(no subject)

[bubosquared]

I think the telly is trying to make up for almost destroying my soul or something, or maybe IKEA is just trying to remind me of how much I love them, because there was a commercial on yesterday that I, frustratingly, cannot find on YouTube in its entirety.

It starts with a man coming home, trying to turn on the TV and finding a new, big flatscreen in the other corner from where he's expecting the TV. There are, I think ,a few other things he finds have changed, and then he sees his wife in the (new! improved!) kitchen. He goes over to her as she's holding out a spoonful of whatever it is she's cooking, only to be left looking silly as it turns out he's not the intended recipient, and instead she feeds it to another woman. It's Change Time.

I love IKEA. :D

And in completely different news: I'm going to have a lot of fic to catch up on when I'm done with the Zombie!fic, aren't I? (I avoid reading fic in a fandom I'm writing in, for fear of ... I dunno, call it "cross-contamination". I've been known to avoid entire genres, or even avoid fiction altogether, when I'm writing non-fanfic, as well.) Which is to say, I apologise for not commenting and encouraging and whatnot, and I will be catching up ... probably in October. :D

Comments

[freya-sacksen.livejournal.com]

Cross-contamination is good, though!

I mean, so long as you're not obviously outright plagiarizing, it can be useful to read other people's works. It shows you different ways of writing things, gives you new perspectives on characters. You can see what they did right and what they did wrong, learn from those lessons and then try and apply what you've learned to what you're writing.

When it's a published author and their own fandom, I generally agree - Rowling got away with it because she had everything planned in advance - but the fics in our fandom are so weird and at such bizarre right angles that reading them is almost useful as it helps to put into words something you may have had difficulty defining before them.

The fact is, it is literally impossible to not cross-contaminate. Everything we read ever goes into our writing. There have been times when I've read a book I haven't looked at for years, edited some of my writing and found ideas from that book have seeped into my writing style.

If you don't cross-contaminate while you're writing, it can make your writing style stagnate. As stories progress, you'll want to try new things with the characters, new ways of twisting them around and playing with them, and seeing the way other people have seen them.

Maybe it's different for you, but I've always found reading other people's fanfics actually helps inspire me when I'm going through a bout of writer's block, even if it's just to make certain wires in my brain finally connect.

Just my two cents.

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

No, I know what you mean, and it definitely helps me to read a lot before I start writing, but I just can't read and write at the same time, for some reason. It;s like my head only has enough room in it for one version of a given character, and if I want to hold on to the version I'm writing about, I can't let any other version in, if that makes sense?

[freya-sacksen.livejournal.com]

It makes perfect sense. Everyone has different ways of writing, after all - there is not such thing as be-all end-all way to write.

[wimmeke.livejournal.com]

Haven't found the IKEA commercial you just mentioned, but when I saw this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu0ZkuyaYQM
It looked like the kind you'd find amusing. Alas, it's not that one yet.