Thoughts or witterings. Not sure which.

[truepenny]

bonibaru has wise and interesting things to say about fame and online friendships. She's writing in a fannish context, but I have to say I think it applies across the board. If you're doing ANYTHING for the fame/money/prestige/coolness factor, you are doing it for the wrong reasons and should not be surprised if it does not bring you joy. This applies to pro writers as much as to fans. Even if you've set your sights on being a pro (as, for example, I have), if you're doing it solely because of the money, then it's likely that (a) your work is going to blow dead bears, (b) you're going to be sadly disappointed as riches fail to tumble into your lap (writing is SO not the way to become fabulously wealthy), and (c) it is not going to bring you anything EXCEPT money, i.e., no joy, no self-love, no nothing. I do love myself when I'm writing, not in a Gilderoy Lockhart aren't-I-WONDERFUL fashion, but because I'm WRITING and it feels like the right thing to be doing. Always.

You reap what you sow, in creative endeavors as much as in friendship. If you put yourself into it, you get yourself back.

Which feels really profound, but I'm afraid may merely be lack of sleep. And the head cold.

Comments

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Okay, yes, fair and necessary corrective.

My personal experience, from which I should NOT generalize to the rest of the world, is that online interactions are superficially easy but can become deeply and unpleasantly fraught in the blink of an eye, merely because text on screen does not convey tone of voice or a smile or even a dead-pan joke. It's so terribly easy to be misread online. (Also, to be fair, most of my online experience, pre-LJ, is from usenet in the early 90s, when I was NOT at my personal best. The burnt child, as Bertie Wooster says, fears the spilt milk.)

I know that this is not true for other people, that in fact I've got it ass-backwards from a great many other people who are, like me, introverts, geeks, readers, writers. So I'm sorry for trying to impose my rubric on other people's experience. Bad form.

(Memo to self: Every time you over-generalize, you get called on it. Cut it the fuck out.)

[pameladean]

There, there, it's a natural human activity. (Over-generalizing, that is.) I do it myself. I've gotten sensitized to it from so much hanging around online with aspiring writers who have read the wrong kinds of advice.

Pamela