Struggling
Mar. 7th, 2006 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienYes, I did write some words today -- in a notebook on the bus this morning. Later on I may type them up and add some more, but I'm getting to the bit where it isn't fun, already, and only hoping I can push through it and get my flow back.
EDIT: About 500 words total, in the end; heroine dressed and off to have breakfast, thanks to motherly friend who turned up with her things. I need to find some way to bring in a bit more detail about her instrument, in revisions; so far I've established that it means a lot to her, but not why, unless I actually use the essay-written-when-she-was-twelve that I wrote just before I ran out of steam last time. I've had some vague notion of using stuff like that as interstitial material between chapters, but that might be a bit too fancy and slow the action down too much.
Writing is like this: I have a scene in my mind -- in this case, one that's been there for quite some time. When I come to set it down in electrons, I first have to take that platonic ideal of the scene, with its walking, talking, thinking people, and make a crude mental mockup of it, all badly moulded papier mache and slapdash paintwork. Then I walk around the model and look at it from all angles, making sure it's physically possible, and then try to put it into words. If I can't get words that please me, if the sentences come up with more than one semicolon splice or too many instances of the same adjective, or just the wrong rhythm, or if the words point in a direction I don't want the story to go, I go back in and tweak the model until I get something that does translate into reasonable words. Then I shove the little mannequins into the next position, and repeat. It's slow, and boring, and painful, and I'm not at all sure, at this point, that it's producing anything anyone would want to read.
At this point, all the discussions floating around about the possibility or impossibility of making a career out of writing are completely beside the point, for me. I made that choice the other way, a long time ago; it really is just a hobby for me, albeit one that I feel just slightly imcomplete without, and that makes me uncomfortable talking about it at all in the company of people who actually do it for a living, or aim to. For now, I'll be happy if I can get back to the point where my friends find my stories a pleasant evening relaxation; I'm nowhere near that, right now.
EDIT: About 500 words total, in the end; heroine dressed and off to have breakfast, thanks to motherly friend who turned up with her things. I need to find some way to bring in a bit more detail about her instrument, in revisions; so far I've established that it means a lot to her, but not why, unless I actually use the essay-written-when-she-was-twelve that I wrote just before I ran out of steam last time. I've had some vague notion of using stuff like that as interstitial material between chapters, but that might be a bit too fancy and slow the action down too much.
Writing is like this: I have a scene in my mind -- in this case, one that's been there for quite some time. When I come to set it down in electrons, I first have to take that platonic ideal of the scene, with its walking, talking, thinking people, and make a crude mental mockup of it, all badly moulded papier mache and slapdash paintwork. Then I walk around the model and look at it from all angles, making sure it's physically possible, and then try to put it into words. If I can't get words that please me, if the sentences come up with more than one semicolon splice or too many instances of the same adjective, or just the wrong rhythm, or if the words point in a direction I don't want the story to go, I go back in and tweak the model until I get something that does translate into reasonable words. Then I shove the little mannequins into the next position, and repeat. It's slow, and boring, and painful, and I'm not at all sure, at this point, that it's producing anything anyone would want to read.
At this point, all the discussions floating around about the possibility or impossibility of making a career out of writing are completely beside the point, for me. I made that choice the other way, a long time ago; it really is just a hobby for me, albeit one that I feel just slightly imcomplete without, and that makes me uncomfortable talking about it at all in the company of people who actually do it for a living, or aim to. For now, I'll be happy if I can get back to the point where my friends find my stories a pleasant evening relaxation; I'm nowhere near that, right now.
