(no subject)

[cimorene]

parents want to have movie marathon tonight and i said yes but am actually too tired. i want to go to bed right now, only i still have to have dinner. maybe i'll give writing a try for a little while, but i'd definitely fall asleep in the movie.

the other day shadowleopard said that qui/obi was the best pairing ever, which got me thinking about the whole one true pairing concept. i've had several, i'd think, only then if you've had more than one that kind of defeats it all. but i remember discussing it with caraloup earlier, and that she was writing just one pairing for years and years, and i honestly can't comprehend that. as much as i like timbertrick, for instance, i don't want to write two of it in a row. kirk/spock and qui/obi are both richer in possibilities in all kinds of ways (any sf pairing would be, but we're speaking only of the ones i particularly like, of course), but i think my affection for timbertrick may be greater. still, i get tired of it, and no matter how much i like lotrips to read i find i don't want to write more than one story in any one pairing. domlijah has lost its attraction for me, and so has dom/billy. i'll still read viggorli, but i can't even conceive of writing it again.

the fact is, i don't want to take a little corner of the possible fictional universes i could create and explore it thoroughly. i don't want to look at one pairing from every possible angle, put them in a lot of different situations--i just don't. i don't mind reading what other people have done on those lines, and cara never had any trouble holding my attention with her excellent han/luke even though the pairing seemed ludicrous to me when i first thought of it.

i wonder if it indicates something fundamental about writers? i don't dislike exploring, but i like to explore more widely. every time i do something, i want to strike out in a new direction, lately. i don't want to write the same point of view twice in a row or the same gimmick (a la tense shifts and pov shifts and timeline shifts in burn and tennessee) twice in a row or the same theme twice in a row. the themes may even be the most closely related things, if you look at what i write in chronological order. i'm not even certain if there's a connection there.

Comments

[carraway54.livejournal.com]

I find I tend to do the same thing. If I hadn't fallen into the LoTR/lotrips fandom, I would still be fandom-hopping madly. Even here, I think I'm congenitally incapable of writing more than one story per pairing. If I ever did, it would likely be more of the same, that is the two stories would at some point link up to each other, take place in the same universe (am on caffeine, please excuse incoherency). I will read anything. I will read dozens and dozens of stories for the same pairing, if they are sufficiently well-written. Reading, for me, is trying on somebody else's mind. I try on their universe, walk around, see how it works, and then I leave.

When I'm writing, I'm creating my own universe. Writing ideas, for me, are like self-fulfilling prophecies. An idea, once it's well-formed, negates all other forms of itself and becomes, in my mind, canon for its universe. I think it would be difficult for me to get rid of one world I constructed around a set of characters just to build another one around them.

Which is the long way around to saying that when you don't watch television, you end up trying to slash obscure cowboy vampire movies.

Sorry if none of this makes sense. Again, me and half a pot of coffee? Bad combination.