Friends Only!

[snarry_fan7]

Due to the recent events on LJ, I have decided to make my journal friends only. As long as you don't seem to be a troll or a stalker I have no problem friending anyone. Just leave a comment here and I'll get to it as soon as possible. It's not necessary to leave your age or birth date, if you want to I won't stop you though.

I had a Friends Only pic up, but I'm sick of seeing the PhotoBucket crap plastered over it, so I took it down. I wish DW would let us directly upload a photo on a post.

Comments

[paulamcg]

It must be wonderful to learn pronunciation in the way you do! I remember how I seemed to simply refuse to remember even what “thank you” is in Arabic before I had learnt how to write and read it in Arabic letters.

Now I realise that when thinking about a word, I somehow see it in my mind in the way it’s spelled. On the other hand, I read very slowly, and my inability to learn a quick, glancing technique in reading can be explained by the fact that I’ve had very weak sight in my right eye, which is now completely blind. I always read as if I were reading aloud in my mind. I’ve thought that this is perhaps a weakness which I’ve turned into a strength. I’ve read carefully and learnt (by heart) what’s been required at schools, and I choose my words and edit my texts carefully, listening to the sound of the words (with faulty pronunciation at times, for sure :)) in my mind.

I could definitely not make podfics of my own stories or I’d ruin them. It’s sad, because I love reading them, also truly aloud to myself when there’s no one else to hear.

It’s comforting that not all comparative literature professors have impeccable pronunciation! I (and people in general, too) used to think we should learn to sound like native speakers of English. With the globalisation it’s become more acceptable that not only formula drivers (some of the internationally most famous Finns) but also professionals in international business speak English with their own accents (and my highly successful friend in a high position in Human Resources in an international company makes – in my view – awful grammar mistakes, but it’s all right as his English is easy to understand), and the Finnish accent is perhaps not the most incomprehensible, at least not if we remember to sometimes stress other syllables than the first one. But I’d like my fiction to be read in beautiful British English.

I wonder what there is about HP that makes you write long fics when you can write short ones in other fandoms. After all, I keep writing a single terribly long story, even though I’ve succeeded in turning the rest of it into manageable short stories.

[snarry_fan7]

I wouldn't say wonderful. It's just how I can do it.

Ah, how you've explained how you read also explains how you learn languages. I am a very fast reader. I don't see individual words. I see the sentence or even paragraph as a whole. When it comes to anything relaying a story or event, whether fiction or non-fiction, I have a sort of visual movie in my head giving me an actual image of what's going on or what has happened (if an historical event).

I don't like hearing myself talk, so I would never make podfics of any of my own stories and probably wouldn't make podfics or audiobooks in general because of that.

I don't know what it is about the HP world that makes me write that like. I've managed a few very short ones, basically drabbles and double drabbles, or something no longer than about 1,000 words, but it's very rare and those aren't things I'd put on AO3 or anywhere. With the HP world, I guess I feel the need to provide more explanations of my interpretations of that world, whether it's the characters, environment/surroundings, or magic. Other fandoms make it a little easier. If I were to write Lord of the Rings fic I think I would face a similar problem owing to the complexity and detail of Middle Earth.

[paulamcg]

Since I’ve shared fic on AO3 and fic-related posts on my DW, it’s taken me a while to get back here. Thank you for still replying!

Now I can’t resist quoting… Ah, how you've explained how you read also explains how what you had to say after reading a couple of my short stories was just that my Remus is okay! I wish there were readers who read – even listened – to every word I’ve carefully chosen, but I guess I’m an anomaly with my writing.

Yes, I agree that the complexity of the worlds must be a reason why people end up writing long fic in HP and LotR. When I started (right after OotP came out), I thought that fanfic was about writing a chaptered story like Rowling’s, because others on the forum posted about the beginning of Harry’s sixth year. I just chose an adult’s perspective and ended up not covering a school year but expanding the world and going deeper, so that the story turned into a novel.

Only after six months or so did I write my first short story, and it was redoing a scene of my novel from another perspective. After that it’s been easier to feel motivated to and succeed in writing sharable drabbles and short stories of any length (from 500 to 20 000 words). I enjoy the challenge of making each of them work separately – some of them even separately from the canon, like the two drabbles I reposted the other day on my DW, too – while adding something meaningful to the whole big story and including references to various parts of it.

[snarry_fan7]

That method of doing shorter stories as small scenes from a different perspective can work well. I haven't tried that, but it's something I might do at a later date. Stay at home orders aren't actually conducive to me doing much writing at all since I'm currently staying with my parents and there are too many distractions around me; no real privacy since my original bedroom is being redone/fixed up and there aren't any good places for privacy as a result.