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Jul. 10th, 2025 09:11 amI dreamed that a respected elder writer had looked at my AO3 collection and provided brief feedback on each of the stories. I recall the feedback existing in the form of a printout with handwritten notes in the margins - rather improbably, as we live on opposite sides of the world and have never met in person.
I was well chuffed that on one of my stories (the one featuring Princess Ozma and a neglected character from the later Oz books) he wrote that his only major criticism was that it wasn't longer. Very specifically three times as long, which I had to admit was fair, as I'd basically written only the first act of the story, introducing the situation and characters, and then had run out of steam (or had hit a deadline on the fanfic exchange I'd written it for, I couldn't at the moment recall which) and left the rest of the adventure implied. I decided I should have a shot at finishing it off properly.
I did a web search to find a copy of the Oz novel the character first appeared in, and re-read that appearance. (In the manner of dreams, I didn't so much read it as see the action playing out in front of me.) I found that the character had more characterisation than I'd remembered when I wrote the fic, and a hint of backstory involving a large family that didn't accord with her situation in the fic. No worries, I said to myself, I can sort all of that out in a rewrite.
As I started waking up, I began planning out the changes I would make. After a while it occurred to me that you can never trust the results from Dream Google and that I was going to have to repeat the web search in the waking world before I committed to any changes to the characterisation.
After another while, I realised that this would be unnecessary because I've never actually written a fic featuring Princess Ozma and the Joyful Rabbit of Oz, and indeed that, to the best of my reasonably extensive knowledge, the Joyful Rabbit of Oz doesn't exist.
I was well chuffed that on one of my stories (the one featuring Princess Ozma and a neglected character from the later Oz books) he wrote that his only major criticism was that it wasn't longer. Very specifically three times as long, which I had to admit was fair, as I'd basically written only the first act of the story, introducing the situation and characters, and then had run out of steam (or had hit a deadline on the fanfic exchange I'd written it for, I couldn't at the moment recall which) and left the rest of the adventure implied. I decided I should have a shot at finishing it off properly.
I did a web search to find a copy of the Oz novel the character first appeared in, and re-read that appearance. (In the manner of dreams, I didn't so much read it as see the action playing out in front of me.) I found that the character had more characterisation than I'd remembered when I wrote the fic, and a hint of backstory involving a large family that didn't accord with her situation in the fic. No worries, I said to myself, I can sort all of that out in a rewrite.
As I started waking up, I began planning out the changes I would make. After a while it occurred to me that you can never trust the results from Dream Google and that I was going to have to repeat the web search in the waking world before I committed to any changes to the characterisation.
After another while, I realised that this would be unnecessary because I've never actually written a fic featuring Princess Ozma and the Joyful Rabbit of Oz, and indeed that, to the best of my reasonably extensive knowledge, the Joyful Rabbit of Oz doesn't exist.
