Grumpy Writers.
Jul. 21st, 2005 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThere are two camps of writers: there's the camp in which the writer loves to talk about his work, because he is enjoying it and because the more he plays with it and converses with it, even when he shares it with others, the more alive and real it becomes. These are the sorts of people who have to hear knowledge, even from their own mouths, in order to get that knowledge from one part of their brain to the other.
There is the other camp, from which the writer does not talk about his work, afraid that if he lets it loose into the world too early, too young and innocent and incapable of defense, that it will wither and die.
It seems I have wandered into a third camp. This is the camp full of writers who are sick to death of their story because they have been working on it for far too long. The two-story series Warmachines and Robots of the Deep Vs. The Vampire Woman of Fallow Five has taken me far longer to write than I would have thought. Yesterday, I started at 6400 words, threw away nearly 1300 of them, and by the end of the day wrote another 1600, for a total reach of 300 words. Whoop-de-frickin-doo.
Not only that, but it needs a re-write. It's... not lush enough. I want these characters to be important to the reader, to reach the reader in new ways. I've been concentrating on this story because doing so is a new experience for me; often, I flit from story to story until one is sort-of done, then clean it up, mark it as good, and schedule it for release in a couple of months. I've never lived with just one story before. I decided on this one because it seemed to be a good place to start-- a 10,000 word target, no real subplots, just a few complications.
And now I just want it done, but not done in a slapdash or slipshod manner.
There is the other camp, from which the writer does not talk about his work, afraid that if he lets it loose into the world too early, too young and innocent and incapable of defense, that it will wither and die.
It seems I have wandered into a third camp. This is the camp full of writers who are sick to death of their story because they have been working on it for far too long. The two-story series Warmachines and Robots of the Deep Vs. The Vampire Woman of Fallow Five has taken me far longer to write than I would have thought. Yesterday, I started at 6400 words, threw away nearly 1300 of them, and by the end of the day wrote another 1600, for a total reach of 300 words. Whoop-de-frickin-doo.
Not only that, but it needs a re-write. It's... not lush enough. I want these characters to be important to the reader, to reach the reader in new ways. I've been concentrating on this story because doing so is a new experience for me; often, I flit from story to story until one is sort-of done, then clean it up, mark it as good, and schedule it for release in a couple of months. I've never lived with just one story before. I decided on this one because it seemed to be a good place to start-- a 10,000 word target, no real subplots, just a few complications.
And now I just want it done, but not done in a slapdash or slipshod manner.
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Re: Grumpy Writers
Date: 2005-07-21 08:10 pm (UTC)Writing is messy and when writing correctly we perceive the messiness. Our opportunity is to embrace and tolerate who we are at this moment. It frees us from the suffering and enables us to continue ... writing.
Or as I think about it -- I'm pissed and I'm going to use that energy to get through this too.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-24 06:42 am (UTC)Perhaps a change of genre or subject matter might help. Something completely different? No suggestions, just a thought.