readjustments
Rambling, mostly - cut so as not to bore most of you to tears. It's late, I'm tired and my thoughts are attempting to organise themselves and succeeding about as well as most of my organisational efforts usually do.
The holidays aren't good for me, it seems; too much time spent with only my thoughts for company. And I've been thinking about a lot of things, but mostly my writing, especially as I watch my personal NaNo be chased merrily down the drain by uninterest and distraction.
I want to finish that novel. I do. But the only reason I want to is so that I can say I have - so I can prove to myself that I can finish a full-length project, even if the first 45,000 words are juvenile shit and the rest was rushed and not paid proper attention. And I may not make any claims to being a 'proper' writer, or even a very good one, but that doesn't strike me as the right reason to do anything. I like those characters, I'm become very attached to them over the past four years, and I have no doubt that some time in the future when I have more time and talent to spend on them, I'll pick them up again. But what I'm doing right now; the word deadlines, the sitting and staring at the screen feeling bad about it, the slow and reluctant tapping out of sentence after sentence in a jerky rhythm - that isn't me. That isn't what writing is to me.
I'm a perfectionist - anyone who has been subjected to my rants or sulking via chat will know this. I spend ages on pieces that I really care about, I tear my hair and fiddle with wording and look up quotes or mythology or tidbits of information to make the story that little bit better. And more often than not this takes far more time than I'd like, but it leaves me feeling happy and content that I'm a step closer to being a good writer.
There are exceptions - if the mood hits (inspiration strikes?) then I can tap away without changing a word and it'll come out perfect. The piece I did for Nny, a while back - Billy and Lucifer. Inspired by a single mental image, and it just flew. That's a glorious feeling, but it's not a common one.
I'm not like the scores of people that I see on LJ and in life - some of whom have talents I respect and envy, some of whom I can judge more critically, but all of whom I admire for the drive they show. I read a quote, can't remember when or where or who, that said that to be a writer does not mean that you produce words. To be a writer means that you wake up every morning and can't imagine doing anything else. I do not wake up wanting to write - no, I do. I wake up wanting to be able to write. And when I'm working on something that I love and when the words fit, I am lost to anything else you could shove in front of me. But I don't have the motivation that so many do. Writing is not it for me. I may not do a single course of English, history, writing, media or anything else Arts-related for the rest of my life, and I'm only 18. I am doing science. I am doing psychology and biology and chemistry and I want to spend my life in psychiatry or research or some other field, because it fascinates me and because my brain is wired that way. Maths and science click. Always have.
Writing? Not as much. I had a precocious vocabulary, I was making up crazy tales from a wee age, but I have worked very hard and very consciously to improve. If I don't read widely and often, if I don't push myself and put energy into making the words work, then they don't. I slip. And I hate that. But it's why I've never considered for a single moment the idea of dropping everything and writing for a living. I'm too much of a coward for that. If I had the time, the money to support the lifestyle, I have no doubt that I could produce a novel. Maybe it'd even be published. Who knows. But I am competitive in the worst sense; I don't like playing unless I have a very good chance of winning. Science, I can win. I don't have nearly enough faith in what I write to bet my living and my happiness on it.
Where is this heading? I'm not quite sure myself, at the moment, so bear with me whilst I get this all down and out. I'm not going to finish the NaNo. Quindlemire will remain in stasis (at a nice 56,000 or so words) until I next feel like working on it. I have a million and one novel ideas that are what I want to write now, not what I wanted to write when I was 14. My problem has been trying to shove myself back into that mindset when I've expanded in so many directions. I want to write my crazy Arthurian/Elizabethan history. I want to write my Pandora novella for the magazine. I want to try my hand at writing plays; I love the medium, and I may as well do something with my talent for dialogue. I have a lot of ideas that would require a lot of research, and right now I can't afford to give them that time. Hopefully they'll wait for me.
Those Christmas fics that I promised way back when will be finished, but not at the price of their quality. And I'll keep putting out those silly little pieces that strike me at odd moments and demand to be written. I need to read more. I'd like to RP more, but that's a kind of lost cause. I'm not writing as much fanfiction because I have so many original ideas that I'd like to expand, and playing in my own worlds can be so much more liberating than visiting someone else's. The rules can change as I please.
Venturing into the fields of oddness, now... I mentioned to a few people a long while back that I heard talking all the time, in my head. That's died off a lot as late, and it's peaceful but also a bit frightening. It still stirs occasionally; a fic writing itself, or two people that I'm not sure of, or just my own mental babble. Some of my best dialogue fics have risen from this, and I'd like it back. I'm not claiming a muse or a disorder or anything other than an overactive imagination and a busy subconscious, but sometimes it's nice not to have to formulate things from intelligence and planning, and to just listen in happily as the words flow through.
As always in life, I approach things with my head and not my heart, to borrow a cliche. I can intellectualise writing, I can do a decent critique and a good beta and I can edit my own work as well as others'. But it's the problem I had with theatre, when I gave that a try. I was a good actor, an intelligent actor, but not a great one. I didn't have the gift for character. But I could judge and see and change and direct others, and point out easily the flaws in method and portrayal and production. I don't feel the burn to write nearly as much as I should to even consider it a career. I don't connect emotionally with everything I do. I have logic for that.
I guess what I'm coming to grips with is that I'm not what I'd like to think I am. I'm not a writer, it's not the first or even the second label that I'd apply to myself. I'm just a reasonably intelligent girl with a patiently-developed knack for language and too many ideas in her head to set down.
And a penchant for talking about herself, it would seem. I'd really welcome any thoughts, suggestions, similar experiences or whaps on the head. Really, even if you don't think you know me well enough. I'm at something of a loose end here. Direction appreciated.
I'm not usually this boring and self-analytical and unmotivated.
Must be the weather.
*wilts*
For those of you not here for the teenage wangst, I'm going to shamelessly pimp a story of mine that was buried in the depths of my ficblog ages ago. Notable because it's one of the only times I've ever tried to tackle the Harry Potter fandom; mostly I just hover around, dip into the occasional fic, and hide in corners because it's so sodding huge.
As We Were - gen, post-war, Harry-centric. I wanted to play with the idea of the Time-Turner, which Rowling could do so much with and hasn't as yet. Addiction, Remus!tea, and coping with old memories and new wounds.
The holidays aren't good for me, it seems; too much time spent with only my thoughts for company. And I've been thinking about a lot of things, but mostly my writing, especially as I watch my personal NaNo be chased merrily down the drain by uninterest and distraction.
I want to finish that novel. I do. But the only reason I want to is so that I can say I have - so I can prove to myself that I can finish a full-length project, even if the first 45,000 words are juvenile shit and the rest was rushed and not paid proper attention. And I may not make any claims to being a 'proper' writer, or even a very good one, but that doesn't strike me as the right reason to do anything. I like those characters, I'm become very attached to them over the past four years, and I have no doubt that some time in the future when I have more time and talent to spend on them, I'll pick them up again. But what I'm doing right now; the word deadlines, the sitting and staring at the screen feeling bad about it, the slow and reluctant tapping out of sentence after sentence in a jerky rhythm - that isn't me. That isn't what writing is to me.
I'm a perfectionist - anyone who has been subjected to my rants or sulking via chat will know this. I spend ages on pieces that I really care about, I tear my hair and fiddle with wording and look up quotes or mythology or tidbits of information to make the story that little bit better. And more often than not this takes far more time than I'd like, but it leaves me feeling happy and content that I'm a step closer to being a good writer.
There are exceptions - if the mood hits (inspiration strikes?) then I can tap away without changing a word and it'll come out perfect. The piece I did for Nny, a while back - Billy and Lucifer. Inspired by a single mental image, and it just flew. That's a glorious feeling, but it's not a common one.
I'm not like the scores of people that I see on LJ and in life - some of whom have talents I respect and envy, some of whom I can judge more critically, but all of whom I admire for the drive they show. I read a quote, can't remember when or where or who, that said that to be a writer does not mean that you produce words. To be a writer means that you wake up every morning and can't imagine doing anything else. I do not wake up wanting to write - no, I do. I wake up wanting to be able to write. And when I'm working on something that I love and when the words fit, I am lost to anything else you could shove in front of me. But I don't have the motivation that so many do. Writing is not it for me. I may not do a single course of English, history, writing, media or anything else Arts-related for the rest of my life, and I'm only 18. I am doing science. I am doing psychology and biology and chemistry and I want to spend my life in psychiatry or research or some other field, because it fascinates me and because my brain is wired that way. Maths and science click. Always have.
Writing? Not as much. I had a precocious vocabulary, I was making up crazy tales from a wee age, but I have worked very hard and very consciously to improve. If I don't read widely and often, if I don't push myself and put energy into making the words work, then they don't. I slip. And I hate that. But it's why I've never considered for a single moment the idea of dropping everything and writing for a living. I'm too much of a coward for that. If I had the time, the money to support the lifestyle, I have no doubt that I could produce a novel. Maybe it'd even be published. Who knows. But I am competitive in the worst sense; I don't like playing unless I have a very good chance of winning. Science, I can win. I don't have nearly enough faith in what I write to bet my living and my happiness on it.
Where is this heading? I'm not quite sure myself, at the moment, so bear with me whilst I get this all down and out. I'm not going to finish the NaNo. Quindlemire will remain in stasis (at a nice 56,000 or so words) until I next feel like working on it. I have a million and one novel ideas that are what I want to write now, not what I wanted to write when I was 14. My problem has been trying to shove myself back into that mindset when I've expanded in so many directions. I want to write my crazy Arthurian/Elizabethan history. I want to write my Pandora novella for the magazine. I want to try my hand at writing plays; I love the medium, and I may as well do something with my talent for dialogue. I have a lot of ideas that would require a lot of research, and right now I can't afford to give them that time. Hopefully they'll wait for me.
Those Christmas fics that I promised way back when will be finished, but not at the price of their quality. And I'll keep putting out those silly little pieces that strike me at odd moments and demand to be written. I need to read more. I'd like to RP more, but that's a kind of lost cause. I'm not writing as much fanfiction because I have so many original ideas that I'd like to expand, and playing in my own worlds can be so much more liberating than visiting someone else's. The rules can change as I please.
Venturing into the fields of oddness, now... I mentioned to a few people a long while back that I heard talking all the time, in my head. That's died off a lot as late, and it's peaceful but also a bit frightening. It still stirs occasionally; a fic writing itself, or two people that I'm not sure of, or just my own mental babble. Some of my best dialogue fics have risen from this, and I'd like it back. I'm not claiming a muse or a disorder or anything other than an overactive imagination and a busy subconscious, but sometimes it's nice not to have to formulate things from intelligence and planning, and to just listen in happily as the words flow through.
As always in life, I approach things with my head and not my heart, to borrow a cliche. I can intellectualise writing, I can do a decent critique and a good beta and I can edit my own work as well as others'. But it's the problem I had with theatre, when I gave that a try. I was a good actor, an intelligent actor, but not a great one. I didn't have the gift for character. But I could judge and see and change and direct others, and point out easily the flaws in method and portrayal and production. I don't feel the burn to write nearly as much as I should to even consider it a career. I don't connect emotionally with everything I do. I have logic for that.
I guess what I'm coming to grips with is that I'm not what I'd like to think I am. I'm not a writer, it's not the first or even the second label that I'd apply to myself. I'm just a reasonably intelligent girl with a patiently-developed knack for language and too many ideas in her head to set down.
And a penchant for talking about herself, it would seem. I'd really welcome any thoughts, suggestions, similar experiences or whaps on the head. Really, even if you don't think you know me well enough. I'm at something of a loose end here. Direction appreciated.
I'm not usually this boring and self-analytical and unmotivated.
Must be the weather.
*wilts*
For those of you not here for the teenage wangst, I'm going to shamelessly pimp a story of mine that was buried in the depths of my ficblog ages ago. Notable because it's one of the only times I've ever tried to tackle the Harry Potter fandom; mostly I just hover around, dip into the occasional fic, and hide in corners because it's so sodding huge.
As We Were - gen, post-war, Harry-centric. I wanted to play with the idea of the Time-Turner, which Rowling could do so much with and hasn't as yet. Addiction, Remus!tea, and coping with old memories and new wounds.