Late last spring, we decided to move. We aren't far from our last home, but we are further out in a more undeveloped area and frankly, it's nice to be surrounded by trees instead of a bunch of other houses. We closed on our house in early July and then started the move. It's crazy how much stuff you can accumulate when you live in the same place for 16 years, even if you aren't particularly a pack rat.
One of the lovely things about our new home is I have a dedicated writing nook. I've never set aside space like this for myself before. (Pretty much every Trixie story I have ever written was done either sitting on my bed or couch with my laptop on my lap - which I suppose was the original idea behind the name?)
Equally nice is though I have a long commute to and from work, because of my hours, I'm home between 4:15 and 4:30 and I no longer bring hours of work home with me like I did at my previous job. I actually have - gasp! - free time again.
I have spent the past month or so re-reading everything. It's been so long, I actually need all the reminders. And dangit, every time I think surely I've caught all the typos, another read-through reveals even more. Wince.
There have been frequent moments of, "I wrote that?" And not always in a cringe way. Sometimes, I'm all, "Okay, that's not half bad. Go me!" It's the passage of time that's really astounding me lately, though. When I first stumbled across the Trixie fandom online with Barb's original website, my youngest was a baby. She's now 27. The age I was when she was born. I have to keep reminding myself of when these stories are set - what was going on in the world at that time, what technology was available, what the internet was like, etc. I also have to remember what it was like to be a young 20-something person, which was a lot easier to do when I was writing as a 20-something person myself than my present mid-50s.
One of the lovely things about our new home is I have a dedicated writing nook. I've never set aside space like this for myself before. (Pretty much every Trixie story I have ever written was done either sitting on my bed or couch with my laptop on my lap - which I suppose was the original idea behind the name?)
Equally nice is though I have a long commute to and from work, because of my hours, I'm home between 4:15 and 4:30 and I no longer bring hours of work home with me like I did at my previous job. I actually have - gasp! - free time again.
I have spent the past month or so re-reading everything. It's been so long, I actually need all the reminders. And dangit, every time I think surely I've caught all the typos, another read-through reveals even more. Wince.
There have been frequent moments of, "I wrote that?" And not always in a cringe way. Sometimes, I'm all, "Okay, that's not half bad. Go me!" It's the passage of time that's really astounding me lately, though. When I first stumbled across the Trixie fandom online with Barb's original website, my youngest was a baby. She's now 27. The age I was when she was born. I have to keep reminding myself of when these stories are set - what was going on in the world at that time, what technology was available, what the internet was like, etc. I also have to remember what it was like to be a young 20-something person, which was a lot easier to do when I was writing as a 20-something person myself than my present mid-50s.
I recently binge-watched the first half of season 1 of Veronica Mars. It's slightly too far in the future compared to ASKOF, but close enough to get me back in that mindset. It also reminded me of something I hadn't thought of in years. I used to hang out on the Television Without Pity forums for a few shows, including VM. One day, I logged in and people were jokingly referring to me as a psychologist. I didn't understand why, at first, but then working backward through the posts, I came to a link to an interview with show creator Rob Thomas, which included this bit:
"It's like the guilty pleasure scene in 'Soapdish' where Sally Field goes to the ball and gets to be adored," Thomas said. "The day after a 'Veronica Mars' episode airs, if you swim around in the Television Without Pity Web site, it's what a producer on the show calls 'a tidal wave of love mixed with a thousand paper cuts.' "
Thomas said these articulate viewers sometimes even come up with theories about the show and its characters that never occurred to the show's creator.
"Somebody did a complete psychological breakdown of Logan and suggested that he resents Veronica for her loving relationship with her father, and because he has a cold relationship with his father, he can never appreciate Veronica," Thomas said. "That never occurred to me."
Who knows, maybe some smart viewer helped this smart writer solve one of the mysteries of the smart, entertaining "Veronica Mars."
That was me. ("That was I!" shouts the Grumpy Grammar Geek in the back of my head.) I was the "smart viewer." Who turned out to be wrong, in the end, *snort*. Or maybe a little right, because that observation of Logan could still stand, but it's definitely not where the show ultimately went by a long shot.
But this also reminded me of why I feel like the internet has lost something precious since I first started writing fanfiction. And no, I don't mean the demise of Television Without Pity, though, man, do I miss that bucket of unrelenting snark. Having dedicated websites where fans of anything (books, TV shows, buttered croissants - whatever) could gather and really discuss their obsession with said thing was just cool. Oh, I know there are still sites out there about cooking or true crime or childrearing, but it just isn't the same to me. I feel like social media ended the online communities as people gravitated to those outlets. And to be fair, with some reason. Social media has given fans unprecedented access to the creators/writers/stars of their favorite fandoms. Why gather with a collection of online folks to speculate why the writers of the latest episode of your favorite show chose to kill off a main character when you can hop on X and ask them directly?
I know, I know. The world moves on. But the same sort of nostalgia that pulled me into the online Trixie world to begin with in the late 90s has me wishing for that world again. The silly forum posts. The epic, late night chat room marathons. The in-depth character discussions. Even the squabbles and arguments. Because all of these things came from the same place - a deep love of the fictional world of Sleepyside and its inhabitants - and sharing that love with other fans was a wonderful experience.
I really was making a point in here somewhere, lol.
The Trixie Belden of ASKOF still lives in that world. So maybe I can't literally go back in time to then, but it's nice, as I start writing again, to feel like I am somehow revisiting it. And sites like A Simple Kind of Fear - sites owned and maintained by individual fans of a certain thing - may have been replaced by social media and endless blogs where folks post a single recipe among 18 different ads and pop-up videos along with their entire life story before you finally get to the teriyaki baked chicken, but I am holding on to this. Even when life keeps getting in the way, just knowing it's still here waiting for me is something that genuinely makes me happy.
Now, it's time to cue up my late 90s, early 2000s play list and get writing. :)
"It's like the guilty pleasure scene in 'Soapdish' where Sally Field goes to the ball and gets to be adored," Thomas said. "The day after a 'Veronica Mars' episode airs, if you swim around in the Television Without Pity Web site, it's what a producer on the show calls 'a tidal wave of love mixed with a thousand paper cuts.' "
Thomas said these articulate viewers sometimes even come up with theories about the show and its characters that never occurred to the show's creator.
"Somebody did a complete psychological breakdown of Logan and suggested that he resents Veronica for her loving relationship with her father, and because he has a cold relationship with his father, he can never appreciate Veronica," Thomas said. "That never occurred to me."
Who knows, maybe some smart viewer helped this smart writer solve one of the mysteries of the smart, entertaining "Veronica Mars."
That was me. ("That was I!" shouts the Grumpy Grammar Geek in the back of my head.) I was the "smart viewer." Who turned out to be wrong, in the end, *snort*. Or maybe a little right, because that observation of Logan could still stand, but it's definitely not where the show ultimately went by a long shot.
But this also reminded me of why I feel like the internet has lost something precious since I first started writing fanfiction. And no, I don't mean the demise of Television Without Pity, though, man, do I miss that bucket of unrelenting snark. Having dedicated websites where fans of anything (books, TV shows, buttered croissants - whatever) could gather and really discuss their obsession with said thing was just cool. Oh, I know there are still sites out there about cooking or true crime or childrearing, but it just isn't the same to me. I feel like social media ended the online communities as people gravitated to those outlets. And to be fair, with some reason. Social media has given fans unprecedented access to the creators/writers/stars of their favorite fandoms. Why gather with a collection of online folks to speculate why the writers of the latest episode of your favorite show chose to kill off a main character when you can hop on X and ask them directly?
I know, I know. The world moves on. But the same sort of nostalgia that pulled me into the online Trixie world to begin with in the late 90s has me wishing for that world again. The silly forum posts. The epic, late night chat room marathons. The in-depth character discussions. Even the squabbles and arguments. Because all of these things came from the same place - a deep love of the fictional world of Sleepyside and its inhabitants - and sharing that love with other fans was a wonderful experience.
I really was making a point in here somewhere, lol.
The Trixie Belden of ASKOF still lives in that world. So maybe I can't literally go back in time to then, but it's nice, as I start writing again, to feel like I am somehow revisiting it. And sites like A Simple Kind of Fear - sites owned and maintained by individual fans of a certain thing - may have been replaced by social media and endless blogs where folks post a single recipe among 18 different ads and pop-up videos along with their entire life story before you finally get to the teriyaki baked chicken, but I am holding on to this. Even when life keeps getting in the way, just knowing it's still here waiting for me is something that genuinely makes me happy.
Now, it's time to cue up my late 90s, early 2000s play list and get writing. :)
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