listen. look at my perfect boy. my beautiful little boy. My shining light. my sweet pea my darling my everything. now do you understand.
[ID: four images of Pharaoh the cat from yugioh gx. the first shows him worriedly looking to the side. the second shows him holding fish bones. the third shows him side eyeing something while his paws are tucked underneath him. The fourth image shows him happy. end ID]
I have a question for the fanfic writers among you: How do you treat your work in progress when a very similar story is put out there? Do you go on writing - in the spirit that everything is unique in its own way - or do you abandon the piece - in the spirit of preventing 'superfluous' contributions?
Let's add a further wrench into the process by saying the recently published work by another author, so similar to your own, seems so much better written than your own (granted we are always our own worst critics). Where do you go with that?
Maybe this is a question for readers, too. Do you mind reading similar works/story lines?
Rereading Sunshine by Robin McKinley (one of my favourite vampire books). All I remember from reading it 10 years ago is the amount of page-time dedicated to baking cinnamon rolls. But I've realised, this time round, that the baking of cinnamon rolls is the symptom of a much larger theme in characterisation - Rae's ride-or-die commitment to the 'I'm just some guy' bit.
Every single chapter, another thing is revealed about Rae that puts her closer to being a special snowflake Chosen One: her name is Raven Blase but her nickname is Sunshine, she has sunlight powers, she's not just an innocent bystander but the daughter of a powerful warlock, she can help a vampire walk in sunlight, she's performing powerful magic. And every single time Rae just turns round and says to the reader, "but that's not important :) I'm just some guy :) I really like baking :) ignore that gothic heroine coding :) it's time to get up at 4am to make bread :)"
Her commitment to being Just Some Guy is genuinely carrying the novel. Every single day she becomes more of a Chosen One, but there's cinnamon rolls to make. Fucking D&D-ass characterisation. High art.
(for the purposes of this poll, there is no monkey's paw situation: the chore you pick stays the same level of difficulty/grossness/etc. as it normally is for you, and you only have to do it as often as you want to. the chores you don't pick are magically done for you exactly the way you'd want them to be, just with zero effort on your part.)