What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

seraphile-blog asked: I'm really bad at explaining sexism, so I usually collect resources that explain it well. I want you to know you are a big part of it. I feel kinda bad cause I read S&G, and it felt rather awkward and done before, for me? I knew there was a sequel, but I wasn't compelled to read it. Yet I love your writing in general. This is just my personal experience with S&G, not really a critique. Do you think if you rewrote S&G now, would it be different? If yes, how so?

Solace & Grief was written before I started actively thinking about tropes and sexism and culture as being influential on narrative - literally the idea came to me by accident, and it was ages before I realised I was writing an actual novel, so there’s a lot of stuff I included without as much scrutiny as I would do now. I’m definitely proud of it as a first effort, but if I were to write it again today, it’d be a very different book, not only because I’ve grown as a writer since then, but because my perception of narrative has fundamentally changed. Hopefully, some of that evolution is evident in the sequel, but there’s only so much I could do within the parameters set out in the original.

Honestly? It’s occurred to me that I might be fundamentally better at commenting on culture than creating it; at the very least, I find essays and blogging much easier than fiction, and while that doesn’t mean I’m a bad novelist, it does suggest that, for me, making stuff up requires more effort and energy to get right. Which I’m very keen to improve on, because I really love writing fiction. But if I end up being known more for my blogging than as an author, I can live with that. For me, the important thing is that I get to engage with stories in a way that makes me happy, and actively enough that there’s always more to learn. So long as I can keep doing that, I’ll count this whole living-by-words gig as a success.

  1. fozmeadows posted this