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Two things I discovered about myself via my last few postings:
a) I miss writing but specifically I miss writing-and-posting.
It's posting that I really, really want to do, not writing for my eyes only. This is connected to finishing. I remembered that I did write (origfic) before my discovery of slash and the fanfic web. But I never, ever finished anything. The only story I ever finished was one I wrote when I was fifteen (I think), and I finished it because my friend egged me on. So it was finishing-in-order-to-share which is the off-line equivalent of finishing-in-order-to-post.
I am not sure I will ever finish anything if I don't have the carrot of posting it before me.
b) I find it very difficult to write shit.
This was supposed to be a therapeutic exercise in writing crap. Everybody always says this: Write crap, free yourself from the angst of the perfect metaphor, the ultimate turn of phrase, the one and only word choice, the consummate placement of a semi-colon. (Sorry, I'm veering off the point.) But you know what I'm getting at. This is advice found both in the on-line world and in the world of the published how-to-write manual.
But I just find this so hard! What I wrote last night, upon waking, was all wrong. It isn't necessarily 'crap', as in badly written. But it is wrong as in: not true to my boys. And my boys are a cathected site for me! I love them too much to twist them out of shape with words. The words are making them into different people, and they're not the people I want them to be.
Possibly I made the mistake of choosing to write a snitchet about some boys whom I adore abjectly and in a storyverse I know inside-out. Because there are two kinds of writing:
1) discovering through writing
You don't know the story. You don't know the characters. You discover them as you write. The story comes into being as you type. The words make the people and the events.
2) writing something you've already discovered
There is a pre-existing story. You have invented or discovered characters and what they do outside of writing (in daydreams or dreams). So you need to find words adequately to express what you already know. I find this very, very hard. This is the case for the fics I am currently struggling with, the very, very long ones. It is a chore to get something that is already rounded and finished in my head onto paper or screen.
Mode 1) is easier, for me. But that's not currently where my passion lies.
I'm in the same dilemma as before, aren't I? Except I've gathered some self-knowledge along the way.
Thanks for tigging me so kindly! If there's any more advice out there: bring it on! Specifically:
i) Should I revise what I wrote last night with a view to finishing and posting it?
ii) Or should I write something entirely new, with a pairing I know nothing about and possibly hate, and finish this new thing within the hour?
Now I will go and revise last night's fic-start instead of writing into an LJ post box!
a) I miss writing but specifically I miss writing-and-posting.
It's posting that I really, really want to do, not writing for my eyes only. This is connected to finishing. I remembered that I did write (origfic) before my discovery of slash and the fanfic web. But I never, ever finished anything. The only story I ever finished was one I wrote when I was fifteen (I think), and I finished it because my friend egged me on. So it was finishing-in-order-to-share which is the off-line equivalent of finishing-in-order-to-post.
I am not sure I will ever finish anything if I don't have the carrot of posting it before me.
b) I find it very difficult to write shit.
This was supposed to be a therapeutic exercise in writing crap. Everybody always says this: Write crap, free yourself from the angst of the perfect metaphor, the ultimate turn of phrase, the one and only word choice, the consummate placement of a semi-colon. (Sorry, I'm veering off the point.) But you know what I'm getting at. This is advice found both in the on-line world and in the world of the published how-to-write manual.
But I just find this so hard! What I wrote last night, upon waking, was all wrong. It isn't necessarily 'crap', as in badly written. But it is wrong as in: not true to my boys. And my boys are a cathected site for me! I love them too much to twist them out of shape with words. The words are making them into different people, and they're not the people I want them to be.
Possibly I made the mistake of choosing to write a snitchet about some boys whom I adore abjectly and in a storyverse I know inside-out. Because there are two kinds of writing:
1) discovering through writing
You don't know the story. You don't know the characters. You discover them as you write. The story comes into being as you type. The words make the people and the events.
2) writing something you've already discovered
There is a pre-existing story. You have invented or discovered characters and what they do outside of writing (in daydreams or dreams). So you need to find words adequately to express what you already know. I find this very, very hard. This is the case for the fics I am currently struggling with, the very, very long ones. It is a chore to get something that is already rounded and finished in my head onto paper or screen.
Mode 1) is easier, for me. But that's not currently where my passion lies.
I'm in the same dilemma as before, aren't I? Except I've gathered some self-knowledge along the way.
Thanks for tigging me so kindly! If there's any more advice out there: bring it on! Specifically:
i) Should I revise what I wrote last night with a view to finishing and posting it?
ii) Or should I write something entirely new, with a pairing I know nothing about and possibly hate, and finish this new thing within the hour?
Now I will go and revise last night's fic-start instead of writing into an LJ post box!