writer's block and blah-ness
omg it's so hot in here, whyyy *cries*
*ahem* alright, done whining now maybeBeen a while since I last updated, but really, I haven't been up to very much or, at least, nothing that seemed either a) worth posting or b) other ppl would be interested in :P (not that that's stopped me before, but... eh, been feeling lazy lately too, so... ^^;) Am ( Read more... )
*ahem* alright, done whining now maybeBeen a while since I last updated, but really, I haven't been up to very much or, at least, nothing that seemed either a) worth posting or b) other ppl would be interested in :P (not that that's stopped me before, but... eh, been feeling lazy lately too, so... ^^;) Am ( Read more... )
I hope all your writer's block problems go away soon. At least you've been writing. Good luck with the plans to be a writer... your parents are probably right that you should get at least a part-time job since some sort of income might be good until you write that best-seller. ;)
Honestly, I'd love be a writer I just think I suck at it too much to actually do it. ^^; I haven't read anything you've written (other than LJ posts) but I'm sure you're a much better writer than I am.
At least I'm over my years of writer's block and am actually writing again, even if it is in spurts and I never finish anything. I think one reason I never finish anything is because I think too much. I'll lay in bed and finish the little movie in my head without ever getting it onto paper and once the movie is done I'm just not inspired anymore... or I've moved onto another idea (same characters usually, just a different story in their lives).
O.o... as amusing a that Supernatural bar it, it's kind of distracting when I'm trying to write in here. I was gonna just respond on my friend page but I decided to see the Supernatural goodness... maybe it wasn't such a great idea.
Anyway, where was I? oh yeah, my lack of writing ability. I think part of my problem is that I don't think anyone other than myself would care to read what I write. Lately it's just been a group of characters stuck in my head (>.> though I keep adding more) and pretty much the stories of their lives. I mean the other day I told Tracy I had written like 5 pages but it was most likely boring. She asked what happens in them. I said it's pretty much just a kid getting ready for school. ^^; ...she was like "yeah, that's boring."... If it's not blood and guts and action it's boring to her but I don't think I can write that stuff. It's just family/friend drama sorta stuff that I keep getting told is really boring. I think the only reason I really write at all is because these I like my characters and kind of want to save their memory...if that makes sense.
Sorry for rambling. I'm not sure how much sense that made since I keep stopping to take bites of my salad. This little box doesn't help with the whole looking back to see what I said before and I'm too lazy to scroll all the way back up to re-read it all.
*stares for a second at Supernatural goodness* Okay, I had better post this and finish eating now. Sorry again for the rambling. ^^; I just don't usually post about this sort of thing in my LJ 'cuz I doubt most people care.
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Thanks, I hope they do too... I was thinking about it last night while I was out, so I may have some ideas I can work with. We'll see...
I'm sure you're a much better writer than I am.
You know, I don't think it's really fair to say that, as neither of us has read the other's writing :P I'm sure it doesn't suck-- like i said in my other comment, you're a great storyteller, and honestly, it's the stories that are important-- writing too, of course, but those are things that can be improved upon with practice. and, remember, editors can help with the technical stuff, it's their job ;) If you're over your writer's block and writing again, then that's a great start!
I tend to do the whole 'story as a movie in my head' thing too, actually XD maybe that's one of the reasons i'm having trouble with it lately-- i've already 'seen' certain things happen in the story tons of times as i imagined them, so it's hard to sit down and write the stuff that comes first (or in-between). I've noticed that I do get more ideas in bed tho, either as i'm trying to fall asleep, or still waking up. Maybe I should keep a notebook by my pillow ;)
Well, different ppl will like different kinds of stories-- just cause Tracy thinks it sounds boring doesn't mean that it is. Honestly, if you look at most of the bestseller lists or the books on display at the front of the stores, they're mostly about family/friend drama-- ppl do read and enjoy that! So, if that's what you like to write about, then you should go for it, there's tons of story potential in everyday life stuff. As for length-- listen, I recently finished reading a 700+ page book, and trust me, there was a lot of character stuff in there that maybe some ppl would've been bored with, but I found really interesting, so that's not a bad thing at all.
I like my characters and kind of want to save their memory...if that makes sense.
It does make sense. That's actually a really cool way of putting it, I really like that. They're these ppl we've created, who are also a part of ourselves, so of course we'd want to 'keep' them, and have other ppl enjoy them too.
You should definitely post about writing in your lj if you want to, I'd read it :)
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Well my writing definitely would need to be heavily edited. I know Word keeps trying to correct things, half the time I don't let it though because I don't agree with it. I do know I'm very good at doing comma splices but just because I know that doesn't mean I'm good at fixing it. I seem to hate short sentences (and short paragraphs). I think I end up with way too many semicolons because I prefer that to short, choppy sentences. >.>; probably writing all those essays in university where I tried to add as many words in as possible to meet the word count doesn't help.
I still had my writer's block last year for Nano. *opens document* I managed to write 80 pages / 38,525 words for that. I think it was Feb. when I got over my writer's block. I wrote almost every day that whole month and ended up with 175 pages (though the first 3 are lists of characters and definitions and stuff)and 91,438 words (-474 for those prelim pages). >.>; There's two problems with that one. The first is that when Feb. finished I kinda stopped working on it. I got stuck at ideas for one part and never continued. The second is that the story is far from actually being finished. I've worked on random stuff since then but I never finish anything...
Maybe you should keep a notebook by your pillow. I think one of my problems is I keep having "what if"s. I'll change things around, make a new love interest for my favorite character, have someone die, >.>; invent a new brother for a character, etc. I do this while laying in bed trying to sleep, trying not to think about the actual story so it never concludes because then I'll never finish writing it. Problem is I sometimes like some of these "what if"s. Have the stories I've started for these characters don't work so well anymore since someone now has a twin brother. I also have no clue who that same character "ends up with" romantically "at the end" because I like a few of the invented love interests and I'm not sure which it should be.
Yeah, I know different people like different stuff. From what I see at the library many books that go out the most are romances or mysteries. People have different tastes; I guess I just tend to think no one else has the same tastes as I do. I'm so used to not fitting in and being an outsider that I think it makes me worry that my thoughts aren't important. I was also told by a teacher at Abbott that I'm a horrible writer and no one should be forced to read my poor excuse for writing (or something along those lines). I couldn't stand that teacher, she couldn't teach. The big problem with what I wrote for that class (it was some news article thing or report or something) was that I didn't proofread it at all. One of my sentences was really screwed up. I'm not sure what I did exactly but I pretty much didn't like the way a sentence was worded and re-wrote it but forgot to erase some of the words so in the end it made absolutely no sense. ^^; Anyway, her comments totally killed any self-confidence I had in my writing. I couldn't stand her before but I hated her after that.
I should update my LJ more but I never know if people bother to read it since I rarely get comments. Sometimes I just think what's the point?
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gah, i ignore Word's 'suggestions' all the time-- i dunno who decided what's 'right' or 'wrong' when they designed that, but it's on crack. Not only do I not agree with them, but they don't even recognize some words since they're not spelled in the 'u.s.' way (i guess our way is considered as the British spelling? i'm not sure, but my ACTUAL DICTIONARY tells me i'm right, so i trust it ;P). I've actually started using a program called Pages, which is the mac word processor and, thankfully, does not bug me too much like Word does. I think things like spelling and punctuation become intuitive after a while, especially for ppl who like to read/read a lot, tho i admit i probably don't use the semi-colon as often as i should/properly XD I do use a lot of commas, tho *points to icon* possibly to the point of abusing them, tho i'm not sure, lol. I don't really like short sentences either, but I find that sometimes they do work.
writing all those essays in university where I tried to add as many words in as possible to meet the word count doesn't help.
lol! yeah, same here XD and then doing the same thing with Nano made it worse, i think XD speaking of which, wow, 91K words is awesome o.o i don't think i've ever written anything that long! (that's actually closer to 'real' novel length, as opposed to Nano's 50K goal, which is more like a novella, so even if it's not finished, that's really good!)
Mm, I can totally understand the 'what-if' thing-- even tho i've had certain parts of stories in my head for years (literally), i always wonder if it might not be better to do something else instead, but since i've 'replayed' them so often in my head, it's like they've already been written. Not that I couldn't go back and change it even if it was already written, but... yeah ^^; There's nothing wrong with going back and re-writing/revising stuff, tho-- Melissa has a story she's been working on since high school, and she keeps going back and changing it cause she has new/better ideas for it (it's pretty long, too). Maybe this is why outlining is apparently a good idea (tho i really haven't outlined anything since school >.>), it forces us to make decisions about what happens. Not that that's easy, of course, and i'm not saying you have to do it that way or anything, but... yeah. I understand ^^;
Okay, 1) of course your thoughts are important! Everyone's are! and 2) that is a horrible thing for anyone, especially a teacher to say, wtf o.o She sounds terrible... and i know it's hard, but you shouldn't take her comments to heart, especially if she wasn't even a good teacher. Not to mention that writing articles/reports are very different from writing stories (personally, i was never fond of those kind of assignments, or even essays... they were too, i dunno, 'cold'? *shrug* not much room for creativity)
I read it! Sometimes I go through periods where i'm not on lj much or miss a few entries if i'm away or something, but i always try to read all my friends' entries (and if i don't comment on lj, it's usually the times when you also post to fb and i just comment there if i see it there first). I don't always get comments on every entry either, but i don't think it's a really big deal-- sometimes ppl just don't have anything to say about what i wrote, i guess (ex: fandoms no one knows much about, lol) but that's okay. I know we all used to be a bit more active around here, and I do miss that, but that doesn't mean that no one's reading :)
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I tried writing outlines and stuff when I was trying to do a fantasy story. I got all kinds of world planning done and what was going to happen and everything... the problem was I never got around to actually writing the story since I never finished all the planning. I applaud Melissa for continuing a story for so long. The one I started the first time I was at Abbott totally sucked and needed to be redone so that's why I was doing all the world planning, etc. but I never got around to writing it. I think I like my characters being more living, changing entities that dictate their story to me, even though it changes. I mean some things just needed to be changed, like originally two characters were supposed to end up together but when one of them became my favorite the story changed and other love interests took shape and now I can't imagine those two "finishing" with each other. ^^; though in my current version of things they do end up with a kid together and no matter what I change I don't want to get rid of the cute, little kid. One of those characters did undergo a drastic personality change though; they've become a lot more self-centered than they were when they were just a side character to someone else's story.
>.>; Yeah, that teacher was evil. She was one of my computer teachers in ILT... the one for the class where everyone asked me for help because I was on the last chapter of the HTML book when the teacher was still on chapter one with the rest of the class. Seriously, how do you teach something you know nothing about? I corrected her on some stuff but she didn't believe me. I actually got Tracy to come into my class once since she was in PDHT and tell the teacher she was wrong. She believed Tracy after not believing me. -_- I think I just hated the teacher and the assignment and didn't work hard enough on it. I did it the night before it was due and should have proof-read it more carefully. I can't even remember what it was about. I've always much preferred writing fiction over non-fiction stuff. It's much more fun.
Okay, I posted an update. I'll try to post once a week or something. I just haven't been on LJ much lately. I tend to go on lunch break at work when I'm bored and don't have much else I can do. I try to read back but usually only go so far. I also tend to skip certain people's entries. Some people write a lot, multiple times daily. Someone else has all her Tweets posting to her LJ so I skip that... mostly I read my rl friends stuff and a couple of online friends. I don't always comment but I try to occasionally.
Sorry for the long comments. ^^; I don't usually talk about writing much. Tracy isn't much of a writer so I don't usually have anyone to talk to about it.
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Ah, yes, that's it. That's what I was trying to say XD I could just use the US spelling, but it just looks weird to me ^^; Like, I know both versions are right, but *shrug* I guess I'm just stubborn, sticking to the Canadian spelling, lol.
I think I like my characters being more living, changing entities that dictate their story to me, even though it changes.
Once again, very well put. I like it ^^ There's definitely nothing wrong with writing that way, tho i think it's also really good that you did all that planning-- even if character stuff changes, world-building's really important and (for me, anyway) hard XD And even if you make changes to that, too, you can still play around with what you have. Oh, and I'm all for keeping cute little kids ;) (and just cause they have one together doesn't mean they have to end up together, so it still works! if anything, that gives you even more to play with ^^)
Oh, wow. Okay, if she ppl were asking you for help over her, then you definitely knew what you were doing. This woman sounds like she was on crack, seriously o.O If she didn't even know that she was teaching wrong, then I highly doubt she knew anything about writing...
Cool, I will go and read it next ^^
Ah, don't apologize! I don't mind long comments, it's always nice to have a discussion ^^ And I really like talking about writing, so I tend to get a bit carried away, lol.
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lol, yeah in the story they have a kid but don't stay together...but then they sorta fight over the poor kid. Not gonna go into the details but eventually the better parent wins, but not after some heartache on the part of that parent and the kid. None of that is on 'paper' yet... just in my head. Maybe one day. An alternate version is on paper...sorta... it's kinda complicated to explain. ^^; It's not them but it sorta based on them. I kinda of make it complicated when I have characters writing stories...^^;
Well that teacher couldn't teach, that was for sure. Not sure how she got hired. I'm assuming no one else wanted to teach the computer class and that's why she was doing it. She was the worst teacher I had in ILT.
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