Last day. Steal this meme! I'd love to see my whole dwircle talking about their fanworks. <333

[kate]

Day 1. Discuss something old
Day 2. Discuss something new
Day 3. Discuss something made for someone else
Day 4. Discuss something made just for yourself
Day 5. Discuss something for a large fandom/pairing/character
Day 6. Discuss something for a small fandom/pairing/character
Day 7. Discuss something you're just really proud of

So, remember that writing meme that I didn't answer? I decided I was going to do audio answers to all the questions, because I had to drive home (I think this was from St. Louis?) and I needed something to do. There was a question, of the fic you’ve written, of which are you most proud? which I did actually manage to answer (in 15 minutes of meandering around the topic).

Click here to stream 15 minutes of me babbling about things I'm not proud of, things I am proud of, and why I'm proud of my Variations on a Theme of John Sheppard series.

Summary of the audio file, for those who don't want to listen to me babble in a kinda loud car: I'm generally relatively proud of things I do - the only things that I really am not proud of are some of the shorts I wrote for episodic_supernatural, sga_episodefic, and 15minuteficlets because they didn't have any structure or purpose. Even my shorts, like the Dean cross-dressing fic, are complete fics where I am trying to accomplish some particular objective. So anyway - that's to say, I'm proud of most of what I put out there.

I have a bunch of fics that I count as things I'm really proud of, and I'll read one of my old ones every once and a while and be really pleased with it, but one that always comes to mind when people ask me of things I'm proud of is Variations on a Theme of John Sheppard and its sequels. Basically I am proud of what I tried to accomplish and how I did it (with many, many spreadsheets). The last complete story, Passacaglia, is one of my favorite things ever - moving a story forward through multiple POVs and a variety of scenarios in their universe-hopping puddle jumper. I'm ridiculously proud of how it turned out.

Comments

[china_shop]

Yay! I've really enjoyed your meme answers (and now I have a couple of new things on my kindle, waiting for me). :-)

[kate]

Aw, thank you! I hope you like them! And I'm so glad you're doing it too - I'm going to have to check out your answers - I'm excited for the Leverage vid! :D :D :D

[mashimero]

Oooh yes, I remember reading that series before. I thought it was brilliant!

Your answer makes me wonder how many people post fanworks that they aren't proud of though? Personally, if I wasn't proud of something, and there was no deadline/obligation, then I probably wouldn't post it. Of course, not counting hindsight and styles changing and all that. But maybe these are the types of people who post fics labelled "OOC" and warning people off their fics?

[kate]

OH, hm, good point! I don't... actually have anything I've created that I'm not proud of - even the unfinished bits (which I still post, heh) so I'm probably not a good person to ask.

I tend to think people who put OOC tags and wave people off in summaries are concerned about crit? It's a pretty solid way to make sure anyone with high standards won't click on it.

But also I was thinking in the long run - there are a lot of people who look back at their earlier works and cringe. I'm not like that, I rarely read something I've written and think, "man, that was awful." Even if it's not up to my standards now, I'm usually proud of finishing it, and it stands as a testament to what I was capable of at the time. (I like being able to trace my history through my writing.)

[mashimero]

I tend to think people who put OOC tags and wave people off in summaries are concerned about crit? It's a pretty solid way to make sure anyone with high standards won't click on it.
Haha good point! :P

But also I was thinking in the long run - there are a lot of people who look back at their earlier works and cringe. I'm not like that, I rarely read something I've written and think, "man, that was awful." Even if it's not up to my standards now, I'm usually proud of finishing it, and it stands as a testament to what I was capable of at the time. (I like being able to trace my history through my writing.)

Interesting way of looking at it! I am one of those people who cringe when I look at some of my older stuff. I remember that I was definitely proud of it at the time, but in hindsight, not so much LOL.

[kate]

I am one of those people who cringe when I look at some of my older stuff. I remember that I was definitely proud of it at the time, but in hindsight, not so much LOL.

I used to be like that, but I've come to regard my old fanworks kind of like our family pictures - it's a completely different makeup of people every time. And I could cringe that there were ex-husbands and ex-wives and ex-boyfriends in the pictures, but eh. They're just a snapshot of a particular point in time. That's pretty much how I think about my fanworks, so that takes the cringe out of it for me, these days.