passing thoughts on a Sunday

 I've been encountering a lot of media lately where something is well-known and has a considerable fanbase, and yet for some reason it does NOT do a thing for me at all. In particular, a lot of my writer friends here and elsewhere are totally into The Expanse. A started watching it the other day, and while I can see the appeal, there were just too many Meh parts to it that didn't appeal to me. I loved the detailed world building and the story idea is interesting...but found the noirish aspect of it tiring. Unfortunately, its pilot episode also suffered from being tediously glacial to me, to the point that I gave up halfway through. Another recent example of this was NK Jemisin's The City We Became. Again, brilliant world building, and a really neat idea...but I just found it repetitive (each character seems to experience The Same Exact Type Of Showdown With The Main Villain) and in some parts extremely slow. She's a great writer, but I just couldn't bother finishing the book, even though I got about two thirds of the way in.

This of course made me think a bit about my own writing...are my books tedious? I imagine the Bridgetown Trilogy could possibly use a bit more trimming. I try to run with the rule of thumb that if I'm getting bored writing it, then the reader will have probably gotten bored sometime earlier. At the same time, though, this is not the first (and probably not the last) time where what I really need to do is be patient because Bigger Things are Coming. I suppose so, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Anyhoo, that's what was on my mind lately -- the way that sometimes my brain will totally be on a different page than everyone else's. I find it kind of fascinating when that happens, actually. :)