WIP challenge: day 16 check-in!

[littlebutfierce]

Hello everyone! How's the fic going today?

Poll #11163

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

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How's the fic going today?

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Fantastic!
2 (25.0%)

All right
2 (25.0%)

Meh
2 (25.0%)

Terrible
2 (25.0%)

& what have you been up to?

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Writing
4 (50.0%)

Editing
3 (37.5%)

Researching
1 (12.5%)

Taking a breaking
2 (25.0%)

Posting
2 (25.0%)

Sending to beta
0 (0.0%)

Canon refresh
0 (0.0%)

Something else (tell us what in comments!)
1 (12.5%)

... with typo in it, natch! orz

Tell us something you're good at in fic. Even if it's difficult to claim that you're good at anything, give it a try! Is it churning out words for a first draft? Sex scenes? Editing? Getting a character's voice just right? Whatever it is, does it come easily to you? Is it something you've struggled with forever? How did you improve at it?

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Still no words today, ugh. :/

I'm generally good at getting words out for a first draft; when I am able to write at all, it's relatively easy for me to do that, partly because of establishing a habit via 750 Words (though that habit is now gone, after nearly 2 years of keeping it up, sob).

[gramarye1971]

Finally I can check in, since I just posted the final part of my most recent WIP to its anon-meme, and now I can go back and make the last few edits before cross-posting it hither and yon in a day or two!

The one thing I'm usually good at is pacing and building suspense. Whether it's for comedy or drama, action or tension, I've been told (and don't have much cause to doubt) that the pacing in my stories is pretty good. I'm not quite sure how it comes to me, but I think it's something that I've had to work at over the years. It's required a lot of chopping out scenes and swapping dialogue around, and not being afraid to jettison entire lines or scenes if they simply don't work in a story. So that's something I've got going for me, at least.

[littlebutfierce]

Oooh, yay for posting!!

Pacing is important! I am not great at it (& this is part of the reason I don't write longfic), so I salute you.

[gramarye1971]

Thanks! I suspect that part of it comes from having to write and edit conference presentations, where you only have so much time to present and you can't have extraneous material (no matter how good it is) but you still can't oversimplify things (or your audience won't be able to follow you). It's tricky to get right, and I'm by no means an expert at it, but it's one of the few things I don't tend to stress about when writing.

[lea_hazel]

I finally wrote again after being stalled for ages! Plus I figured out an important insight about my central conflict. I'm very pleased.

[littlebutfierce]

YAAAAAAAY for breaking your writer's block! That's fantastic. :D

[ladygriddlebone]

I did some writing and editing today, and posted a drabble. I finally caught up on my word count goal, which I missed all weekend due to RL events getting in the way. I feel more or less okay about this. The things I wrote are going to require a lot of editing, but everything I write lately does.

I normally don't feel all that confident about my abilities to write things. I always see room for improvement, no matter how good a particular scene/sentence/story is. I find sex scenes really easy to write, but I don't think that necessarily makes my results very good. I've improved quite a bit at writing action scenes over the past couple of years, and I'm proud of that, though I still see places I can improve. In my opinion, I also build better (although I tend to think "more thorough" is a better way to put it) fantasy AUs than others, at least in the fandoms I read and write for.

[littlebutfierce]

Hooray for catching up on your word count goal & posting that drabble, especially after having hectic RL stuff in the way -- go you!

I think feeling like we're good at something doesn't mean we never think there's room for improvement -- you can feel like you have a strength while still admitting you could grow in that respect, you know? I'm glad you are still able to list things that you've improved at & feel more comfortable w/.

[lullabymoon]

Another 900 words written and I got my snippets sent away for the check in. Quite a few wee sparks of inspiration as well so yesterday was a very good day.

[littlebutfierce]

Woooooo, yay! Sounds like a great day indeed!

[linaewen]

I had this year's busiest day ever yesterday, and I'm lucky I survived it with most of a smile intact -- so no time to even think about fic! However, I'm off for the rest of the week, so I think I should be able to make up for it with some productive writing work. ;-)

I think I'm good at a couple of things -- one of them is description, particularly settings. Part of this might be because I try to visualize a place based on things I've actually seen and that helps me describe it in a way that the readers appreciate. Another is character voice; I think I do a good job of keeping my characters in character! They each have a particular way of talking and thinking, and I try to be consistent with that. I also am also veyr confident in my ability to edit, which actually makes it possible to forgo betas unless I want someone to look at a story for something else other than actual editing.

I would say the things I do well come fairly easily, because I've always been good at expressing myself (on paper) -- I just have to find the right words -- and I have a pretty good idea of who my characters are before they walk onto the page, so I can be true to them from the start. Descriptions take a fair bit of research sometimes, because I find that to write something correctly I want to see a picture of it, if it's not something I have experienced in real life.

[littlebutfierce]

Yay for getting through yesterday! I hope the rest of the week has time for writing, as you hope.

& I find description a challenge, so I am well impressed. :D

[linaewen]

So much for my ability to edit. I just saw a typo in my reply, lol!