Meta-musing
Apr. 25th, 2012 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_lucy21I figured something out in the pool today while I was working out that I think will be useful to remember for writing in the future. Last fall, I started writing snippets of a post-S2/first episodes of S3 NCIS:LA fic that became Comes The Fall. It's not a bad story. There's things about it I like. And as a writer, I think it works reasonably well (or I wouldn't have posted it on AO3). But I have to admit, that I reread my stuff. A lot. Partly for consistency sake- sometimes my stories are interrelated to some extent, and I rail against inconsistencies in canon enough that I want my stuff to hang together if it's supposed to do so. Part of it is that I have favorite lines and scenes in each story and when I'm stuck on writing something else I like to go back to them and say "hey, see? This turned out ok, so what you're banging your head at probably will too." It's self-validation.
There was always something about "Comes The Fall" that did not work for me as a reader. Something about it wasn't quite right. Now, at least 17 people have thought it was good enough to leave a Kudos on it, so clearly it worked for some people. But something was always a little bit off and today while bouncing up and down the pool, thinking about something completely unrelated, it hit me. There's a little too much self-projection in there. Because at the time of those episodes, I could identify a little too much with G's world getting flipped upside down and not knowing how bad the landing was going to be. Granted, obviously, my triggering events weren't nearly so dramatic- so far as I know, there was no Eastern European crime family out for my blood and no one I cared about got shot or murdered in front of me (thank God, and may it stay that way), and no one's been trying to hide my identity from me. But...I did have something I'd worked very hard for and wanted very, very much taken away. And I was living with a lot of uncertainty and I wound up uprooting my entire life and moving it back into my parents' house in a different city. And don't get me wrong, I'm immensely grateful to them and we do get along very well and I am extremely lucky. But even so, there's a lot of emotional and mental upheaval that came along for the ride. So, that was where *I* was when I was writing it and I think that bleeds through more than I wanted it to. As a writer, it was very comforting (I could have really used a Sam to have my back. Hell, I could *still* use a Sam). But, it wasn't quite true to G's character (I'm pretty comfortable with Sam's characterization. Man's a total mother hen and doesn't even try to hide it). And so, it doesn't work for me as reader.
I'm not going to pull the story or anything. I toyed with rewriting it, but that's not terribly appealing when I've got plenty of other things poking at my brain. There's a scene hanging out in my head that kind of goes a step beyond what I wrote, taking into consideration other things that have happened in S3 and that story might get written at some point and it might use certain things that happened in "Comes the Fall" as part of the frame, but it'll be a stand-alone thing. But mostly, it's a good lesson for remembering your characters when you're writing and one I'm sure I'll need to revisit. But, doesn't everyone, really, at some point?
There was always something about "Comes The Fall" that did not work for me as a reader. Something about it wasn't quite right. Now, at least 17 people have thought it was good enough to leave a Kudos on it, so clearly it worked for some people. But something was always a little bit off and today while bouncing up and down the pool, thinking about something completely unrelated, it hit me. There's a little too much self-projection in there. Because at the time of those episodes, I could identify a little too much with G's world getting flipped upside down and not knowing how bad the landing was going to be. Granted, obviously, my triggering events weren't nearly so dramatic- so far as I know, there was no Eastern European crime family out for my blood and no one I cared about got shot or murdered in front of me (thank God, and may it stay that way), and no one's been trying to hide my identity from me. But...I did have something I'd worked very hard for and wanted very, very much taken away. And I was living with a lot of uncertainty and I wound up uprooting my entire life and moving it back into my parents' house in a different city. And don't get me wrong, I'm immensely grateful to them and we do get along very well and I am extremely lucky. But even so, there's a lot of emotional and mental upheaval that came along for the ride. So, that was where *I* was when I was writing it and I think that bleeds through more than I wanted it to. As a writer, it was very comforting (I could have really used a Sam to have my back. Hell, I could *still* use a Sam). But, it wasn't quite true to G's character (I'm pretty comfortable with Sam's characterization. Man's a total mother hen and doesn't even try to hide it). And so, it doesn't work for me as reader.
I'm not going to pull the story or anything. I toyed with rewriting it, but that's not terribly appealing when I've got plenty of other things poking at my brain. There's a scene hanging out in my head that kind of goes a step beyond what I wrote, taking into consideration other things that have happened in S3 and that story might get written at some point and it might use certain things that happened in "Comes the Fall" as part of the frame, but it'll be a stand-alone thing. But mostly, it's a good lesson for remembering your characters when you're writing and one I'm sure I'll need to revisit. But, doesn't everyone, really, at some point?