when people say it just right
Apr. 17th, 2004 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethA lined face, dark-green eyes set in starbursts of wrinkles, like paper folded again and again and then roughly smoothed out.
From the Verona Beach AU that glossing is writing.
I read this about a week ago and it stuck in my head. Because it is the exactly right way to describe Giles. It has paper, and the sense of being used up and crumpled *and then brought back again*. It is a description for someone who has been through the mill but still has something wondrous about him. Because, starbursts, not common things. Actually it says folded paper, not crumpled, so maybe folding like letters so the insides dont show. And lines always reminds me of writing, possibly due to a misspent youth, but that works too- punishment lines, same thing over and over, crumple it up and then realise you can use the back for something else. Like the reason it is exactly right that canon Giles has a tattoo, because ink is so much of his world of course it left it's mark. Ink and lines.
The trouble is, now I have this precisely right way of saying it in my head, I can't use it because it is someone elses line. I'm sure I have a lot of them in here by now. I have a little project of re-reading all the Ethan fic ever and copying with references all the bits that struck me as perfect. This isn't just so I can re-read them all in one handy place, or for checking my Ethan against the Ethan they see. It is because I know, sooner or later, I'll be happily writing something intended to be original and out will come the words. Because they are the *right* words, and so are in my head the way green means tree colors or red means blood. These are the words that say a thing. And if they are the right words, any new words I invent will inevitably be less right, because different. *sigh*
Add that to the usual fannish brain sharing that has some of my favourite authors now using images or even gods that I had intended to be central in my work, and the fact that some of my work is a way of replying to their work anyway because there are bits that Ethan-in-my-head pretty much laughs at because they fit him so badly so I kinda *have* to write something to show them *my* Ethan...
Do you ever get deja-vu about your writing? I mean you make a string of words and then you think you must have read that somewhere before. The internet being the wonder that it is, sometimes I'll drop the words into search engines to see what turns up. Because I get that feeling *all the time*. I'm serious, every fricking thing I write I either get the feeling it is not original to me, or the other feeling where I'm pretty sure I'm the only one saying it but that would be because it does not need saying. I'm trying to put this feeling in a box the way I have to with the forgotten-something feeling just to get through the day, because neither of these feelings have anything to do with external conditions. These are just my freaky wiring.
Trouble is with either feeling, it really doesnt work. It can take me half an hour to go from ready to leave to actually stepping out of the door because I keep trying to find whatever I've forgotten. And half the posts I write I then modify, and modify, and modify, and sometimes just delete before anyone else can see them, which doesnt actually work on lj because people get them emailed.
So, even though I'm pretty sure there is a way to modify my posts here, I'm on purpose not learning it. Because then I can't take anything back. This should be good practice. Or, you know, drive me utterly insane, but I've been there before, I can stand a visit.
Perfect ways of writing things are as difficult to get writ down as they are to come up with. And letting people see them? Worst. But then if they really are perfect, they are good to share, because, shiny. So, confusion.
From the Verona Beach AU that glossing is writing.
I read this about a week ago and it stuck in my head. Because it is the exactly right way to describe Giles. It has paper, and the sense of being used up and crumpled *and then brought back again*. It is a description for someone who has been through the mill but still has something wondrous about him. Because, starbursts, not common things. Actually it says folded paper, not crumpled, so maybe folding like letters so the insides dont show. And lines always reminds me of writing, possibly due to a misspent youth, but that works too- punishment lines, same thing over and over, crumple it up and then realise you can use the back for something else. Like the reason it is exactly right that canon Giles has a tattoo, because ink is so much of his world of course it left it's mark. Ink and lines.
The trouble is, now I have this precisely right way of saying it in my head, I can't use it because it is someone elses line. I'm sure I have a lot of them in here by now. I have a little project of re-reading all the Ethan fic ever and copying with references all the bits that struck me as perfect. This isn't just so I can re-read them all in one handy place, or for checking my Ethan against the Ethan they see. It is because I know, sooner or later, I'll be happily writing something intended to be original and out will come the words. Because they are the *right* words, and so are in my head the way green means tree colors or red means blood. These are the words that say a thing. And if they are the right words, any new words I invent will inevitably be less right, because different. *sigh*
Add that to the usual fannish brain sharing that has some of my favourite authors now using images or even gods that I had intended to be central in my work, and the fact that some of my work is a way of replying to their work anyway because there are bits that Ethan-in-my-head pretty much laughs at because they fit him so badly so I kinda *have* to write something to show them *my* Ethan...
Do you ever get deja-vu about your writing? I mean you make a string of words and then you think you must have read that somewhere before. The internet being the wonder that it is, sometimes I'll drop the words into search engines to see what turns up. Because I get that feeling *all the time*. I'm serious, every fricking thing I write I either get the feeling it is not original to me, or the other feeling where I'm pretty sure I'm the only one saying it but that would be because it does not need saying. I'm trying to put this feeling in a box the way I have to with the forgotten-something feeling just to get through the day, because neither of these feelings have anything to do with external conditions. These are just my freaky wiring.
Trouble is with either feeling, it really doesnt work. It can take me half an hour to go from ready to leave to actually stepping out of the door because I keep trying to find whatever I've forgotten. And half the posts I write I then modify, and modify, and modify, and sometimes just delete before anyone else can see them, which doesnt actually work on lj because people get them emailed.
So, even though I'm pretty sure there is a way to modify my posts here, I'm on purpose not learning it. Because then I can't take anything back. This should be good practice. Or, you know, drive me utterly insane, but I've been there before, I can stand a visit.
Perfect ways of writing things are as difficult to get writ down as they are to come up with. And letting people see them? Worst. But then if they really are perfect, they are good to share, because, shiny. So, confusion.