There's not enough bitching

[Yuthirin]

I hate being sick while on vacation!

[Anastasia]

I hate puking, period.

[Brian]

I think I'm done playing Dreadmore with permadeath enabled.

Roguelikes can be kinda neat.

Ridiculous cheapness is not.

Edit: According to the wiki I encountered a bug involving fire on your current tile being stacked.  Repeatedly.  I think my decision will stand.

[Dracos]

yay no-permadeath :P

[Anastasia]

This topic is nearly 8 years old. We've had too much bitching.

[Yuthirin]

This topic is nearly 8 years old. We haven't had nearly enough bitching.

Fixed that for you.

[Brian]

This thread is like a shared blog.  Who needs facebook?

[Yuthirin]

I don't really bitch on Facebook. Too many friends are business related.

[Anastasia]

I don't really bitch on Facebook. Too many friends are business related.

That and facebook is easy to blend worlds with. There's no real discretion.

[Yuthirin]

Exactly. That's why I only talk about how awesome I am on Facebook.

[Anastasia]

Good call.

[Arakawa]

Someone I consider to have good taste in writing expressed curiosity about my writing hobby, then (after I handed over the link with some misgivings) gave in-person feedback.

Pointing out the obvious - that I'm catastrophically failing to cross the gender gap with my narration. Mikuru narrates like a precocious, snarky, likeable eight-year old boy.

GODDAMN IT (because I have no idea how to even begin to rectify this)

And what was to me less obvious - there was just the one bit at the beginning where I display a reasonably engaging sense of character, and then everything after that goes flat.

GODDAMN IT * 10,000 (because I can't sustain the state in which the indicated bit was written for maybe more than half an hour on a good day)

If I can't... write about... people... how... can I... understand them?? As something other than mechanisms to be exploited! This is, surprisingly enough, pretty important to me!

(Which is probably why I spend so much of my time writer's blocked.)

Sorry, needed to vent. I think I'm overreacting right now. (Been a while since I've overreacted to something... I think it's because someone in-person unwittingly saw -- for just a moment -- past my facade to what is arguably part of the psychologically shriveled thing within, and then had the -- from my perspective -- condescension to tell me that I was worrying too much about a non-issue. They didn't do anything wrong, but when I can hide a problem that well it becomes an incredibly isolating feeling.)

Probably in the morning I'll resolve to do less bitching and more writing. Even if it comes out as mostly drivel. Or maybe I'll drop my story and search for an easier idea. It's also a fifty-fifty chance I might delete this post.

[Anastasia]

Keep writing. The answers may seem far away, but more experience and practice will only bring you closer to your goals.

[Arakawa]

Okay, putting the hissy fit aside.

With the specific fic I'm talking about, it was a weird but potentially fun idea; however mostly unworkable since I didn't know which end to grasp the story from. Which was... it was a spur of the moment decision to switch the entire fic to first person Mikuru narration. And the first chapter felt like it came out fine (the sum of feedback I've received seems to indicate she's at least mischaracterized in an engaging fashion) and I thought that the idea might, after all, come together. Except it's a huge problem to have a female narrator if I can't write feminine prose (at any age) and people notice this fact.

(My first choice of fandom, Lucky Star, is also kind of problematic in that regard, with a cast of mostly girls.)

Which brings me to the problem of just plain finding inspiration. It's pretty obvious that unless I'm really inspired, what I produce isn't even engagingly mischaracterized, it's just flat. With weird, occasionally squick-inducing spikes which I use instead of emotional engagement. Which corresponds nicely to the way my flat, immovable psyche perceives things.

Right, except I'm not that inspired, in spite of having a serious psychological need to do this. I'm not even sure what to write anymore. Since these frustrations have drained my inspiration and without inspiration I have to admit I'm stuck at a very low baseline. And experience shows the only way to get inspired again is to do some (passable) writing first.

The question comes back to what.

* Arakawa wanders off to think.

[Muphrid]

What is it that this person found to be masculine about the piece?  I admit, writing from a female perspective is something I can only guess at and approximate.  There must be something recognizably not how most girls or women would think that should give some idea of how to fix it.