Friday Rants and Raves - August 15

[sarillia]

Hey all! I haven't done this in a while. How are you doing? How's the writing going? Things to celebrate? Complaints? Let's hear it!

Today's picture is Awaiting the Rebirth by Peter Gric, a wonderfully weird example of fantastic realism:

Comments

[inevitableentresol]

I'm feeling pretty good about my writing goals.

My challenge this year for myself was to write something novel-length-ish, anything at all, fanfic or original, and not to care how good it was.

I've finished the first draft of something up to the last chapter now, and I'm kind of high on the achievement. It only took me about a month to do it, which I never thought I could manage.

Before this, I only wrote short stories, and had a very slow writing rate. I have all kinds of future long length stories, both original and fanfic, that I've long been planning and now seem a lot more possible.

I did write myself into a bind, though. I lost the credibility of the character motivation right at the end, which was when I ground down to a halt and eventually decided to stop and go back. I'm pretty sure I can fix it. I'm going back to edit the start again first, and then work my way through it to find my way out of it.

I found that forcing myself to just keep writing on and on for that shortish period not only massively raised my wordcount but helped the general quality of the other short stories I've finished this summer (I hope).

I wouldn't sign up to a formal NaNoWriMo, it doesn't appeal at all, but it occurred to me that I did do something similar on my own, ie a speed first draft in less than a month. It was great, but not if I'd tried to force it. It just happened naturally.

[sarillia]

It's great that you seem to have found what works for you! I'm a big proponent of experimenting until you manage to do that.

I also want to say I love your icon. Ema is so cute. :)

[inevitableentresol]

Thank you! Ema is so much fun, taking all her little notes.

I've experimented for years, and found out so much stuff that doesn't work for me but apparently works great for other people. So frustrating! It made me wonder what was wrong with me.

Things that don't work for me:
- forcing myself to write every day
- any kind of organised writing spree (including NaNoWriMo, write-a-thons, writers' forums, and writers' groups)
- plotting my stories in too much detail, especially the endings
- any kind of "how to write" literature or software


What does work for me:
- rigidly enforcing several rest days from my writing each week
- deciding on the emotional note I want to hit at the end of my stories, but not planning the details
- not writing unless I've had enough sleep
- stopping my writing every day when I still want to do more

It's taken me many years to get this far. I still have a lot to learn.

This comm is pretty good in that everyone respects that each writer works differently. Some places are very prescriptive and it's depressing when you don't fit the box.

Hope your challenge is going well. :)

[splinteredstar]

Yeah, that's the thing - everyone's brain works differently, and there's no /right/ way to do this. Anyone who says "you're producing art the wrong way" is being a jerk.

Glad you've found your methods!

[inevitableentresol]

Thanks.

Especially the "write every day" method. That works for so many people. It
seems to be very effective.

Not for me, though. It's a guaranteed way to make me stop writing at all, and if I do manage to write, to make it terrible (usually I go back over what I've already written, and ruin it, and forget to save the original because I find the whole thing so stressful).

It does give me extra admiration for those who do work that way, though, and succeed with their daily writing.

I hope you find your methods too! Lots of trial and error is the only way for each person.

[sarillia]

If it helps, I know of plenty of other people who say that writing every day doesn't work for them either. And a bunch of others who say that the other things on your list don't work for them too.

It's my firm belief that any time someone asks "Am I the only one...?" the answer is pretty much always no and sometimes I find that pretty comforting.

[inevitableentresol]

I've met no one else so far apart from myself who has had a bad time with trying to write every day. Perhaps it's because those who do write every day, and find it works for them, are much more likely to talk about it?

So thanks, that's nice to hear.

I think of my way as being like a brain athlete. Athletes deliberately build rest days into their training programs, so why shouldn't writers? The brain is after all one of the body's biggest muscles (after the posterior, which writers also use, for sitting on). :P

The one thing about write_away is that I've been able to see that there as many writing methods as there are people.

[sarillia]

I do think you get more people preaching the ways that work for them to other people rather than talking about what doesn't work unless it went so spectacularly badly that they got a good story out of it. Writing advice especially tends to be very "you have to try this!" and "never do that!". It's a little hard to make an annoying prescriptive writing rule out of the opposite of writing every day so that's probably why the people who don't like it aren't so loud about it. Maybe?

Your rest days sound reasonable to me. That's actually something I'm still trying to figure out with exercise so it's a good analogy.