Thinky thinky thinky.
First of all, for starting_gate, princessofg, redbyrd_sgcfic, and zats_clear: as the fic currently NOT in your inbox will attest to, I will apparently be belaying that call for hand-holding, as upon review I have discovered that I am still at the 'aiiiiiiiieeee, this story is the devil!' stage. I will check back in with you guys when I upgrade to 'I do not currently want to kill this story and everyone in it' status and see if you are still available/willing, if that's okay? Which leads me to...
I have been having, thoughts, people. Thoughts! Vaguely internal-metaish thoughts, in fact, which is somewhat rare for me, as my thought process usually involves trying to decide how best to insert myself into the entertainment industry for the express purposes of getting someone to write me a Die Hard-esque action movie to blow stuff up in, or contemplating whether or not my favorite Sim family should get a puppy. (One of those things is 100% true and the other, about half. I withhold comment on which is which.) Lately, though... contemplative. Mostly about writing.
There's a level on which I think I wasn't able to finish this apocafic story last time for a reason (or several, one being that I'm not really sure I want to end the world, actually. I like the world! But then, I'm also the girl who wrote a whole story about everybody dying just so I could go butwaitnotreaaaaally! at the end, so clearly I have commitment issues when it comes to ending anything). But I also have been thinking, lately, about my writing process. Or, uh, lack of, which I think is a big part of the problem.
I write, but I don't know how to write, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Or, I often feel that I have very little agency in the mater. I'm always fascinated by writing meta posts, when people post them, or general musing on the writing process, but often I find myself reading people writing about their choices in a story or how they structured things or tried to hint at this or that, and I get it, but... I don't know how to do that kind of self-awareness while writing, really. If I write something, it's generally because it's already more or less formed in my head, and I'm just typing it. And when it's not in my head, it's just not, and it's totally beyond me how to put something on the page. On those days, which are significantly more frequent, I will maybe write... oh, a sentence, if anything at all. On a day where I have something, though, I will sometimes write a complete story in a sitting - 'A million years...', for instance, went from start to pre-beta finish in about 24 hours. I still have no idea to switch back and forth between the two, or even find some kind of middle ground, which is frustrating. And it's frustrating to feel like I don't really know what I'm doing as I'm doing it, and only go back to find themes or ideas that are trying to come across on later read-throughs.
All that considered, I've made it my goal to try and take little more ownership of my own writing process. It's not really something I'm entirely sure how to go about, though, which makes it an... interesting exercise. But as I've clearly learned with this ficathon debacle, sitting around and waiting for a story to form itself will not always do it. So I've been kind of experimenting. I've started playing around with writing some director's commentaries on a couple stories just to see for myself what I would say - I don't expect I'll ever post them, especially since I try to limit the amount of my rambling I inflict on the public at large, but it's been interesting to look at finished fic again with an eye specifically tuned towards why I did things or what purpose in the story something serves. I'm quite bad at it, but maybe it takes practice.
But that's not so useful on stretching myself much on the writing front, so, my lovely flist, if anybody has made it this far through all this prattling: consider this an open invitation, if you ever feel the urge, or are bored, or just want to watch me flail (hey, it could be amusing), to challenge me with whatever. (I mean it, prompts, drabbles, whacked out dares, doesn't even have to be fandom if you don't want.) Here, somewhere else, the comments of an unrelated post a month from now if the mood strikes you - seriously. I am a lazy, lazy writer, basically, so I'm enrolling myself in weird free-form bootcamp. Now, I will tack on a disclaimer there that I make no promises as to the quality or the success of any of these endeavors, but I will at least give anything someone throws at me a fighting shot, and if I fail spectacularly I'll at least give you a summation of why and how much I suck and how I will try to suck less in the future. (I shall call this Project Suck Less.)
Whew. That was long. I dunno how I feel about this thinking thing.
I have been having, thoughts, people. Thoughts! Vaguely internal-metaish thoughts, in fact, which is somewhat rare for me, as my thought process usually involves trying to decide how best to insert myself into the entertainment industry for the express purposes of getting someone to write me a Die Hard-esque action movie to blow stuff up in, or contemplating whether or not my favorite Sim family should get a puppy. (One of those things is 100% true and the other, about half. I withhold comment on which is which.) Lately, though... contemplative. Mostly about writing.
There's a level on which I think I wasn't able to finish this apocafic story last time for a reason (or several, one being that I'm not really sure I want to end the world, actually. I like the world! But then, I'm also the girl who wrote a whole story about everybody dying just so I could go butwaitnotreaaaaally! at the end, so clearly I have commitment issues when it comes to ending anything). But I also have been thinking, lately, about my writing process. Or, uh, lack of, which I think is a big part of the problem.
I write, but I don't know how to write, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Or, I often feel that I have very little agency in the mater. I'm always fascinated by writing meta posts, when people post them, or general musing on the writing process, but often I find myself reading people writing about their choices in a story or how they structured things or tried to hint at this or that, and I get it, but... I don't know how to do that kind of self-awareness while writing, really. If I write something, it's generally because it's already more or less formed in my head, and I'm just typing it. And when it's not in my head, it's just not, and it's totally beyond me how to put something on the page. On those days, which are significantly more frequent, I will maybe write... oh, a sentence, if anything at all. On a day where I have something, though, I will sometimes write a complete story in a sitting - 'A million years...', for instance, went from start to pre-beta finish in about 24 hours. I still have no idea to switch back and forth between the two, or even find some kind of middle ground, which is frustrating. And it's frustrating to feel like I don't really know what I'm doing as I'm doing it, and only go back to find themes or ideas that are trying to come across on later read-throughs.
All that considered, I've made it my goal to try and take little more ownership of my own writing process. It's not really something I'm entirely sure how to go about, though, which makes it an... interesting exercise. But as I've clearly learned with this ficathon debacle, sitting around and waiting for a story to form itself will not always do it. So I've been kind of experimenting. I've started playing around with writing some director's commentaries on a couple stories just to see for myself what I would say - I don't expect I'll ever post them, especially since I try to limit the amount of my rambling I inflict on the public at large, but it's been interesting to look at finished fic again with an eye specifically tuned towards why I did things or what purpose in the story something serves. I'm quite bad at it, but maybe it takes practice.
But that's not so useful on stretching myself much on the writing front, so, my lovely flist, if anybody has made it this far through all this prattling: consider this an open invitation, if you ever feel the urge, or are bored, or just want to watch me flail (hey, it could be amusing), to challenge me with whatever. (I mean it, prompts, drabbles, whacked out dares, doesn't even have to be fandom if you don't want.) Here, somewhere else, the comments of an unrelated post a month from now if the mood strikes you - seriously. I am a lazy, lazy writer, basically, so I'm enrolling myself in weird free-form bootcamp. Now, I will tack on a disclaimer there that I make no promises as to the quality or the success of any of these endeavors, but I will at least give anything someone throws at me a fighting shot, and if I fail spectacularly I'll at least give you a summation of why and how much I suck and how I will try to suck less in the future. (I shall call this Project Suck Less.)
Whew. That was long. I dunno how I feel about this thinking thing.