expertise and the opposite
Mar. 30th, 2022 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sido_rloThoughts on leisure, labor, fanfic, and focus (written on a day off)
Lately, I’ve been thinking about being good and bad at things.
I think there are two main reasons behind this: First, I’m leaving my job in a few short weeks, and I’m having some complicated feelings about how I could have loved it had I been better at it. Second, I have made a tentative return to writing fanfiction, which I haven’t done since I was 18. Both of these reasons have to do with labor, or at least effort, and both of them carry a strong concern for being good, or talented or skilled or big-brained or maybe even genius. But, as I have come to consider recently, what is the point of being good?
When it comes to writing fic, I don’t think I have to explain why we all want to be good at it. I have always been a reader, and there are few things more important to me than really good writing. So of course, my decision to write something and post it online is driven not only by the fact that I have a certain story or dynamic or scene or feeling I want to express, but that I want to express it in the best way possible. This is inevitably accompanied by a desire for admiration, attention, recognition, etc., which isn’t a bad thing. Though I find I crave this a lot less than I did when I was younger, it’s nice to be affirmed and know that my writing resonates with other people, if only a few. At the very least, it is a great motivator.
However, as a very burnt-out and generally fatigued individual, when I decided to adopt fic writing as a capital-H Hobby, one that I would commit to because I genuinely enjoy it and think that it benefits me and my brain, I also committed to the following mantra: Finished is better than perfect.
I’ve actually never been a fiction writer. My fanfic attempts in high school were just to do what all my friends were doing, which was scribbling headcanons onto notebook paper during study hall, roleplaying in shared google docs, going home to our fanfiction.net profiles. Fandom was our playground, and we dove into everything with undiscriminating enthusiasm. However, I never felt like I had many original ideas, and I was content to just pick up the threads my friends wove about Doctor Who and Harry Potter and Supernatural and Glee and Merlin and the Demon’s Lexicon and the Mortal Instruments and the few animes I never watched but absorbed info about from all my weeb friends.
I felt much more comfortable writing poetry. Fiction seemed dauntingly long, with the issue of narrative logistics and characterization and (worst of all for an awkward teen) dialogue. Poetry was more a process of editing than writing, which I’ve always preferred. I would spit some words out—always less than a page—then fiddle with them for hours, days, even months. That was my writing.
I mentioned in my last post that I was diagnosed with ADHD last year. A lot of things fell into clarity with this diagnosis, particularly my inability to keep track of anything that isn’t immediately visible to me. So my transition to fic writing this year, though I have yet to pass the 7,000 word mark, is first and foremost an accomplishment to me. Who knew I could write narrative (and characterization and dialogue!)? I still find it very challenging, but now, the concerted effort that it takes for me to do it scratches my sad, tired brain in a way that is wholly rewarding and allows me to enjoy fandom in a more involved way.
For an example of this, let’s take my recent two-shot Verhao fic, between two lungs. I’ve vaguely enjoyed this pairing in a passive, those-two-together-make-my-brain-go-brrr way for a while, but I don’t think I would ever have had a single meaningful thought about them if I didn’t force myself to come up with answers to the questions that arose while writing them. In fact, the whole fic came from a prompt (for 17hols), which is a question in its own way. Most of the time, I don’t see a picture or a video or a quote and immediately get struck with a headcanon or brain worm. I usually just think some variant of “holy shit” (appreciative) and move on with my life. And while this is a fun and perfectly valid way to engage in fandom (I’m sure a lot of people with less than shining opinions of rpf would consider this the better way, actually), fanfiction is, for me, the ideal tool for capturing and processing the complicated thoughts and feelings hiding behind the wall of TV static that is my brain.
Thus, for me, finished is better than perfect. At the end of it, whatever I create doesn’t need to be amazing—I’m just satisfied to have followed through on an idea and created something whole and complete. In fact, I could be writing really, really terrible fic and I still think it would be a worthy endeavor. This is one area of my life in which I don’t owe anyone quality of any sort. Besides, sometimes things that are bad are good. I’m talking My Immortal, or certain episodes of Grey's Anatomy (which I love). We’ve all seen our share of terrible but incredibly fun movies, or read fics that are a delicious hodgepodge of the most obvious cliches and platitudes. Outside of the scope of media or fiction, hobbies done clumsily and with no heed for skill are the best! I’m personally obsessed with chess—I play it online against strangers all the time—but you will never catch me researching chess strategy. I prefer no-thoughts-head-empty gameplay, thank you very much.
I’m sure there’s a pseudo-Marxist argument to be made in the scope of all this about the value of labor (whether it’s for a paycheck or for a hobby) vs the value of the product, but I won’t try to flesh this out because I am also granting myself permission to be bad at anti-capitalist theory today. Instead, I’ll just connect this to my own life as a worker. I work full time as an editor, a job in which I am expected to be perfect. No, scratch that, I am expected to perfect—active verb, stress on the second syllable and all that. I’m also the only native English speaker at my company, so my ability to perfect is seen as somewhat innate, though I would argue that being from America does not grant me any inherent skills, particularly linguistically. Regardless, when I started the job, I was terrified of failing at it. This fear was valid from a basic survival standpoint, since one needs to perform their job to a certain standard in order to keep it and I was totally new to the profession. But I’m glad that I quickly saw that there was little sense in equating my ability to do good work with my value as a person. I’d rather be proud of the skills and knowledge I’ve gained than hate myself for the mistakes I’ve made, and it’s incredibly freeing to disassociate yourself from what you do for a paycheck or even for fun.
I admit I’m being somewhat hypocritical here. I do think that the editing I do at work is important and try to do it well. I also do really try to write good fanfiction, and I only post the things that I think are good, which is less than half what I write. But, as I tweeted a while ago, “if being an editor has taught me anything, it's that if i'm writing for fun, i might as well let myself be bad at it too.” This was in response to a tweet by twitter user @/upstateslut that reads “fuck feeling like you have to write masterpieces to write. write shitty work, write self-indulgent work, write works for tiny fandoms, write works with grammar mistakes, write whatever you want. who cares. if you like it and it makes you happy, write it!” I loved this tweet; I suppose that instead of writing this long, rambling thing, I could have just retweeted it again, since it says everything I want to say at essence. Whatever! I’ll just wrap up with the following TL;DR:
- Fanfiction is fun!
- Mediocrity is my god-given right!
- Let’s all be gentler to ourselves about our ability to be excellent in a world that demands it from us but offers very little in return.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about being good and bad at things.
I think there are two main reasons behind this: First, I’m leaving my job in a few short weeks, and I’m having some complicated feelings about how I could have loved it had I been better at it. Second, I have made a tentative return to writing fanfiction, which I haven’t done since I was 18. Both of these reasons have to do with labor, or at least effort, and both of them carry a strong concern for being good, or talented or skilled or big-brained or maybe even genius. But, as I have come to consider recently, what is the point of being good?
When it comes to writing fic, I don’t think I have to explain why we all want to be good at it. I have always been a reader, and there are few things more important to me than really good writing. So of course, my decision to write something and post it online is driven not only by the fact that I have a certain story or dynamic or scene or feeling I want to express, but that I want to express it in the best way possible. This is inevitably accompanied by a desire for admiration, attention, recognition, etc., which isn’t a bad thing. Though I find I crave this a lot less than I did when I was younger, it’s nice to be affirmed and know that my writing resonates with other people, if only a few. At the very least, it is a great motivator.
However, as a very burnt-out and generally fatigued individual, when I decided to adopt fic writing as a capital-H Hobby, one that I would commit to because I genuinely enjoy it and think that it benefits me and my brain, I also committed to the following mantra: Finished is better than perfect.
I’ve actually never been a fiction writer. My fanfic attempts in high school were just to do what all my friends were doing, which was scribbling headcanons onto notebook paper during study hall, roleplaying in shared google docs, going home to our fanfiction.net profiles. Fandom was our playground, and we dove into everything with undiscriminating enthusiasm. However, I never felt like I had many original ideas, and I was content to just pick up the threads my friends wove about Doctor Who and Harry Potter and Supernatural and Glee and Merlin and the Demon’s Lexicon and the Mortal Instruments and the few animes I never watched but absorbed info about from all my weeb friends.
I felt much more comfortable writing poetry. Fiction seemed dauntingly long, with the issue of narrative logistics and characterization and (worst of all for an awkward teen) dialogue. Poetry was more a process of editing than writing, which I’ve always preferred. I would spit some words out—always less than a page—then fiddle with them for hours, days, even months. That was my writing.
I mentioned in my last post that I was diagnosed with ADHD last year. A lot of things fell into clarity with this diagnosis, particularly my inability to keep track of anything that isn’t immediately visible to me. So my transition to fic writing this year, though I have yet to pass the 7,000 word mark, is first and foremost an accomplishment to me. Who knew I could write narrative (and characterization and dialogue!)? I still find it very challenging, but now, the concerted effort that it takes for me to do it scratches my sad, tired brain in a way that is wholly rewarding and allows me to enjoy fandom in a more involved way.
For an example of this, let’s take my recent two-shot Verhao fic, between two lungs. I’ve vaguely enjoyed this pairing in a passive, those-two-together-make-my-brain-go-brrr way for a while, but I don’t think I would ever have had a single meaningful thought about them if I didn’t force myself to come up with answers to the questions that arose while writing them. In fact, the whole fic came from a prompt (for 17hols), which is a question in its own way. Most of the time, I don’t see a picture or a video or a quote and immediately get struck with a headcanon or brain worm. I usually just think some variant of “holy shit” (appreciative) and move on with my life. And while this is a fun and perfectly valid way to engage in fandom (I’m sure a lot of people with less than shining opinions of rpf would consider this the better way, actually), fanfiction is, for me, the ideal tool for capturing and processing the complicated thoughts and feelings hiding behind the wall of TV static that is my brain.
Thus, for me, finished is better than perfect. At the end of it, whatever I create doesn’t need to be amazing—I’m just satisfied to have followed through on an idea and created something whole and complete. In fact, I could be writing really, really terrible fic and I still think it would be a worthy endeavor. This is one area of my life in which I don’t owe anyone quality of any sort. Besides, sometimes things that are bad are good. I’m talking My Immortal, or certain episodes of Grey's Anatomy (which I love). We’ve all seen our share of terrible but incredibly fun movies, or read fics that are a delicious hodgepodge of the most obvious cliches and platitudes. Outside of the scope of media or fiction, hobbies done clumsily and with no heed for skill are the best! I’m personally obsessed with chess—I play it online against strangers all the time—but you will never catch me researching chess strategy. I prefer no-thoughts-head-empty gameplay, thank you very much.
I’m sure there’s a pseudo-Marxist argument to be made in the scope of all this about the value of labor (whether it’s for a paycheck or for a hobby) vs the value of the product, but I won’t try to flesh this out because I am also granting myself permission to be bad at anti-capitalist theory today. Instead, I’ll just connect this to my own life as a worker. I work full time as an editor, a job in which I am expected to be perfect. No, scratch that, I am expected to perfect—active verb, stress on the second syllable and all that. I’m also the only native English speaker at my company, so my ability to perfect is seen as somewhat innate, though I would argue that being from America does not grant me any inherent skills, particularly linguistically. Regardless, when I started the job, I was terrified of failing at it. This fear was valid from a basic survival standpoint, since one needs to perform their job to a certain standard in order to keep it and I was totally new to the profession. But I’m glad that I quickly saw that there was little sense in equating my ability to do good work with my value as a person. I’d rather be proud of the skills and knowledge I’ve gained than hate myself for the mistakes I’ve made, and it’s incredibly freeing to disassociate yourself from what you do for a paycheck or even for fun.
I admit I’m being somewhat hypocritical here. I do think that the editing I do at work is important and try to do it well. I also do really try to write good fanfiction, and I only post the things that I think are good, which is less than half what I write. But, as I tweeted a while ago, “if being an editor has taught me anything, it's that if i'm writing for fun, i might as well let myself be bad at it too.” This was in response to a tweet by twitter user @/upstateslut that reads “fuck feeling like you have to write masterpieces to write. write shitty work, write self-indulgent work, write works for tiny fandoms, write works with grammar mistakes, write whatever you want. who cares. if you like it and it makes you happy, write it!” I loved this tweet; I suppose that instead of writing this long, rambling thing, I could have just retweeted it again, since it says everything I want to say at essence. Whatever! I’ll just wrap up with the following TL;DR:
- Fanfiction is fun!
- Mediocrity is my god-given right!
- Let’s all be gentler to ourselves about our ability to be excellent in a world that demands it from us but offers very little in return.
