"Why can't I do that?" · 7:04am May 11th, 2023
"Why can't I do that?"
It's a question I often find myself thinking. Often when a fic in the featured box catches my eye, or I revisit a famous story from the fandom's past. I don't pretend to be unique in this, but it is something that's been on my mind recently.
It's cringy story from my teenage years time! Oh boy!
So I've been writing for about 11 years now. (Cheezus that's more than a decade holy shit). Coming into it, I had no idea, less than no idea what I was doing. Please don't go back and read my old fics. The oldest have been removed from my account (for reasons unrelated to their bad-ness, though I assure you they are bad. Please don't look for them on fimfetch) but the ones that remain showcase my skill back then rather succinctly.
It was, how you say, not good.
... that joke works better verbally when I can throw in an exaggerated accent. Alas.
In a way, being so bad was a blessing. Because I could not see how bad I was, and my standards were "whatever I type" so I had no problem throwing up whatever basically as soon as I finished. Editing? Never met her. Did you know... god this is cringe, but my very first fic - the very first story I ever wrote outside of English assignments in school, when I told my friend I'd write his plot, do you know what I said?
I said I'd write the next Past Sins.
I still physically cringe recalling that.
But, at the time, I thought, why couldn't I do that? I certainly wasn't skills enough to see the difference in technical ability between what I put out and what I was reading.
That changed, slowly, over the years. I saw the gaps in my ability. Plugged them, as best I could. Emulated other author's styles, slowly grew something I could call my own - though it still changes to this day. I'll touch on that in a bit.
And for a while, as my skill improved roughly in time with my eye for it, I was happy with my progress. Then my skill stalled out, and I got frustrated. I felt like I couldn't get any better. Started wondering if that was all I could do - if others were just naturally talented, and I wasn't cut out for this.
I stopped writing for several years. My first hiatus. There were other things in my life at the time that also caused it, but that was a bit one.
And by now I'm sure you've all seen where this is going, so I'll go ahead and put the graph here.
Yeah, this isn't new. Everyone's seen this before. But yes, I was in one of those "periods of frustration". My skill ran up against a limit of some kind, and I was perceiving my own skill as lower than it was, while I could see the glaring holes.
Intellectually I knew, of course. But knowing something and feeling something are, foten, two different things. And I felt like I was crappy and couldn't get better.
So I took a break. Came back three years later to a shrunken but still passionate and lively fandom. Wrote a ton in 2019, some in 2020, then fucking up and disappeared again. Genuinely, it doesn't feel like I was gone that long this time, and I did have a handful of releases during this period. but... well I hit that period of frustration again. Everything I wrote sounded bad to my own ears.
And I looked at other people's works - people my age and younger - and wondered why I couldn't do that.
Why wasn't I that good? I'd been writing for years at that point - what was I still missing?
Yeah, I expected to be a master after a few years of work. Uh-huh. You may point and laugh now.
But I kept writing. Had fun. Felt I was putting out my own best work - saw where I still needed to improve, but I wasn't overly upset about it.
And then recently... recently, that same question again. Why can't I do that? What's wrong with me? Why is my development so stunted? This time, it was different though. I was frustrated - oh, believe me, I was frustrated. With myself, my skill. Wondering why I couldn't do what I perceived as other people doing so easily. I know, of course, that those people just practiced more. Put more effort in over longer. Maybe one or two what you could call prodigies or otherwise people with a unique talent, but by and large I just hadn't put enough work and time in yet.
But it was different this time.
Because I was looking at a fic, thinking, "Why can't I do that?"
And it occured to me, as I studied the words, the sentences, the structure. The flow and the prose. Used the skill I had gained to look at the skill I was missing.
And I wondered, "Why can't I do that?"
Like an artist learning by tracing another's art or copying a shading style. Why not try and emulate the style and technique I was so jealous of?
Yes, I am an idiot for just figuring that out now.
So I did. I wrote a fic, a short little thing that you'll never see, where I wholesale ripped off another's style. Felt what it was like to use it on my own words. Decided what parts I liked, which ones I didn't, and like that, my style evolved. Well not just like that. It will take time to adapt and perfect, but I have more tools now. And it... it really was that easy. It took effort, sure, and time, but the overall process was simple.
And thinking about it... that's what I used to do, when I was learning, when I had the most rapid growth. I was just ripping off other's styles until I had enough pieces to make my own, bare-bones toolbelt. And now I'm just... filling it out.
Why yes, I do feel like a fucking idiot for taking this long.
I guess my point is... when you're trying to learn a skill - to get better at something, just... remember that graph. Think to yourself if you've really hit your limit, or if you're just in a period of frustration. It took me far too long to figure out how to continue forward, hopefully this blog can help someone else. Don't be afraid to emulate others. Don't, like, rip them off entirely, but try and copy their style and tools for yourself. See what it is about their work you like so much, and find the parts that you can adopt into your own.
In other totally-unrelated-I-promise news, I have an almost-14K word Twidash (clop)fic almost ready to go live that's I've been working at furiously for the last ten days. I've got to do a round of revisions, send it to my much-beleaguered editor, and it should be up. Within about a week, if I had to guess.
Although Tears of the Kingdom is coming out on friday so I better get those revisions done tomorrow before I get sucked into that time sink. Yikes.
Also another 10K words of a slow-burn Twidash that I haven't decided what to do with yet. I'm worried about losing steam on it so honestly it might be something I hold back until I've gotten pretty far into it. Just know, I might not be actively publishing right now, but I am actively writing and growing. Because I really do feel like I'm finally improving again.
Until next time,
Kodeake out
I can't help but wonder what happened to Fimfetch. No stories have been added since December of 2021 and I can't create an account either.
5727694
Oh dear, I hadn't noticed. I don't use fimfetch for more than nostalgia of a handful of stories that were removed. Gonna have to remember to download anything I want to keep just in case.
You totally described my current situation. Though, I haven't been a part of western fanfiction community untill recently. My base, so to speak, is Ficbook (Russian site for fanfics). And that's the question I always ask myself whenever I see great russian or english fanfic, "Why can't I do something like this?". I am writing since 2012 (OMG, a little more than a decade indeed), and I also don't like my first works because it's not my level anymore. Then I tried myself in translations to Russian, turned out I am pretty good at that. A year ago I tried to translate one of my fanfics to English, it is exausting but exciting experience)) And there we come to my main problem - I rarely finish something and rarely write new chapters. "Why did you even start?", I ask myself. Just because I felt like it...
The dude still runs it but it's basically a semi dead project. Always download your fics