October 27. 2004 20:10

Lacking confidence in my story writing skills...

I thought I could shake off the (unnatural) feeling of guilt I get when someone sees my stories, as they're full of romantic fluff and childish stuff. It's very unnerving to be so ashamed of what I like most, but I can't help it, I've heard too much criticism towards that kind of stuff from my friends. Some of the girls here are writing the same sort of stuff, some are actually even doing boy's love openly at school, which I could never do, so I thought it might be better here. But today I got one of those self-pitying depressions again.

When it comes to my stories, I have very little confidence in them. It's just that it's been ages since I last wrote a decent story and I have no idea how good the ones I write now are. I have trouble finding an idea worthy of supporting a story longer than a few scenes. I'm trying to find something really great all the time, but then I think how many stories with a simple storyline I've loved. In fact, some of the best manga I've read have no world-shaking revelations behind them. I try to convince myself that something small, or even something full of cliches is enough, that what I do can't be so much worse than any unprofessional doujinshi, but it's not really working. I think I need someone whom I can show my stories to and who'd give an honest opinion about them. And that person should of course like the same stuff as me, or it'd be no use...

Today this lack of self confidence was triggered by the Inu-Yasha doujinshi I'm making. It concentrates on cute scenes between Sango and Miroku and the weakness Sango has in Kohaku being Naraku's servant. The setting is from around episode 80 from the anime, so it's a bit different than what I'd make now, having seen the whole series. I've re-written it already once, because I didn't think the fight worked when it was divided in two, and because of that I had to drop a lot of Sango+Miroku fluff from it. The thing is, I only re-wrote half of the story and didn't go through the whole thing to see if it was logical. When I started finishing it, I felt it didn't go as smoothly as I wanted it to, so today I re-wrote some of the dialogue to bring more emphasis on Sango's feelings about Kohaku, which had been way too mild on the previous version. I even had to add a page to clear out the reason of the whole fight. Now, though, I feel like the story is pulled between the Sango/Miroku axis and the Sango/Kohaku axis. I think the story might work well enough to be finished now, but I'm afraid the two subjects are eating each other in such a short story, so that neither has the proper spotlight they should have. I don't think I can do anything about it, though, unless I trash the whole thing and start from scratch, so I'll just have to go with it like this and do another story after that, then.

Apart from the story, there's also the problem of my drawing style changing in between the story. I started the first pages about a year ago and then I was able ot mimic Takahashi's style pretty well, but now I've forgotten how I did it and the rest of the pages will be more in my own style... I could do the first pages again, but there are so many and they're good enough now, so I don't really want to. I'm a bit too lazy, really, don't want to put the extra effort in...

There's just one thing that keeps me from trashing the whole story. Okay, three things, and the fact that it's not really that bad. First, I really want to do an Inu-Yasha doujinshi, so I can play with the characters I love and to show my love for them. Second, I've been working on this for too long to just leave it aside. And third, Matt saw me working on it today and wants to see it when it's done, and I can't tell him I chickened and threw it away... The scriptwriting teachers saw me, too, but they didn't ask for such a "friendly" thing (the border between a regular teacher and a student is too wide ^_^). The did ask me about the story and said doing a doujinshi is a great way of studying someone's art style ^_^ They had actually noticed I was away last week and came to say hi, and one of them calls me "Anna-chan", which makes me feel warm inside ^_^

It's good that I wrote all this down now. It cleared my mind a bit so it's easier to get on those other scripts I should write today. Doing that in the depressed state of mind I had before writing this would've been impossible... Now I can at least try. If I can't do that, I guess I'll just have to do some real work on websites... Writing stories all the time is so much more fun than ordered work. I'll just have to try and keep myself away from the new Copic markers I bought... Tomorrow I'll buy even more, so I'm not sure if I can resist the temptetion of colouring a picture with them.

Uh, now I just have to shake the nasty thought of unpleasant work before I can start on the scripts ^_^;; Or maybe I just should do some web stuff first, as I'm on the mood already...