bewize

I'm going to make a second serious!post about my feelings with regards to the latest rounds of fandom uproar. To my astonishment, I find that my thought patterns have settled to the same conclusion with both the issues of race!fail and issues regarding the hurt/comfort paradigm.

In sum, this is my opinion -

"Authors, write whatever you want, but be prepared to stand behind it. Do not feel that you're entitled to a pass if you fail. If you write something, and people are upset about it, you should be able to explain why you wrote what you wrote and still sleep at night. If you cannot do this, then it's a safe bet that you have, indeed, Done It Wrong."

For a little bit of background, I wrote this post on DW (which is the same as this post on LJ) about an incident where I failed in the past and got called out on it. And you know what, I survived just fine.

Here's the short of it - I have two jobs, both require me to write a great deal and both require me to write persuasively. Also, both jobs require me to obtain feedback from my bosses/editors. In both jobs, I've been told to do better before, and it hurts my pride and it makes me upset and at the end of the day, I suck it up and do it better.

(And for the record, I had an asshole!boss once who threw something at me that I'd written and demanded, "What the hell is this shit?!", so it's not like the critiques I get in my professional life are all that nice. Just saying, for comparison's sake.)

( And here's the long of it. )

Today's 3w4dw theme is politics. Good God. The quickest way to lose friends is to talk politics. But, that's never stopped me before.

Luckily (or not), I don't want to discuss American politics today. Not exactly, anyway. I want to talk about the UK election, but there is simply no way that I can avoid talking about it like an American.

( Brace Yourself )

So the contestants had to nominate people all this week. The mods picked the top four nominations and have put them in charge of picking tribes for the next few weeks.

This means that IF I survive this vote, the tribes will be changing again. It also means that one of the four top votes will have to ask for me in their tribe (or maybe tribe 5 is everyone who didn't get picked...). *lol*

I'm really nervous about this vote. I reread my post and liked it, but I'm not sure it's strong enough to push me into next week. I will undoubtedly be back to ask for votes from you lovely people later (presuming that non-participants are able to vote this week).

For a game, this thing causes me a lot of stress.

That made me think, last night, about why it causes me stress. I think it's several reasons. One, I don't normally put my writing out and allow a "vote" of like or dislike to persuade me of much.

I've churned out tens of thousands of words of fiction for public consumption, and felt not even a tiny bit as nervous as I do when I put up these entries. I mean, I look forward to and enjoy feedback as much as any author does. I don't get paid, so hearing what someone thought is seriously a high all of its own. For these entries, though, it's a little different. This isn't fiction. It's my life. I guess part of me feels like people are voting not only on my writing skills, but on my life.

It makes responding to comments hard, too, because I find myself inferring things that likely were not implied. In other words, I need to get a grip.

But it was interesting to me at least, so I thought I'd share my thoughts.