The Grace of Tragedy

Moving.

I'm abandoning this incarnation of GoT, and combining it with my other journal, Changed Priorities Ahead.

Ch- ch- changes

Since I spend most of my time over on Livejournal, which is a wonderful and easy updating interface for giant slackers like me, I'm going to be moving this journal over there in the near future. I am actually writing (and consequently whining, bitching and wailing about writing), though my priorities have changed significantly and I'm not focusing on writing for publication.

I haven't yet decided if I'm just going to combine GOT with my main journal, or if I am going to keep it seperate. Likely the former, because of that giant slacker thing.

Writer Brain Diaries

Every once in a while I get a bug to reform myself and write things in sequence. Finish a story, start the next one, finish it, and so on. A nice, neat linear progression, no distractions from new or other old ideas. Just sit down and work through a story. End of story.

And every time I get that bug, I am stomping on it within a month. I can't even write consecutively within a story. I bounce from end to beginning to middle to another story entirely. It's not at all uncommon for me to finish something, and for the next week sit around working on three stories until I pick one to focus on, and then I end up opening something else I haven't touched in ages, or working on somethign entirely new. Most of my WIPS are disconnected chunks of prose and ideas, and usually by the time I get to the point of filling it all in, I've changed most of what was there originally.

I never learn that I don't think in a straight line. Even in day-to-day stuff, I'm bouncing between five or six things all the time. I do something at one task that reminds me of another task, and I work my way around until everything's been fit into its place. Writing rough drafts of papers for school used to send me into fits, because I don't do drafts. I add and tweak and revise every time I open a document, and when it's done, it's done, unless I'm having fits about a specific issue, then I send it off to someone.

I used to think that this inability to just sit down and produce a story from beginning to end and move on to the next was what held me back as a writer, but I've been producing pretty consistently (averaging a fanfic a month) for the last two years, so I think that was more an issue of what I was writing, not how I was writing it. But still, sometimes, it would be nice to think in a straight line.

The first step is admitting it

Signs you might have a problem: you just paid four bucks for a wireless connection at a cafe to check email and livejournal.

Currently I'm the last writer standing at Write Club. Eric just fled, and I would too, but again, just paid four bucks for two hours of wireless, so I feel I should sit here and dork around online to get the most out of my money.

Besides, there are disgustingly rich chocolate cupcakes here. And writing is actually happening! Words have actually survived the treacherous trip from my brain through the keyboard to the screen. Four hundred or so words weren't so lucky, alas, but they were weak and would have held back the rest. It was a sacrifice for the greater good, and they did not die in vain.

Okay, I should probably lay off the disgustingly rich chocolate cupcakes.

You know when you write something, and you think, "Damn, that's good." And then you look at it a week or two later, and you can't hit delete fast enough?

Yeah.

Writing is just fucking irritating sometimes.

After four days in a row of being unable to stand up straight for fifteen or twenty seconds after getting up off the couch, I've started doing yoga in the mornings. I'm not a coordinated or balance-enabled person when I'm fully conscious. And I am so not a morning person. But at least my back and hip won't hurt when I inevitably concuss myself by falling on my head during a downward dog pose.

Driven to distraction

I feel like I've developed some sort of story attention deficit disorder. I can't keep my concentration on any story for more than three minutes at a time, and my brain is tossing out new ideas left and right. And they're GOOD ideas and they deserve far better than my current "Ooooh, shiney...but, ooooh, the one over there is shinier!" approach. I had vowed to finish the Gemini tag this weekend. I haven't even opened that file.

I was also thwarted in my deep desire for cupcakes because the eggs we have expired on Dec 31st.

Woe. Woe is me. *back of hand to forehead*

Man, today has been all about the melodrama in my head. I think I'm finally succumbing to the cold/flu/malaise that's been making the rounds.

Out with the old...

So Mer gave "Little Green Gods" the red-pen treatment again, and made lots of excellent comments. But the most telling was that my writing style has shifted quite a bit in the last months, and it might be best to restart the whole story from scratch.

And I considered it for about ten minutes, but since I really didn't have any good answers to her other questions about the motivations of the character, etc. ("Because I said so!" not being a compelling argument in this case.), I decided that I'm trunking the two completed shorts I have, dumping all the half finished stuff in an "abandon all hope" file, and starting from scratch.

(Well sort of. I'm keeping "The Charlatan's Creed" concept, and rewriting that one from scratch. And I fully intend to plunder "Little Green Gods" for some of the better bits of descriptive imagery.)

Which doesn't mean a whole lot has changed, except that my current projects folder looks much neater, now.

Revue

All right. I am finally overwhelmed with shame at how long this page has been empty. Damn you, Moveable Type.

Have actually been writing rather steadily since my last, long ago post. None of it pro or publishable work, but having come to terms with the realization that I just don't have the ambition or drive to make a professional career out of writing, I'm just writing for the sheer joy telling stories. And surprisingly, my style has shifted drastically and I dare say my skills have improved quite a bit.

You could call it working smarter, not harder, but I think it's more of an issue that when I remembered why I loved writing, it wasn't so painful a process to focus on improving the craft as well as on the fun.

Also bought a house, and attended my first Worldcon (which also happened to be my first SF/F con) this year, with the Feral Writers. Much geeky joy and networking was had, and I came out of it with a renewed impression that I'm writing for the right reasons right now. I focused on the fannish panel tracks for this con, unleashing my inner fangirl for a weekend of unparalleled dorking around (well, okay, the least year I've spent immersed in media fandom probably has been much dorkier), and gleaned the good stuff from writer track perspectives from Mer and Eric. We won't make 2005, but we're planning to hit LA in 2006, and I think I'll take the writer route for that con.

We also had another feral writer's retreat , having expanded out number by one Lou, and Julie, an honorary feral writer for the weekend. One of the best retreats yet, and that had nothing to do with the Saturday night drunkeness. Really.

I haven't been ignoring pro work. Got a completely outside the group opinion on Little Green Gods, and a good swift kick form Mer on the decisions I need to make for the story to work. I've trunked all but two of the pieces I'd been working on last year. Most don't have any real room for improvement. Keeping "Little Green Gods," "12 Steps" and I'll be restaring "Drowning Atlantis" and "The Charlatan's Creed" more or less from scratch.

And I'm finally FINALLY making the last necessary efforts to finish my degree. It's become such an emotional and intellectual albatross hanging around my neck, and I've made it into this giant dramamtic psychological block about moving on with my life and my interests. Because I am a big moron that way.

All in all, I'm happy my writing, and have all sorts of places to go with it. Life is good.

It was Lisa's turn to

It was Lisa's turn to fall prey to the viral demons, and her job is crazy right now, so we've postponed the inauguration of our writing meetings until the end of the month. Thus, you all get to nag me so I don't just let the novel sit until that point. Because I will. I should have a badge that identifies me as an official "Devotee of Slack".

Instead of going out to Starbucks by myself last night (which I should have), I started reading "The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile" by Noah T. Lukeman. So I was reading about writing, even I wasn't actually writing. That counts, right?

All in all, I like the book, but it feels a bit elementary in some of the early sections. That's not a criticism (it's all excellent advice, and well put), but it's just that I already know most of what he's talking about, so it's not holding my attention very well. Still, some of the exercises he gives at the ends of the chapters look pretty useful, especially the one on taking control of adverbs and adjectives (I have a very bad habit of filling my first drafts with descriptive adverbs as a shortcut, just so I can get the basic form of the story down), and I like the tone and approach he uses. And I'm not even halfway through the book, so perhaps I should just shut up until I'm done with it...

So far, though, I think I like "The Forest for the Trees : An Editor's Advice to Writers" by Betsy Lerner better. That may be because it had a more anecdotal feel, rather than a direct "how not to" approach. That feel was one of the things I enjoyed most about Stephen King's "On Writing".

I broke my one-day record

I broke my one-day record - 6021 words since 3:00 this afternoon, putting me at 35,168 overall. That said, I'm going to break for the night before my head explodes.