I used to watch Masterpiece Theater with my parents as a kid and now this theme sounds like coming home

And that's so cool! Our brains are a marvel! Even when they produce terrible work! And that's really all I was trying to say here. A fic I read 25 yrs ago ended up affecting the way I write now, not because of its content but because of my *experience* of reading it.

Isn't that marvelous?

But I've read a lot, and I've written a lot, and I've been influnced by those things in ways it's taken me half my life to notice. I don't doubt that I'll notice more such things some-odd years in the future. Our subconscious does a lot more work than people give it credit for.

Or don't do any of that. I mean, who tf am I? All of this relates to my own experiences, the things I learned from my own teachers, coworkers. None of us can escape subjectivity. You don't have to subscribe to a solipsistic philosphy to say 'computer, end program' aloud, just in case.

Remember that a thing needn't be profound to have a message. Remember that 'this character is down bad for that one actually' counts as a message. Accept that different people will read into your work in different ways and come out the other side with different ideas of what it all means.

Read things closely, passively, attentively. Read masterpieces and the most terribly constructed crap to grace a page/screen. Write something even worse. Become okay with throwing things out. Grow more discerning. Take it less seriously, then take it more seriously, then take a break.

If you want to be a better writer - if you want to get closer to the goal of making art that says what you wish it to say, no matter the medium - then consume a *variety* of writing, and not in the way of a 'consumer' as an economic term.

Sentience and sapience are more than the sum of a living, thinking thing's parts. The ship of theseus once all boards were replaced still held its original shape. The hyper-watering-down by the tech industry of the meaning of 'smart' and 'intelligence' doesn't erase what it means to be self aware.

Now as I reread it I see how much of my fic-writer's voice came from this and other early, foundational works. Even after years of writing...well, a lot of crap, actually, somehow these old elements still leaked through. Which is what happens.

I know how reading that first big fic felt. I'll never forget it. I learned (even if it would take me a few more years to admit it) that I was queer *because* of that fic. Even the parts that made me uncomfortable taught me something - about people, stories, myself. *Especially* those parts at times

Do I want to make stories people want to read? Yes. But what do I want my work to *do*? To *say*? To evoke in someone else? What you write needn't be 'literary' or scholarly to do any of that. It doesn't even have to be *good*. 'This character is down bad for this one actually' counts.

When things I've read before - 20+ yr old fanfic very much included - impacts my writing now, it's always, *always* in part because of how that thing impacted me *emotionally* at one time or another. The things it evoked in me, even if that thing was contempt, or delight, or fucking...horniness ffs

The keywork there being *created*. Creation is not calculation. Its not simple input to output. Human minds are not computers. Personhood is essential to craft. Skill is born of an amalgamation of experience. You can memorize every word in a textbook and still learn nothing from it.

Practice is important and has its place, same as any other creative endeavor, but art is not the same as 'content'. One weighs the process much more heavily than the other. It's why 'AI art' is a misnomer, only ever approaching art when trained off the theft of art created by living artists -

Inversely, you can tell when the writer didn't enjoy it. When the whole process was a slog. When the focus was on liking the end product at the expense of that process. I can see it in my own writing; when it's poorer because I pushed to get it out for the sake of getting it out.

It takes more than those 4 things of coure, but that last one? More important than a lot of people realize. You can tell when the writer enjoyed the act of writing what you are now reading. Not just cared about it - enjoyed it. Even with blood, sweat, tears involved, the process can bring joy.

All of this is to say that good writing - or, at least, moving in the direction of good writing - requires:
1. reading a lot, both in volume and variety
2. writing a lot
3. learning how to take *and give* feedback
4. enjoying the process

And yesterday it hit me how essential all that was to being able to write (what I hope is) decent poetry now (or at least so my masters degree purports). It's no different to how being a voracious fiction reader growing up made me a better fiction writer later on.

I've ready so many types of poetry, have done general analysis and close readings, have heard it and read it and recited it, have read poems in zines and poems in anthologies and poems in collections that are much more like music albums than a string of greatest hits -