read more fanficion
Dec. 27th, 2015 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
undieshogun I think one of my biggest weaknesses this year is that I've been underestimating how productive reading critically can be. I feel like I would have grown a lot faster if I had made more time to read more fanfiction and leave feedback, because leaving comments should involve reading carefully for what's good (and what's bad for some people but I am still of the firm belief that negative feedback should not be the reader's to give) and putting that down in a comment so that both the writer and i can see it helps us both grow as writers. i can take those techniques that i think are good and try to use them in my own writing. i think it leads to a more exponential?? sort of growth than pure writing practice does, because changing just one thing about your writing can make an unbelievable difference. of course, you have to learn how to do these new things so obviously writing practice is still crucial, but it just goes faster if you continue to actively learn new things from others so they should be used together.
and i say read more fanfiction specifically, because obviously you could still do the same thing with novels and other original stories, but the unique thing about fanfiction is how many different and complete stories you can read in one sitting, so you can write your feedback at a good and productive pace. the thing about original short stories these days is that while they are very artful and great to read, i feel like the ones i have read tend to be....kind of vague. it's hard to build an entire world and cast in like 20 pages, and i just find it difficult to think about the feedback i should be giving when i'm too busy getting involved in wondering wtf i just read. and, obviously, fanfiction is so easy to access. there are thousands of fics (probably more tbh) being published every single day in every one of my fandoms, and it's ALL FREE. it's kind of a no-brainer that fanfiction is going to take up the majority of my reading material.
so yeah, more goals for 2016, read read read more fanfiction and leave good, productive feedback!!!!!!!!!
and i say read more fanfiction specifically, because obviously you could still do the same thing with novels and other original stories, but the unique thing about fanfiction is how many different and complete stories you can read in one sitting, so you can write your feedback at a good and productive pace. the thing about original short stories these days is that while they are very artful and great to read, i feel like the ones i have read tend to be....kind of vague. it's hard to build an entire world and cast in like 20 pages, and i just find it difficult to think about the feedback i should be giving when i'm too busy getting involved in wondering wtf i just read. and, obviously, fanfiction is so easy to access. there are thousands of fics (probably more tbh) being published every single day in every one of my fandoms, and it's ALL FREE. it's kind of a no-brainer that fanfiction is going to take up the majority of my reading material.
so yeah, more goals for 2016, read read read more fanfiction and leave good, productive feedback!!!!!!!!!
