December daily: Ego-reading

[resonant]

china_shop prompts: Do you re-read your own fic for fun? If so, how do you feel about it and if not, why not?

The three days after Christmas are still questionless.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but, yes, I do sometimes re-read my own stuff. Sometimes it's to see if something's still hot or still whatever it is. Sometimes it's to say to myself, "Come on. You can do this, remember?" (That backfires, though, because a finished story either seems completely and quellingly seamless or is riddled with problems that it's too late to fix!)

Comments

[muccamukk]

I do this all the time. Usually it's to remember what I wrote, as I get kudos or whatever and can't think of the story. Or I'm really the one who knows what flavour of angst I like :D

[resonant]

It would be nice if we could export our specific angst/romance/humor specs into someone else's brain, wouldn't it?

[king_touchy]

I re-read stories I wrote because I wrote the stories I wanted to read. I respect a writer who likes their own stories enough to re-read them.

I certainly re-read yours sometimes. :-)

[jesse_the_k]

Lovely comment, and clearly wins the "repeat a word repeatedly without the repeated word being repeated in error award." :,)

[resonant]

I'm not sure I do write the stories I want to read! I think I write the stories I'm capable of writing, which aren't always the ones I would request.

[pauraque]

There are a few stories of mine that I like enough and that I wrote long enough ago that I can do that with them, and sometimes I do. But they need to be so old that I have very little conscious memory of writing them, or it ruins it for me.

[resonant]

I really can't read my stories the way I'd read someone else's; I'm still aware of them as the products of effort, and as things that could be changed.

[jesse_the_k]

I often reread your stories. All fanfic is familiar in a way, thanks to the explicitly shared tropes. So the fact of my familiarity with a story doesn't degrade the delight in how you've handled it.

So there.

[resonant]

Hee! I think the familiarity is part of the appeal -- as with jazz standards, the audience shares a knowledge of the melody so we can appreciate what the writer has done with it.

[carolyn_claire]

I reread my own humor stories when I need a laugh. I do realize that's me laughing at my own jokes, but it's my sense of humor, right? Of course I'm gonna think they're funny. That was the whole point, after all.

[resonant]

My funny rarely stays funny to me and my hot rarely stays hot, but sometimes I'll like one of my descriptions as if someone else had written it.

More often, I go, "Wow, I really like that word, don't I?"

[ranalore]

I re-read my stories to remind myself I can do this, too, with the same problem. :-/ I also re-read them when I get kudos because I frequently can't remember writing a story with the title in the kudo.

Umm, how about Dec. 27th, fannish soundtracks?

[resonant]

I've put it on the calendar!

[niqaeli]

I find the notion of it being embarrassing to re-read one's own fic a bit odd to be perfectly honest, because so often the fic I write is the fic I want to read but no one else has written yet. Perhaps it comes of reading canon so differently than a majority, most of the time?

Fandom is marvelous and contains multitudes.

[resonant]

As I said above, I don't think I do write the stories I want to read -- only the stories I'm capable of writing.

Or almost capable of writing -- that happens sometimes, too.

[out_there]

I find it a bit embarrasing to admit -- like maybe it's being arrogant about your work? or not being productive with hours that you could be using to write or read new stories and leave feedback? -- but I read my own stuff too. Sometimes because there's kudos and I can't remember the fandom that story was in, let alone the plot. Sometimes because I need a particular type of sweet-and-sappy or hurt/comfort/angst that I know is in my own stories. Sometimes because it's been so long since I've made words appear onscreen and I need to remind myself that I can totally do that writing thing if I just work at it.

[resonant]

That's how I feel about it -- like I'm boasting about my work.

[china_shop]

(from your comment above)
More often, I go, "Wow, I really like that word, don't I?"

Hee! That's the worst, isn't it? The more I re-read my fic, the more aware I become that I have stock words and phrases I fall back on. ("I had that character say that line in four different stories! Ack!") /o\

Thanks for your answer. :-)