More than one way to put the pieces together

[mnfaure]

In a recent entry, I bemoaned the rigidity of my writing brain. I talked about using a different POV to convey info, but I wasn't clear because I don't want to bore people with specifics. What I meant to say was this:

Comments

[asakiyume]

I've read so many different ways of being creative and writing. There's the I-see-a-movie-in-my-head way, but, for instance, nineweaving has written about an accretive way of creating here. Look especially at her remarks here, in comments.

I understand feeling frustrated with your approach to writing and stories. I feel frustrated with mine. I feel so very, very *conventional*, boring, and flat. If I say things like this, people will rush to reassure me, but it's something I feel deeply, inside. I don't know what to do about it. So, I just keep trying...

[green_knight]

*You* feel conventional and boring? You've got a greater talent than almost anybody I know to see the extraordinary in every-day life.

If you feel like that, then there really is no connection between the feeling and reality. Which is tremendously reassuring, as the feeling is one I'm familiar with...

[asakiyume]

Thanks for the generous words. I keep telling myself, people seem to like what I write well enough, but it's hard (sometimes impossible) to silence the inner voice. I think there really is no connection to how we feel and the reality. For better or for worse! I took some big hits to self-esteem and confidence in the past year, and it's surely contributed to my current outlook. But back in, oh, 2006, let's say, I was overbrimming with confidence, and, frankly, some of it was pretty unjustified. A person can be blind in either direction. (Sorry to be such a morose downer... on a more positive note, I think if we just keep trying and sharing, at least our words can find readers)

[khiemtran]

Hmm. I find I certainly different modes for when I'm finding out what happens when I go along, and when I already know what happens and I'm trying to work out the best way to show it. Sometimes I have to go through the first mode to find out what happens (and often more importantly, what really motivates the characters), and then I'll tell it again using the second mode and change all the viewpoints and edit it to best advantage. Other times, what comes out of the first mode is actually the best...

[clarentine]

If I'm slowly growing a story, like a statue, it makes no sense to me to build it (or partially build it), take a hammer to it, break it into pieces, and then cobble it back together and call it the same story.

That depends, I think, on whether your definition of "the story" is the kernel of the idea which prompted you to begin writing or the end product. Is a plant simultaneously the seed it grows from and the grown plant?

I don't know that it will be helpful, but I have always felt that, in writing, I'm translating to the written word from the flat images (not movies) and accompanying emotions my brain thinks in. Once I get the words right, I have a very hard time rewriting - to the point where, when I really get hung up, I have to switch to a different media (most often paper, now) and write out the new scene by hand, completely separate from the draft I'm rewriting. Otherwise, I flail constantly over the transitions from paragraph to paragraph. :-)

[green_knight]

It makes perfect sense, so why didn't I have the sense to see it earlier?

Because it's hindsight. And you cannot have hindsight in advance, by definition.

Why does my brain not search out more creative ways of making connections and shifting either prose or ideas?

Only you can know the answer to that. Maybe. For some writers, everything is made-up. For some writers, everything is set in stone. Most writers are in the middle. My writing metaphor is that I'm a chronicler: I write down what happened. And like a historian, sometimes my block-headed insistence that I know how this kind of story unfolds stands in my way, and I force a story into a shape that doesn't work and I need to go back, and listen more carefully. Like a historian, I sometimes uncover new evidence that means that things cannot have happened as I wrote them down, so I need to go back, and rewrite. But like a historian, I also can never combine two characters to make a third and simplify the story.

my imagination doesn't seem to work like the majority of writersI

[asakiyume]

I like your historian image. I've sometimes felt like an archaeologist of the story, uncovering it.

[green_knight]

I find it helpful - not just because it matches how I work and how I feel about characters/story - but also because I remind myself that historians go back and question 'what they know' and change their mind when they uncover new evidence.

I also discovered eventually that my brain has an idea shorthand: 90% of all ideas arrive with a renaissance-ish setting and young male protagonists. If I stood my ground and said 'this is the story' I'd lose out on a lot. Instead I treat that as a walkthrough, as something that gives me dynamics and an idea of what the story is like, and then I sit down and dig deeper. And suddenly the story might involve classical Greece or three-gendered lizards; if I'd treated my first ideas as written in stone I would have lost out on those. (That one is alive and I'll come back to it one of these days.)

[frigg]

Maybe you shouldn't change the way your imagination works, but work on improving the way of writing that comes naturally to you?

I know I've suggested that you hop into that character brain/body and take it from where, but if that method just isn't growing on you or doesn't come easy to you, then maybe my advice wasn't the right one for you?

(and yes, you're definitely a prose lover, not sure that's a bad thing either, though).