Writing post
Nov. 19th, 2013 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magnetic_poleI've been struggling with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
wrisomifu, folks. I'm not going to say I'm failing at it, because as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fitofpique rightly pointed out the other day, the point of wriso is simply to try, and I've been pretty good about sitting down for ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day (though less good about checking in). But I'm having have a hard time focusing and moving forward in those ten minutes. Often I'll fuss with things I've already written, or I'll write a few lines that don't feel connected to the rest of my story. It's frustrating, because I've experienced this lack of focus and momentum during wriso before.
So here's a mid-month check-in, in an attempt to learn from my mistakes.
* I think writing just isn't an end-of-the-day activity for me. I tend to work well late at night as I start to wake up again, between midnight and about 3:00a, at the quietest part of the day, when there are few distractions and I feel most creative. But as I get older I find I just can't stay up that late very often, and what initially seemed the more sensible alternative, shifting things forward and writing between 9:00p and 12:00m, is just torturous. I'm tired and negative. I do my academic writing first thing in the morning, and perhaps that's when fic needs to happen, too.
* I have a hard time being productive in anything less than two- or three-hour sessions, and ideally I'd prefer much longer stretches, of three to five hours. I wonder if I need to work with a more detailed outline in order to be more focused for shorter periods of time. I tend to gestate a new idea for while when I start a new story, and only after I've already worked a good part of the story in my head do I sit down at the computer. At that point, I usually have a very stern talk with myself about the fewest possible scenes needed to tell the story--my impulse is to start too far from the end and generate too much back story en route--and then I sketch out the scenes with a few lines each and start writing. But even then I may not be far along enough yet--there might still be too much work that need to happen at the moment I sit down with my keyboard. I need to think through how to identify and sketch out smaller story units that can be tackled in much shorter writing sessions.
What have you learned about yourselves as writers or creators, flist? Do you find yourself facing the same challenges or frustrations over and over? Have you been able to make any changes in approach that have improved the process for you?
wrisomifu, folks. I'm not going to say I'm failing at it, because as fitofpique rightly pointed out the other day, the point of wriso is simply to try, and I've been pretty good about sitting down for ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day (though less good about checking in). But I'm having have a hard time focusing and moving forward in those ten minutes. Often I'll fuss with things I've already written, or I'll write a few lines that don't feel connected to the rest of my story. It's frustrating, because I've experienced this lack of focus and momentum during wriso before.So here's a mid-month check-in, in an attempt to learn from my mistakes.
* I think writing just isn't an end-of-the-day activity for me. I tend to work well late at night as I start to wake up again, between midnight and about 3:00a, at the quietest part of the day, when there are few distractions and I feel most creative. But as I get older I find I just can't stay up that late very often, and what initially seemed the more sensible alternative, shifting things forward and writing between 9:00p and 12:00m, is just torturous. I'm tired and negative. I do my academic writing first thing in the morning, and perhaps that's when fic needs to happen, too.
* I have a hard time being productive in anything less than two- or three-hour sessions, and ideally I'd prefer much longer stretches, of three to five hours. I wonder if I need to work with a more detailed outline in order to be more focused for shorter periods of time. I tend to gestate a new idea for while when I start a new story, and only after I've already worked a good part of the story in my head do I sit down at the computer. At that point, I usually have a very stern talk with myself about the fewest possible scenes needed to tell the story--my impulse is to start too far from the end and generate too much back story en route--and then I sketch out the scenes with a few lines each and start writing. But even then I may not be far along enough yet--there might still be too much work that need to happen at the moment I sit down with my keyboard. I need to think through how to identify and sketch out smaller story units that can be tackled in much shorter writing sessions.
What have you learned about yourselves as writers or creators, flist? Do you find yourself facing the same challenges or frustrations over and over? Have you been able to make any changes in approach that have improved the process for you?
