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Craftsmanship
Jul. 20th, 2008 08:37 amLast week my newest story "Consequences" went up on the AEG site, and it created a certain amount of fuss on the various L5R forums. That wasn't at all a surprise; when a well-known character dies there will always be a certain number of people who are upset about it--it comes with the territory. And this wasn't the first time I'd written a story that created a fuss, so I wasn't too disturbed by it. Everyone is convinced that the Story Team hates their faction personally and/or has no idea how to write it correctly. More of the territory.
What did bother me was a post that suggested that the solution to the alleged bad portrayal of Scorpion characters was to make a lot of whiny, bitchy noise, and then we'll stop it--and that, that did bother me. A lot. Sunetra died to a minor miscalculation against someone who was really good at what he did. That is the simple truth of it. A reader who didn't find the set-up convincing could reasonably conclude that I did a poor job of writing it, or even that I am a bad writer, and I have no complaint about that: that is their right. (They might even be correct.) To suggest that I deliberately wrote poorly, and if they just whine at me long enough I'll desist and do a better job in the future--that's just plain insulting. Deeply, deeply insulting.
As a player and a fan of L5R there are factions I love and factions I'm indifferent to and factions that drive me up the wall, and when I sit down to write none of that matters. I don't like the granola bars we make in my bakery (they are bland and far too sweet: a bad combination), but I make them with the same care I do everything else because other people do like them and they are depending on me to get it right. Being dedicated to a craft doesn't mean that you get to pick and choose when you are going to do something well, because if you don't do your best every time you will never be your best. It's that simple.
This weekend I am sitting down to write another story, which may or may not create controversy. It doesn't matter: I'm going to write it the way I do all the others. The doubters can sit in the dark and howl all they like.
What did bother me was a post that suggested that the solution to the alleged bad portrayal of Scorpion characters was to make a lot of whiny, bitchy noise, and then we'll stop it--and that, that did bother me. A lot. Sunetra died to a minor miscalculation against someone who was really good at what he did. That is the simple truth of it. A reader who didn't find the set-up convincing could reasonably conclude that I did a poor job of writing it, or even that I am a bad writer, and I have no complaint about that: that is their right. (They might even be correct.) To suggest that I deliberately wrote poorly, and if they just whine at me long enough I'll desist and do a better job in the future--that's just plain insulting. Deeply, deeply insulting.
As a player and a fan of L5R there are factions I love and factions I'm indifferent to and factions that drive me up the wall, and when I sit down to write none of that matters. I don't like the granola bars we make in my bakery (they are bland and far too sweet: a bad combination), but I make them with the same care I do everything else because other people do like them and they are depending on me to get it right. Being dedicated to a craft doesn't mean that you get to pick and choose when you are going to do something well, because if you don't do your best every time you will never be your best. It's that simple.
This weekend I am sitting down to write another story, which may or may not create controversy. It doesn't matter: I'm going to write it the way I do all the others. The doubters can sit in the dark and howl all they like.
