Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Will You Remember Me?


18 Jul

From the Imagination Prompt Generator:

What do you want to be remembered for?

My stories first, my artwork second, my photographs third. I want to be thought well of NOW before I toddle off Beyond the Veil since it would be a bummer if the only good thoughts came at my funeral. That is, if anyone shows up.

I have told people before that I am a Storyteller. I don’t think that most people realize that a storyteller isn’t someone working to get published. By definition, certainly I am author, so I won’t discount that.

au·thor
? ?/????r/ Show Spelled[aw-ther]
–noun
1. a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.; the composer of a literary work, as distinguished from a compiler, translator, editor, or copyist.

However, a Storyteller is someone who does more than just write a story and hopes that others will read it, or buy it, etc. A Storyteller has an audience and tells them a story. I write fanfiction because I know there is an audience out there that not only wants to read it, but they want someone to tell them a story.

When I was a kid, I love Winnie the Pooh and Mowgli and his friends. My mother would read the stories to me because she was a Storyteller.

It’s a bit different being online and telling a story, and for awhile I felt a bit lost, and certainly frustrated. When I got over the fact that I couldn’t “see” the people I was telling a story to, I fell back into myself, into my comfort zone.

So, I hope there’s a corner of the internet that will remember me as a good Storyteller.

I hope, too, that I get remembered for my artwork. I know there are people in the past that remember some of the “on paper” art I used to do. I doubt they know my name, but my artwork is out there and there are those that remember it. My art affected them.

I haven’t picked up a pen in ages and taken it to paper, but I do still let my imagination go digital in this digital age. It isn’t the same, but I certainly wouldn’t be doing my digital abstracts if I didn’t feel I was putting my emotions into them and they were touching people viscerally.

I hope that enough of my artwork is now out there, that people will find it and think it’s something to talk about. If they don’t know who I am, my name, that’s all right.

And, ditto for my photos. I hope that I leave a lot of photos for people to appreciate. Mostly dogs, cats, gardens, trees, and flowers. Very few people. I hope that what I have gives everyone a bit of peace.

I Said I Wasn’t Going to Say Anymore


09 Jul

…on fanfiction, but I lied.

I write fanfiction. I was pretty vocal about how stupid and amateurish it was, for awhile. And then, I began reading it. I also began to read about the history of fanfiction and became quite educated upon the scores of works that had been published by notable authors.

An excerpt from a really fascinating article titled I’m Done Explaining Why Fanfiction is Okay:

You think fanfic is a personal affront to the many hours you’ve spent carefully crafting your characters. You think fanfic is “immoral and illegal.” You think fanfic is just plagiarism. You think fanfic is illegal. You think fanfic is cheating. You think fanfic is for people who are too stupid/lazy/unimaginative to write stories of their own. You think there are exceptions for people who write published derivative works as part of a brand or franchise, because they’re clearly only doing it because they have to. You’re personally traumatized by the idea that someone else could look at your characters and decide that you did it wrong and they need to fix it/add original characters to your universe/send your characters to the moon/Japan/their hometown. You think all fanfic is basically porn. You’re revolted by the very idea that fanfic writers think what they do is legitimate.

We get it.

Congratulations! You’ve just summarily dismissed as criminal, immoral, and unimaginative each of the following Pulitzer Prize-winning works:

* Jane Smiley’s novel A Thousand Acres, a modernized AU (Alternate Universe) retelling of King Lear and winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. King Lear is itself a hybrid of multiple folk and fairy tales

* Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Tony-Award-winning South Pacific, which was based on James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific and is the only musical to win the Pulitzer Prize that is based on *another* work that also won a Pulitzer.

* Geraldine Brooks’ March, a parallel retelling of Little Women and winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for literature

* Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday In the Park with George, which is half-original fic, half-RPF (real person fiction) based on the artist Georges Seurat, and winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

* Jonathan Larsen’s Rent, which is an AU fanfic of La Boheme (much like the movie Moulin Rouge, an AU hybrid crossover fanfic of La Boheme and La Traviata) and winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

* John Corigliano, 2001 Pulitzer-Prize winner for Music, who wrote the opera Ghosts of Versailles, a postmodern fantasy RPF/fanfic crossover AU about Pierre Beaumarchais and the characters from his play La Mère coupable.. Those characters were previously fanficced twice over, in two separate operatic masterpieces: Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, both based on the other 2 Figaro plays by Beaumarchais.

There are literally hundreds more like that and it doesn’t include the many movies that have been made from books, comic books, games, and Disney Rides. Did you know that even the Harry Potter movies, to a degree, are considered a fanfiction type of work because the movies are an expression, or interpretation, of what the director thought the book was.

We have Michael Gambon as Dumbledore in the later movies, not because he was the best old guy picked to portray the Headmaster after Richard Harris’ death, but because the director felt that in the later books Dumbledore was a much more powerful wizard and wasn’t like the grandfatherly one the Harris portrayed!

The Pirates of the Caribbean – based on a Disney ride that really had no story until someone thought up a story. Of course, it’s great publicity for Disney and their rides and their parks, but the movies are, essentially, fanfiction which have, of course, spawned their own fans writing their own stories.

So, I think you get that.

And I’m a fairly happy little storyteller writing my stories, publishing them on FF.net, and hearing from fans of Harry Potter how they like my stories. I’m not just getting “oooh that’s cool!” (although I have my fair share). There are people that review every chapter, that point out sections they liked, or that caused them to laugh out loud, to hold their breath, or even to cry. I think one of the best letters I received was from a college student, fresh in her first year, away from home, family, and friends, and she was really feeling terrible about being in such an unfriendly place. She was reading the epilogue to my story, Back In Time, in which Snape speaks to his eldest daughter who is afraid about leaving the only home she’s ever known to go to Hogwarts.

The college gal read this, and the advice that Snape gave to his daughter, and wrote to me:

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for writing about Eowyn’s fear of going off to Hogwarts. I’m a Freshman at a huge college in a city several thousand miles from home where I know only my 3 roommates and a girl at another college. Your description of Eowyn sounds just like me: quiet, a bookworm, afraid of seeming ‘uninteresting’ to people, everything. I’ve been called ‘weird’ and ‘too quiet’ by many people.

Snape’s words of comfort to Eowyn really struck something inside me. When I read his dialogue with his daughter, I felt like someone had heard how I felt, how afraid of being friendless, how intimidated I was by the vast amount of new people I had to meet at school, and decided to comfort me; when I read “but we all must bear many things we don’t like in order to attain that which we desire” and “You are different, though, and you may not appreciate that this moment, but you will sooner than you think. All of us are different,” I cried.

Can anyone who writes tell me that if you got a letter like that you wouldn’t feel good about touching someone in such a divine way???

So, it makes me laugh, or shake my head, or kick my desk (not a wise thing to do) when some idiot comes along and tells me that I am “evil” for having turned Snape into a soppy Slytherin who “cares” about children. He’s really just an “evil, greasy git”, who “gets off” on bullying children and killing Dumbledore. “The idiot even got killed by a snake! How dumb was that?”

You’re dumb.

And so it goes.

The Littlest Explorer


04 Jul

Tissoe was two days old! And, his mother had let him go outside to explore all on his own. Not one of his many brothers and sisters to bother him, he had the entire, great wilderness that was the outdoors, all to himself.

He wasn’t too good at flying. Not at first, anyway. He bumped into something the had wonderful smelling, white blossoms that spilled pretty yellow powder all over him.

If he could giggle, he would have.

His wings all a-buzz again, he careened slightly downwards, caught an updraft that carried him over a wonderful patch of grass blades that tried to stab him, and maybe, well, just possibly, he did laugh as he caught a wonderful updraft that carried him away from the blades of green. He buzzed past a blur of yellow and black stripes hearing a rumbly tumble of words cautioning him to be a careful youngster.

Tissoe tried laughing again. The breeze helped and up he went and breathlessly landed on the flat perch of a yarrow pad. He wiggled his proboscis in irritation and felt a different sort of laugh, this one kind of itchy and involuntary slip through his proboscis and widening the many facets of his eyes. He felt dizzy.

And another one was coming.

Blaming the yarrow, he dropped off the wide pad and down to some colourful, and relaxing sweet william.

Oh! These were lovely! This time when he giggled, it was at his own behest.

Tissoe walked all over the sweet william allowing his sticky little feet to remember it. He wanted to come back before he was old (in about 24 days) and experience it again. There were more flowers, and leaves, and rose bushes, and even strawberries to check out.

Tissoe took off again catching little updrafts and alighting here and there. He kept bumping into the big bumble bees, and although they were gruff, they pretty much ignored him. He explored the rose bush, his tiny little body unconcerned by the thorns which were much bigger than him.

On a red carnation he delighted in finding little drops of cool water that were perfect for just helping to keep him cool. Finally, he landed on a long, green leaf where he walked, flexed his little wings, and decided to spend the rest of the day.

Don’t you just think this little fly is cute, now? I hope you enjoyed my little whimsy.

I Have Been Here Before

I am seeking a question.