Comments | barbarienne: The painful slog portion of the program

barbarienne

The painful slog portion of the program

Feb 02, 2014 13:49

So the WRITE ALL THE THINGS phase has passed. I'm now in the "I don't know what happens next" phase.

It's irksome, because there's really no way (that I know of, for me) to goose the muse. He's decided to go on holiday. I keep explaining that I'm perfectly fine with him lying about the house getting drunk here if he likes, but he mutters something ( Read more... )

writing progress

Comments 10

jaylake February 2 2014, 18:54:44 UTC

One of the things I used to do was write *something* every day, even if it was egregious crap, just to keep myself habituated. Free writing never worked very well for me, but banging out a flash piece, especially with a focus on some angle of craft which was bothering me (dialog, or gender characterization, or whatever) tended to work. And often as not, I would realize later it wasn't crap.

barbarienne February 2 2014, 20:15:36 UTC

Ah, yes, the "crap or not?" question! Someone should start a gambling business based on predicting how a writer will feel about a particular day's output some months later.

Hmm, flash training to focus on a particular aspect of writing. Been a while since I've done that. Wouldn't mind getting to that again.

sartorias February 2 2014, 19:08:45 UTC

Doing at least a sentence, good stuff. You never know when one might ignite things.

barbarienne February 2 2014, 20:16:10 UTC

That's what I'm depending on. There's often a point where it goes BOOM in a good way.

burger_eater February 2 2014, 20:23:58 UTC

I'm now in the "I don't know what happens next" phase.

Permission to offer advice on this subject?

barbarienne February 3 2014, 15:10:53 UTC

Sure! Usually I bring in a man with a gun (or the fantasy equivalent), but what this book needs is fewer plot complications, not more, at this point.

burger_eater February 4 2014, 17:32:49 UTC

So, when I'm stuck in a story, what I start doing is what comedians do when they can't come up with a joke: I make lists ( ... )

barbarienne February 4 2014, 19:48:22 UTC

That's good advice!

I kind of instinctively seem to do this a little. Most often it's "I don't know what the hell is going on...lemme timeline this thing" which has some of these list elements in it.

I actually got the scene I'm currently stuck in (oh well) by saying, "What is X character doing right now?" But that doesn't seem to be enough. This strategy you propose seems like it might help push the concept more.

I'm going to try this with deliberate focus.

msisolak February 3 2014, 05:35:06 UTC

I'm telling myself to write two sentences a day--enough to goose me into actual writing, because how hard are two sentences? And then I typically write more. Maybe it's only a hundred words total, but far more than I had before I tried the two-sentence trick. Today, it was a couple of hours of rewriting.

So, go, E!

barbarienne February 3 2014, 15:11:26 UTC

I got 180 words yesterday--THREE PARAGRAPHS!