In an alternate universe, everyone lived happily ever after, and Voyager never left Alpha Quadrant

[tysolna]

Spring has definitely sprung over here. The early birds are making quite a lot of noise, which should drive the early worms out of the earth. Spring flowers are blooming, even though it could be a little warmer. At night, the cats are serenading each other in the garden - well, they are screaming, anyway.


I'm slowly starting to get back into my daily routine: work a few hours early in the morning, lunch break, work a few hours in the afternoon, do fun stuff in the evenings. For a lazy sod like me, having an established routine and forcing myself to adhere to it is more or less the only way to get anything done.


Of course, there are always, and always will be, distractions, but I try my best to only let myself be distracted during lunch break and fun stuff hours. One distraction at the moment is a fan fiction writer's project I am involved in, on the web page design and story editing side. Since I will have to go over all the stories to format them into the new page design, I've also taken to reading them, and well - I thought I was a bad writer!

I'm not going to name names here - besides, you won't know them anyway, dear reader - but oh my. Quite apart from the formatting errors (why do people put spaces not only after each bit of punctuation, but also in front of it? Is that a rule that I am not aware of?) and the tonnes of unneccessary line breaks, there are so many spelling and grammar errors, things that an automatic spell checker won't pick up on. Things like "breathe" and "breath" being consistently used in the wrong sense, for example, as in "he took a deep breathe". Or having an Alien character with an Alien name, and not spell them the same twice in a row.
As for content... Mild slash aside, that's almost par for course these days, why add mpreg? Or have your obvious self-insert Mary Sue get raped? Or become spirit guide to a whole race of dragons?

Don't get me wrong, I do know the answer to this, having led a rather extensive day-dreaming fantasy life myself. Once upon a time, I even wrote these fantasies down, but I've never shown anyone, writing these stories purely for my own pleasure and being well aware that there were Mary Sues in there.* I won't judge the authors, since I don't know them that well. But, what's more to the point, these things probably wouldn't bug me so much if they were well-written.
Of the stories I've proof-read so far, I've chuckled appreciatively at one, really liked the idea behind a second, found one unbearable for all the best reasons, and thought one excelled (but I knew this story before I started on the project). So, that's four, out of twenty. There are about sixty more to read, and quite frankly, I am looking forward to reading them, and mentally tearing them to shreds.

Yes, I know, this is a fan fiction thing, which is primarily supposed to be fun. This is not a creative writing class. And yes, maybe my standards for written works have grown to be rather high, which is no wonder given that I am friends with two budding writers. But I don't see why fan fiction should be bad fiction. Reading fan fiction should at least be as much fun as writing it.


* Except for the one story I actually sent in to a fan club's contest, and which I cringe at these days. My story won, but only because there were no other entries. I was 15, I believe.



I sort of miss having someone around the place.


Yes, I'm still thinking of how to answer that question.

Comments

[manchester-red.livejournal.com]

'The early birds are making quite a lot of noise'

those Brit girls in their mini skirts again? ;)


BTW, no reply as of yet . . .


and also btw, re that phone call I said I'd update you on? Perfect . . ;)

[tysolna]

*eg* Yeah, those Brit girls never seem to go to bed! ;)

*nods* Noted.

Yay! :-D