I'm curious now, about how other writers out there see the things they've already written, individual approaches.

I tend to think I'm full of shit, and am often embarassed by things I've written.

And I think ego-as-defense is probably my biggest issue when it comes to anything creative, but particularly writing.

I missed this earlier, Cindy. I'm not dissing the ego; it just pays to remember that as a defense mechanism, designed to help keep us from breaking apart under too much criticism or what we perceive as criticism, the ego is not generally going to be your friend in terms of opening up. It's just doing its job.

I tend to think I'm full of shit.

Yes, well, you're WRONG. Pftpftpfptpfptpft.

Amy, I'm sorting it out a bit more here, but it occurs to me, that both you and Susan are working within defined genres, and those have specific issues in the trope itself. I don't know whether the more recent stuff I've done is more from the heart than anyone else's, but I do know that the way I tell it is the way I tell it, and that's the way it is.

And I have books of my own that I prefer to others of my own. But I wouldn't go back and change the ones I love maybe a bit less than the others. Those are just reflective of a different me. They aren't less valid.

E.g. with Lucy I was daring myself to actually finish a novel.

Susan, did you always want to write? I don't know if that makes any difference whatsoever, so to clarify: I've known I wanted to write since I was nine or ten. And not just wanted to, did. I have some of those very early stories in a file. But if I decided tomorrow that I wanted to be a photographer, I might have to "dare" myself to try and sell photographs. Do you see what I mean?

Also, and this might only be interesting to me, I read a few romances at age twelve or thirteen, real traditional Gothics, governesses in danger with their brooding employers, that sort of thing. But I didn't read them again until I started working for a publisher whose list is eighty percent romance. And I love them now, and I love the way the genre has broadened and expanded.

But I never seriously considered writing one until a few years ago -- they just weren't the stories I thought I had to tell. Strangely, though, when I got out that file of childhood pieces, one of the first true short stories I ever wrote (and I had to be maybe eleven at the time) was a by-the-book romance, at least in terms of overall setup. A meet-cute beginning, where a college student and a hot guy end up verbally sparring but finally kissing, only for her to walk into class the next day and discover he's her professor. That tickled me.

I'm almost ready for Beta reading of Save Firefly, which needs a sexier title but I won't deal with that til it's really most sincerely dead.

It's an unweildy beast. un-fucking-weildy.

Save Firefly, which needs a sexier title but I won't deal with that til it's really most sincerely dead.

Boobs for Firefly?

which needs a sexier title

My Firefly Brings All the Boys to the Yard?

I knew I wanted to write ever since I wrote my first story in third or fourth grade, with talking horses. But I had a lifetime's habit of starting stories and never finishing them. I have tons of nearly identical novel openings from high school, always teen romances with heroines who were petite and had curly black or red hair with blue or green eyes (since I am a sturdy peasant with straight brown hair and dark brown eyes), and who played clarinet or flute, since I played the sax, and who had a crush on the trumpet section leader or maybe a wide receiver on the football team, since I was in love with the drum section leader. By junior or senior year they were getting better written, less Mary Sueish, and developing some variety of plot, but I didn't write while I was in college.

After college I did a couple of Lois & Clark fanfics, and then made it five or six chapters and a mass of research and worldbuilding into a projected epic fantasy trilogy. That was in 1996 or so. But then I went to England in 1997, got distracted from the story what with meeting DH and being in a new country, and by the time I tried to go back to it, I'd changed too much to write that same story.

So sometime in 1998 or '99, I said, "Face it. You're talented, and you like to write, but you never finish anything. Just drop it and live your life." But then in 2001 I got the idea for Lucy, and thought, "You never finish anything, but this story won't get out of your head, so start writing. It'll stop bugging you after three chapters or so." But it didn't, and I decided I was going to finish it, no matter how long it took nor how good or bad it turned out to be.

Which is a very long-winded way of saying that I pretty much always did want to write.

Susan roooooocks.

Save Firefly, which needs a sexier title but I won't deal with that til it's really most sincerely dead.

Boobs for Firefly?

"Boobs in Space"?

I'm curious now, about how other writers out there see the things they've already written, individual approaches.

I'm one who tends to writhe in horrified embarassment at remembered mistakes, so I burned the notebooks which contained the very earliest versions of a really, really big Star Wars fic I did back when the first movies came out. The "finished" version is in a binder about ten inches from my left knee, so it didn't die a final death, just evolved. I'm *almost* tempted to wish I still had those notebooks so I can see how I progressed as a writer, but not really. I remember. And the me 20 years later has a vague itch to rewrite the thing one more time, but Amy would probably commit me.

I can generally let the things I've written recently rest in a state of sufficient accomplishment, though I tweak little things occasionally if I'm reading on the computer. Sometimes I go, "Hm, fairly bland plot twist there, should have done that to pitch the conflict a little clearer." And sometimes I stare at a phrase or situation and go, "Dear God, I *can* write."

I think I fit Amy's description of "writes well but has no story to tell" . I understand the concept of getting better at one's work, and expect to work to achieve that. I have a standard, but it is my own, and I don't compare my work, my working style, my word count, or my success or lack of it to anyone else, nor have I expected to achieve results similar to anyone else's. That part of being a writer doesn't interest me.

I'd love to sell something new, it would be validating, in that way that remuneration is validating. But basically? I'd be really really thrilled to have an idea burning in my head that I could wrestle with and spend the day in that world and hear those characters in my head, and some days get it right, even if days in a row I didn't. I had that. It's gone, and I have no idea whether it will ever come back.

Hand up over in this corner, Allyson, when you're ready for readers.