liralen: Finch Painting (painting)
[personal profile] liralen
What I've learned about writing is that it's better to do it every week day and build in some "off days". But it's harder to do when I expect something significant every single day, i.e. a whole scene or a whole next step to a plot, it can be really hard to do and I get discouraged enough every time I miss a day's worth of "something significant" that I stop writing all together, and that's not useful at all.

I may just start some Word docs for each of the stories and just work on them for a couple of hours every day, and then post when there's a whole scene or thought of completion.

Or something. I have a good feel, now, for where Ash and Thorn are going. I have a better feeling for Ben as the executioner for Judge Dee, but I really want to read some of the Judge Dee stories before I go further with that and the feeling for that story. I have a good feeling for the seven brothers and their sister and their charge. I need to explore the chapel grounds some more, and may just edit out the thief and lady. But there's some kind of dynamic with the brothers that I really like. I still have to write rebellious brother Six more fully and that's going to be both interesting and hard for me. I'm not very good at rebellion.

It's also good to just write. I appreciate every comment everyone's made, and, especially [livejournal.com profile] rephetibel for following everything so faithfully. Thank you.

Date: 2007-12-01 02:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rephetibel.livejournal.com
You're welcome.

I tried for the longest time to write a story I had in my head, The Moonboat. It's been years since I put it away. Your perserverence has convinced me I should rummage it out in the new year and work on it. My biggest mistake, I think, was when I began writing what I thought people would want to read instead of the story I wanted to tell.

Date: 2007-12-01 07:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] liralen.livejournal.com
Ah... that's hard. I really like writing what others might like to read, and it's hard to balance. Especially when I'm just posting it all willy nilly. *laughter*

I'd probably have gotten more done if I were just writing by myself, but it was very useful for me to get feedback on what people thought of the ideas if even that first pass cut could be made on "wow this is boring" or "wow... these are pretty cool"...

Date: 2007-12-01 05:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crimini.livejournal.com
The best advice Stephen King gives in his book On Writing (also told in Robert McKee's Story, two of the books about writing I own) is that writing every day is super important. So writing even an hour a day, writing something unrelated to the main Work in Progress, writing junk is better than not writing at all.

Date: 2007-12-01 07:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] liralen.livejournal.com
Mmmm... yes. I could believe that.

Even writing my journal every day was pretty cool in and of itself. Keep up with the whole concept of putting words together to make some sense or communication of some sort...

That's very good to know. Thank you!

I know you were trying to write every day for a while, I hope that's working out for you, still.

Date: 2007-12-01 08:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ross-teneyck.livejournal.com
Pat McManus -- who for years wrote a hilarious outdoor-themed humor column for Outdoor Life -- talked once about how he fell into that career. He'd been an English professor but got laid off, I think, from that and decided to take a crack at writing as a career. He'd write for a minumum of two hours every day, and he sent every single thing he wrote to market no matter how good or how bad he thought it was.

One day he finished up a major article he'd been working on for days, and had an hour left of his allotted writing time and nothing in particular planned for it. So he decided, OK, I'll just write nonsense for an hour, and he cranked out a couple of funny stories about the dog he'd had as a kid. He sent them in, because he sent everything in, but he was astonished when they were bought -- for the second-most he'd ever been paid for an article or column, and the article for which he'd been paid the most had taken him weeks to research and write. A quick calculation of the relative hourly rates, and lo and behold, he was a humor writer.

So... yeah. Writing every day = good.

Date: 2007-12-03 07:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] liralen.livejournal.com
I like that rule about sending everything out no matter how good or bad he thought it might be. I might have to learn from that.

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