I'm allowed to call it crap; I'm not calling it unmitigated crap, for one thing
Maybe the people you're complaining about couldn't tell that. I know I couldn't when you were talking to me. But I'm certainly glad to be reassured.
For another thing, if I'm calling it crap in comparison to what I'm doing now, it's not self-deprecation. It's deprecation of myself when I was four years younger
Something of a point, but I didn't want to take it up in detail because it didn't sound like the sort of thing you needed to hear someone agreeing with just then. I still dispute that it's crap, even "in comparison to what [you're] doing now", but I've never sat down and read your earliest fics side-by-side with your most recent stuff, so I'll concede that the early work might at least look crappy by comparison.
It's hard to believe that there's any point in trying to improve when people think something so simplistic and commercial and below what I can do -- hell, below what I want to do -- is the best that I ever will do, and the only thing they want.
Is that aimed, in whole or part, at me? Because the shoe sure fits, or at least fits with the impression I sometimes think I'm giving you. In my case, the thing you currently aren't interested in doing that I was so hot to see isn't the only thing I want. There was a time when it was the thing I wanted most, and to my shame, I let that desire overshadow my interest in your other work. But really, the "only" thing I want, as far as your writing's concerned, is to see the next thing you're working on. I'm sorry for all the times I've forgotten that, and doubly sorry for the times I've remembered it but forgotten to say it.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2003-10-27 09:50 am (UTC)Maybe the people you're complaining about couldn't tell that. I know I couldn't when you were talking to me. But I'm certainly glad to be reassured.
For another thing, if I'm calling it crap in comparison to what I'm doing now, it's not self-deprecation. It's deprecation of myself when I was four years younger
Something of a point, but I didn't want to take it up in detail because it didn't sound like the sort of thing you needed to hear someone agreeing with just then. I still dispute that it's crap, even "in comparison to what [you're] doing now", but I've never sat down and read your earliest fics side-by-side with your most recent stuff, so I'll concede that the early work might at least look crappy by comparison.
It's hard to believe that there's any point in trying to improve when people think something so simplistic and commercial and below what I can do -- hell, below what I want to do -- is the best that I ever will do, and the only thing they want.
Is that aimed, in whole or part, at me? Because the shoe sure fits, or at least fits with the impression I sometimes think I'm giving you. In my case, the thing you currently aren't interested in doing that I was so hot to see isn't the only thing I want. There was a time when it was the thing I wanted most, and to my shame, I let that desire overshadow my interest in your other work. But really, the "only" thing I want, as far as your writing's concerned, is to see the next thing you're working on. I'm sorry for all the times I've forgotten that, and doubly sorry for the times I've remembered it but forgotten to say it.
— Waka-kun