verbage: Voice

[jazzfish]

Words: 227
Total words: 1084
Neat things: Raptured nerds sent to colonize / strip-mine a planet; the job's done when they get things up and running well enough to build a spaceship to get them back off again.

Blarg rant can't write words stuck whine blarg. Used to be able to write and write and write and look up and work out where it was going and write some more, and the process was painful but at least it got somewhere. Now that's good for maybe a few hundred words; after that I work out where it's going and I still can't write it. Spent all afternoon and much of the evening not writing this, trying to bash out the plot/structure I've got. Success was what they call "limited," or maybe "minimal."

This is the third thing running (VP story, Bookwyrms, this) where momentum carries me through a perfectly decent opening scene and then I freeze up on writing anything beyond that. The last two I managed to turn that opening scene plus a bit more into a 1500-word vignette but I don't want to write vignettes. Except apparently I do, or something.

At this point I am seriously out of ideas as to what is wrong with me. I guess I write vignettes until I either figure out how I can write something with more meat to it, or give up.

Blarg.

Comments

[thanate]

:(

Try starting in the middle? Work on clusters of vignettes that can eventually conjoin? Write something totally ridiculous and therefore maybe less stressful? Come up with ways to change up your writing habits-- do the coffee shop thing, get up at 5 am to write before work, set a timer, have a carb/sugar snack or caffeine right before starting...? Contemplate Fran's question about what you do to recharge your creative processes?

Maybe it's just how frustrated you were by the time of writing this entry, but it sounds almost like part of the problem is that you're so stressed about it. (re: which, been there, done that, no fun.)

Good luck sorting something out.

[jazzfish]

A lot of the tone of the above is due to having been beating my head against it all day and gotten more or less nowhere. Having said that it may be related to unrelated stressors. Which, argh. I refuse to be a prima donna writer who must have Everything Perfect before The Making Of Art Can Commence.

Thanks. :7

[thanate]

This is fair. But not being all primadonna also involves an element of knowing when it's time to go get a cup of hot chocolate instead of continuing to bang your head against the computer and swear at things. (I'm still working on that one...)

[thanate]

also... have you tried any of the local/temporary destressing techniques just before sitting down to write, possibly combined with thinking through your next scene and/or first few sentences while you're destressing? (yoga, meditation, cup of tea, go for a walk, whatever...)

[aamcnamara]

I am not sure about this either. With short stories it used to be that my brain worked out where a story was going, so then it added one million complications and extra layers and stuff because otherwise it'd get bored. Now it seems to be more that my brain works out where the story's going and then it stalls. And weirdly it's started to do this with novels too. I simultaneously know too much and not enough about the piece--too much about the overarching plot, not enough about what's happening right now right here.

Maybe post-VP flailing? Consequence of trying to process everything all at once? Maybe it's just that I have to sit down and really immerse myself in the characters, the atmosphere, etc.?

Discard bits of this rambling as in/applicable to your own situation.

[jazzfish]

It helps a bit to know it's happening to someone else, too, at least. :7 Feh.

It may be a continuation of the need to absorb things from VP. Or... I'm starting to suspect that for me at least it's a stress issue, of which I have had a bit the last couple of weeks. I dislike this because, y'know, life is stress; if I'm gonna write I need to figure out how to do so around the stress, or in spite of it, or something. Your mileage may vary, past performance is no guarantee of future results, think globally act locally.

[aamcnamara]

M'm. If you figure out the secret, let me know.