jazzfish | Entries tagged with not writing:memory

Well, that's a draft. And unlike previous 'that's a draft's I think I am sufficiently happy with this one.

By which I mean, I don't think I can make it much better, and certainly not enough better to justify the increasingly diminishing returns of pounding away on it.

So I'll send this draft off for a couple of final reads to make sure I haven't completely screwed anything up, and then I guess it's time for another page in the submission spreadsheet.

And also to figure out what I'm going to be working on at Rainforest next week.

Crossposts: http://jazzfish.livejournal.com/548021.html

I don't generally think in terms of 'drafts.' I'm more of a 'continuous revision' kinda guy. I guess a 'draft' occurs when something is done enough to send out for feedback, mostly so that I can keep the comments on different versions separate.

Which is to say, after a lot of delays and procrastination, culminating in an unexpected nap this afternoon, I've finished the next draft of "In the City of Memory." It's not done, but it's done enough to get some additional eyes on it, because I'm tired of staring at it and it's all running together.

\o/

Now for dinner and sociableness.

Crossposts: http://jazzfish.livejournal.com/526636.html

tl;dr: I hate revising because my brain is terrified I'll screw up something that's currently not-terrible.

So I have this story. It's okay, people seem to like it, but it needs more. So I'm adding in a scene or two and filling in some backstory.

I can't shake the sense that every change I make is, instead of improving things, ruining whatever it was that made the story good to start with.

I complained about it on twitter, and talked it over with a couple of people, and suddenly that looked really familiar.

Imagine it's the dead of winter, and you've woken up in the middle of the night. You're buried under blankets and you're mostly warm enough. Only mostly, though. You've started to get a little chilly.

There's a thermostat on the wall. You can get up and turn the heat up a couple of degrees, and then you'll be fine.

Trouble is, you have to get up. Get out from under the blankets, into the cold air, where you'll be genuinely cold instead of just a bit chilly.

Instead I have a bad habit of staying buried under the blankets and convincing myself that I'm not really that cold. And compared to how I'd be while I'm out, it's true! It just misses the point that I'd be completely comfortable pretty soon after, for some small effort and discomfort now.

Same thing. The story as it is works, sort of. Why mess with it? Why risk making it worse?

Answer: Because it doesn't work, because there is no 'sort of works' any more than 'sort of comfortable.' Because it's worth making the story better, and if that makes it worse to start with then I can correct that when I hear about it.

Crossposts: http://jazzfish.livejournal.com/520675.html

Words: 1008
Total words: 2053
Neat things: Spitting on a hologram. Being responsible for an entire city.

Reports from the front:
10 AM: DRAFTKILL COMMENCING.
3 PM: Well, this isn't the story I thought I was writing, but given the trouble that one was giving me I'm okay with this.
6 PM: Right on schedule: 100% plotted, 75% written, 99% sure it sucks.
8 PM: Hey, that's a draft. How'd that happen? Now to revise.
10 PM: Alpha-read, lightly revised, and sent. What a day

I dunno, man. I sat down at ten this morning intending to come out the other side of today either with my story or on it. After not getting anywhere for about an hour I came up with a different plot altogether, and got the whole shape of that one, and then it was mostly just typing it up.

I don't know what I've learned from this. External deadlines motivate me like nothing else, but I knew that. I can in fact still come up with a story when pushed; that's good to know, though I'd rather it were a bit less stressful. Part of why I couldn't get anywhere with the original plot was a vagueness as to what happens when... but I knew what the next scene was, and I couldn't just write it and find out what happens next from there. Maybe my process has changed. I don't know that I approve if it has, although if it stops me from writing twenty pages of buildup so that I know what happens in the three pages of plot it's a net positive.

Also, the suck in this one is localised to a pair of conversational exchanges. Too bad that one of them sets up the whole emotional payoff, and the other is that payoff. Oh well. Only way to learn is to fail, and the next one will be differently bad.

Current Mood: thud
Crossposts: http://jazzfish.livejournal.com/460119.html

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.