Comments | teethlikedog: your famous friend, well, I blew him

teethlikedog

your famous friend, well, I blew him

Mar 05, 2006 23:36

I found some old notebooks in a drawer today, and skimming through them I realised just how much I write without ever finishing anything. All sorts of scribbled scenarios, half-formed plots and random bits of character interaction that either died in its tracks or was forgotten before it could come to anything. I found a bit of Yoshiki/Takuya I ( Read more... )

tsubasa, ranting, writing

Comments 4

ontogenesis March 6 2006, 05:33:08 UTC

On the one hand, I don't want to discourage you from putting your best effort into a fanfic, but on the other - well, it is fanfic, not a dissertation. If the story becomes too much work, it's not fun anymore and I've noticed that I personally have a tendency to wander away from my fanfic if it reaches that stage. That's why I've deliberately forced myself to limit the size of the Lost In Translation chapters - so it stays fun. It also means I don't have to work four weeks on a chapter before I can post and get feedback / encouragement.

Plus I'm a slow-as-heck writer, but that's another can of worms. :p

I think it would be a good idea for you to post scenes of your story - and if you're not certain about certain parts or elements, you can ask for specific feedback and that will help you try to stitch the whole thing together if you have your heart set on that. I'm not saying this either just because I want to read yummy Yamano fic.

teethlikedog March 9 2006, 22:17:40 UTC

See, the thing is, I do enjoy writing this particular mess, when I'm actually sitting there with a pen in my hand. But then something interrupts me, or I lose focus, or I just can't find the right way to phrase something, and things just...deflate. It doesn't help that I'm one of those edit-as-you-go people, so I can't move onto the next sentence until I've rewritten the current one to my satisfaction; as a result I'll write the same paragraph a half dozen times before I'm happy with it, which fills lots of paper without covering much ground ( ... )

ontogenesis March 11 2006, 02:00:32 UTC

Yeah, I tend to write the same way, pick-as-you-go. I'm trying to force myself to skip over particularly troublesome passages so I can return to them later, and I've had some success with that.

It is easy to become overwhelmed with lots of plot bunnies... I'm sure that if you stick to it, though, that it will be productive for you.

A break would probably end up being productive. Part of the reason I started working on a KuroFai piece was to take a break from the other fanfic - as long as you keep writing *something*, it shouldn't be any problem to pick it back up. ^^

Glad that the advice was a bit helpful. By the way, do you ever do outlines (nothing like that overly format-obsessed thing they teach in school, but just a few notes to guide you)? I find that it helps help sprawling ideas somewhat more contained.

teethlikedog March 11 2006, 13:48:52 UTC

I know what you mean - trying to skip past a section that isn't working feels almost like forcing my way past a physical barrier; part of my brain is just screaming "No! It's not right yet! Fix it! FIX IT!!!" But I think I'm getting a little better at it. Well, I couldn't get much worse...

Outlines are a mixed blessing for me. I don't bother with them for very short pieces, because those tend to be purely visceral writing, with little-to-no planning involved. When I'm planning something longer I do write outlines, but my problem is that once I've outlined something from beginning to end, I sometimes lose interest in writing it, because I already know exactly what's going to happen. Stupid, I know, but it happens at times.

But the Yamano thing I'm writing definitely suffers from complete lack of any guidelines. I think I actually have about three different stories going on in there, which are crisscrossing and overlapping like crazy, and none of which have any appreciable structure to them. To be honest, I'd happy if I could just ( ... )