Encouraging feedback

[pegkerr]

is something that I frequently crave. I wrestle constantly with doubts about my own ability--especially when I suffer through writing sessions like the one I had this morning, when I sit in front of the computer and tear at my hair and wonder, what on earth made me think that I could ever string three sentences together?

And then, just to balance out the agony, I get an unexpected boost by something like this post by vanityfair, which is rather like being unexpectedly given a giant box of dark chocolate truffles, lovingly wrapped in gold paper and tied with a gold ribbon bow, just for me. When all I've had to eat for a week is gruel. It feels marvelous, so marvelous that the shock is almost too much to bear.

But I could get used to it, I think.

Thanks, Aja.

Comments

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

*Hugs Peg for a long time*

Thank *you*. I had to come and write out what I was feeling in that post before I could continue reading the story--I spent the next two or three hours after writing it finishing The Wild Swans. I think I bawled for pretty much the whole time.

So now I feel really drained, in that spent, exhausted way you feel after a really good cry-- but you have also, I must make this clear, moved me and *inspired* me in ways that I probably can't say just yet.

The one thing putting all my thoughts together in that post convinced me to do was to finally be honest with my mom about the fact that I write slash. She has always looked askance at "the gay stuff" as it manifested itself in my life, and 4, nearly 5, now, years ago, when I told her I wrote fanfiction (over at Pemberley and the then-brand-new DWG), she was appalled that I was spending all that time on something that wasn't publishable.

So confessing to her that I just spent the last year writing nonpublishable fan fiction about two teenage wizards getting it on is going to be very hard for me and it's something i've been very scared of for a while. But she knows I'm going to be moderating at the convention--she's proud of me for that; and tonight, thinking over all that I'd digested in my post, and then finishing the novel, made me realize that I'm not afraid anymore--that I *want* her to know that I care about what I'm writing and that it's the reason I was invited to the conference in the first place. So right now I'm printing out my story, a copy of my livejournal post, and some of the letters and reviews I've received for my t00by little fanfic. I am going to send them all to her with a letter of explanation--a 'coming out' letter, really is what it feels like--and my copy of The Wild Swans.

I really, really, *really* want to be able to put as much love and care and feeling into everything I write as I sensed you had for your characters in this book, Peg. And moreover I long to be able to touch and move and feel like I've been able to make a difference in somebody's life by writing about what's important to me. You truly did that for me. I don't read a lot of fantasy (though I love Grimms fairy tales and always have); I have only recently started seeking out subtextual or genre gay fiction, and yours is the first story I ever read that dealt so openly with AIDS and the pain and the reality of it. It will take a long long time to get over, and I hope a part of me never gets over it; right now I feel deeply inspired and motivated, and if that stays with me, it will be in part because of you.

Thank you again.