elfs | Learning How To Write Again

Thirty years ago, back when I was in High School, I wrote, like most pathetic comic book geeks, horrible X-Men Fanfic and Slash. Those words didn't even exist, but that's more or less what it was. And when you're that young and that stupid, you don't know what bad writing is. You feel confident writing any old crap, because you know where you're going. You're going to get Kurt and Hank into bed if it kills you, but you're young and stupid and immortal so it won't kill you.

Eventually, you outgrow that nonsense and begin to write your own characters, your own universe, and your own sensibilities. The stories start to be about something, and not just sex scenes for the sake of seeing the fur fly.

Two years ago, I stopped writing. I had finished the Yowler series, and was satisfied with the result at about the same time as getting laid off from Isilon, the recession was bad, bad, bad, and work was nowhere to be found. I had to make my own work. I took freelance jobs, scut jobs, even freebies to build my portfolio, and it all worked out in the end.

I'm trying to reboot Muse, but it's hard. I'm re-learning how to write from the experienced side. I know the mechanics, but no longer lack the lack of self-awareness to just write crap, knowing I can go back and fix it. I want it to be right the first time, even though I know it can't possibly be so. I stress about how "this isn't going anywhere" even as I'm learning about new characters, grown from tiny seeds of ideas and my own essential humanity rather than taken off the shelf and borrowed from central casting.

I'm up to about a thousand words a day. That's less that half of what I used to do-- I used to do a Lake a day (named after Jay Lake, a PNW writer who does indeed do 2500 words a day, every day). I figure I'll get back up to speed eventually, but it's just annoying being so out of it.