Green Room - Week 4 - Day 3

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is a day to celebrate love and your relationships and/or massacre a bunch of people. "Bladerunner" is obviously ahead of that particular curve, for combining them both!

Here at Idol, we recognize this thing called "love", and yes, Ms Raitt, we are indeed ready for it! How we express it though is by setting up polls and making contestants fight to the death! Or maybe for votes, but I'm pretty sure it's to the death!

The Second Chance poll is up http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/621791.html
and the deadline for the main competition is tonight: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/620811.html so the evening will get off to a good start and romantic start as people ignore their loved ones to spend the evening on the computer reading Idol entries!

Comments

[cacophonesque.livejournal.com]

I wonder if part of it is the shorter season. There have always been stylistic choices I struggled to get into. And there are times when I feel like I should be writing differently, because people people like that other stuff better. But I can't write any way other than my way--I can try to shoehorn myself into a style, but if it doesn't feel right, it's going to be crap. But! When I write something honest (even when it's fiction, or as M calls it lies lies dirty lies) there are people who like it. I might not be the most popular gal in the running, but who knows? I could be the most popular gal to someone reading.

One of the things that keeps me coming back to Idol is the diversity of voices. If it lost that, I'd leave. I think you should keep seeking an audience here, because for some people you are the breath of fresh air. I'm still thinking about your entry this week, hours after I read it, because it made a strong impression on me. You've made it through several rounds of brutal eliminations, because someone is connecting with your writing.

Yeah, I know how you feel about commenting. I still push myself to find something to say, more as a challenge for myself. It's easy for me to sit on the sidelines, and it's really hard for me to reach out and interact with people.

If you want to talk more about feeling out of place, though, you can always email me. <3

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one of my other comments noted that it could be a side effect of the shorter season/less people. It's easier to find more people who write what you want to read when there are more people to choose from.

I'd never try to shoehorn myself into writing things that don't fit me just because it seems to be what the crowd wants. When I have adapted, for example, when I got into writing more speculative fiction, it was more because that was a genre I enjoyed reading rather than because it was popular. I'm told horror seemed to be the "in" genre last season, but... I'm not all that keen on horror, so I couldn't force myself to write it. There are some things in the broad definition in that genre that I like, but it's really hard to get my interest and for me to like it without thinking it was predictable. So that makes me not want to write it. That's just one example.

I have made some new stylistic choices over the course of the time I've played, but they've always been because that's what I was feeling, never because it seemed to be what people wanted.

I guess it's just my personal struggle between wanting to be different vs. feeling too different that people don't like it.

The other thing might be that I'm more aware of how not as many people stick with your writing as you would have expected to, judging by comments, once you sit a season out. It's like, "do these people actually like what I'm writing or are they only reading because it's part of the competition?" For example, I have a short story that's being published this coming weekend -- by someone who didn't know me before I submitted, even. But how many people can I count on who'll go and read it when it's not part of the poll? And I guess that's one of the reasons I even bothered to submit something elsewhere. I thought it might be a better way of building my audience of people who don't know me. The genre there is a lot more specific so I know anyone who comes across it is more likely to enjoy it.

Thank you for saying my entry has stuck with you, though. I guess I find it interesting that my fiction can have that effect, when that was more the goal I had for the non-fiction I wrote the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago I think I was fine, but last week didn't seem to go over as well, and I was feeling at a loss as to why. I thought maybe people just didn't like white people talking about racial issues - or at least not the way I did.

Thanks. <3

[cacophonesque.livejournal.com]

As long as you link to where your story is, I'll try to go read it!

I think that your entry two weeks ago was very powerful. As for the way your entry last week was received, it's partly a mystery. I mean, shit, I can't even count how many times I've been surprised in that way. I will say, for me, it didn't feel like the writing was as strong. It was a subject that I found interesting, but it didn't wham me in the way that the child dumping did.

Even though you wrote fiction this week, it was a window onto your world. For me it was exciting to see Australia! And I do like a lot of post-apocalyptic narrative, so that helped. But I think that the unfamiliar setting made it stand out to me. And the juxtaposition of the rather irrelevant conversation against the bleak reality of the situation was fun. I liked that it wasn't taking itself too seriously. I loved that the story had pretty much nothing to do with romance or unrequited love or anything of that nature (even though it was talking about sex!)

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

I asked Gary if I could link it in the GR when it's up, and he offered to link it for me. So I'll just wait until after the poll since he doesn't promote current contestants during a poll. But I'll also be sharing it on LJ and FB so between those three places, you should encounter the link. ;)

I suppose I could've handled the topic differently last week than I did. I think it's something I might address more in fiction in the future, as that tends to be where I explore some of my views these days, in a safer environment but which might have a greater impact on people. It's like how I try to have more diverse characters in what I write, especially non-straight characters, because I get sad about not seeing them more in the media I consume. Interestingly, it was only really in writing my entry last week that I realised how important it was for me to have major characters who aren't white. Since then, I started a short story with a major Indian character, and whilst I may not have made it particularly clear in my entry this week, Shen is meant to be Chinese.

Setting more fiction in Australia is a newer thing for me, too. Australia barely gets a mention in my novel, for example. But yeah, my fiction tends to be a good window into my world. Some of the bisexual stuff was taken from my own life. If I'd written non-fiction, it would've been about how bisexuals are seen as having a wider field of choices when it comes to partners, which is how it ended up in this fiction story instead. And the narrative itself, aside from the setting, is actually quite an Aussie flavour. The whole not taking it too seriously part in particular.

It also occurred to me that while writing it, I might be the only Australian playing Idol right now? That's a first for me!