it. But if it's a story that I like enough, it sits in my head and shouts at me, and I can't shut it up until I tell it to someone.

This is a big problem for anybody who writes tie-in work and who comes up with stories that are bounced by the powers that be-- Teresa has praised my take on the Marvel Universe before. A non-negligible percentage of fan fiction is written by pros under other names.

There is a considerable amount of "Fools! Look at me! I'll show you how to fix your puny universe! Ah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!" in these works, precisely because the editor took it in a different direction. And there's a large hunk of trying to unjump-the-shark as well, sometimes requiring you to bring in other characters from other places to fix the problem-- Dr. Sam Beckett gets a lot of work doing this, as seen here:

Al was busily tapping into the computer back at the Quantum Leap project. He studied the readout on the hand unit. "According to Ziggy," he said briskly, "there was a series of slayings in Manhattan in the late '80s-- you're in 1989, by the way-- that involved various underworld types being ripped to shreds by something like a wild beast."

"Wild beast," murmured Sam. He stared at his claws in the mirror.

"Newspapers drew a link between those killings to a woman in the D.A.'s office named Catherine Chandler. The problem is, she was eventually found dead, as well."

Sam felt his gorge rising. "Ripped apart?"

"Poisoned," said Al. "Found in her apartment, poisoned. According to Ziggy, that's apparently why you're here. There's a 97% probability," Al looked up, "that you're supposed to save Catherine Chandler."

Me, I'm waiting for the day when Christopher Walken takes a shot at President Bartlett...

Teresa, my dear;
Technorati shows some links
but not every one.

And yes, the song. Note the canonical number of na-nas.

You na-na in iambic pentameter? Figures.

The gallant blogger includes a link to http://www.nancybuttons.com/

We'll chalk it up to more misfiring neuorns.

Comment statistics for Glenn Hauman on the Making Light blog

Total: 23 comments. View all these comments on a single page.