Words fail me
I am having a lot of trouble plotting out the short story for my writing class. This is partly because I am terrible at plotting, and partly because she keeps saying it should occur over a three day arc, despite the fact that a lot of really great stories occur in a much shorter time frame.
I am better at poetry than prose, and most poetry really takes place in the shortest possible time span. "How do I love thee right now? Let me count the ways." "I observe at this moment that I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." So I feel like if I could just take a single scene and construct the story around that, I'd have a shot. Not that it would be any good, but at least I'd have something. The three day arc, though, continues to defeat me.
After class on Thursday I talked with the professor for a few minutes about the other really big problem I have with writing fiction: the main character keeps on turning into me. She threw up a few suggestions, none of which I managed to respond to with any success. Finally she said, "Well, maybe your genre is memoir. There's nothing wrong with that!"
I felt heartened, until I read an interview she did with the new literary magazine on campus. "I think if we [writers] don't find those metaphors [that show parallels between our characters and ourselves], we're pretty much doomed to write memoir."
DOOMED. Thanks.
On a writing project where I am floundering even more, if that is possible, ie Nano: I did some work on a school laptop last night and forgot to save it back to GoogleDocs before I checked it back in. Nobody can tell me which laptop I checked out, so I have lost 3000 words. I suppose if it ends up being the difference between winning and losing, I'll just copy-paste "replacement" 3000 times at the end of my novel. But still, I'm irritated. Also, I feel bad for anyone who gets the laptop next and decides to be nosy and open the file, and ends up with an eyeful of kink.
I am better at poetry than prose, and most poetry really takes place in the shortest possible time span. "How do I love thee right now? Let me count the ways." "I observe at this moment that I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." So I feel like if I could just take a single scene and construct the story around that, I'd have a shot. Not that it would be any good, but at least I'd have something. The three day arc, though, continues to defeat me.
After class on Thursday I talked with the professor for a few minutes about the other really big problem I have with writing fiction: the main character keeps on turning into me. She threw up a few suggestions, none of which I managed to respond to with any success. Finally she said, "Well, maybe your genre is memoir. There's nothing wrong with that!"
I felt heartened, until I read an interview she did with the new literary magazine on campus. "I think if we [writers] don't find those metaphors [that show parallels between our characters and ourselves], we're pretty much doomed to write memoir."
DOOMED. Thanks.
On a writing project where I am floundering even more, if that is possible, ie Nano: I did some work on a school laptop last night and forgot to save it back to GoogleDocs before I checked it back in. Nobody can tell me which laptop I checked out, so I have lost 3000 words. I suppose if it ends up being the difference between winning and losing, I'll just copy-paste "replacement" 3000 times at the end of my novel. But still, I'm irritated. Also, I feel bad for anyone who gets the laptop next and decides to be nosy and open the file, and ends up with an eyeful of kink.