Daily Check-In Post: May 15, 2011

[jagnikjen]

This is your daily check-in post!

Tell us how your day has gone, writing wise:

Awesome!
Pretty good.
On schedule.
Okay.
Like crap.
I've taken the day off.

Share your word count if you've got one; your current research (whether surfing the Net or re-watching/re-reading your fandom source); are you refreshing your well of creativity by reading, watching TV or seeing a movie; listening to music; or has real life taken a swipe at you?

Discussion questions:

What aspect/s of writing do you struggle with the most and would most like to see a discussion on?

What aspect/s of writing do you find easy?

Comments

[anyssia]

Day went pretty well, even if I didn't write anything (yet). I've been taking care of my DW journal, putting everything to right finally.

Word count so far? 4'000. I'm hoping to go to bed with another 1'000 words written.

What aspect of writing do I struggle the most with? My mind: it tends to wander >.> I can't concentrate on my text more that five minutes at a time, so it takes forever to write 500 words ^^;;;
A lot of people use music as background when writing, but even that I can't. I find myself listening, and if there are lyrics, trying to understand them, and I get nothing done.

[jagnikjen]

I've been taking care of my DW journal, putting everything to right finally.

That always makes me feel accomplished too.

And 4K--for one day?? That's fantastic!! I hope you can crank out that other 1000 words.

I know what you mean about music. I'm the same way. It has to be classical for me and on a play list not on a radio station otherwise I get sucked into the programming.

[anyssia]

^^ nope, 4k over two days ;p somehow, this one-shot really inspires me \O/ I didn't get to write those 1'000k yesterday, but I was still working on my DW, so a good evening anyway ^^

It's getting worse with music: I can't listen to anything at all now! I had gotten used to listen to rain sounds and such, but even that is too much now >.>

[eggcrack]

I've been as silent as a rock again, but this month has been going well for me! I'm working on a fanfic that I owe to my friend right now, as well as on plenty of original stuff, and today I got a lot of stuff sorted out and a proper start for this fanfic in question. It's funny; I may have the story otherwise in my head to the point of completion, but unless I find the right beginning I can't get anywhere with it.

Concentration is probably my biggest writing issue too, but I also have issues with planning the stories and finding the right working method for them. The main reason I don't write any multi-chapter stories is that it takes me literally ages to get everything together to the point I can start writing the story, after which I start having trouble with the actual writing. So, how to find the writing method that works best for your brain? All I know that my current methods may work sometimes, but they don't work all the time!

Still, generally this has been a promising month for me and hopefully will keep on being that. On the downside it seems to mean that I'm still going to be the worst commenter ever, for which I'm terribly sorry. I will try to find a way to be the worst commenter in the least worst way possible.

[anyssia]

Sometimes you need the perfect push to get anywhere ^^

Until now, I like to outline everything and go from there, but I recently realized that I blocked more than it helped. I tend to go a bit off tracks when I write and if I have a very detailed outline, I freak and scold myself and then I'm stuck.
So, now I just outline a few important points and that's it, I go with the flow.

Don't worry if you don't comment, as long as you get some work done, it's what counts ^^

[jagnikjen]

I may have the story otherwise in my head to the point of completion, but unless I find the right beginning I can't get anywhere with it.

I can sympathize with this, but I just write even if it's crap and I know I'm going to cut it or revise it until I don't recognize it.\

I'm so glad to hear your month is going well.

So, how to find the writing method that works best for your brain?

Trial and error mostly. Eventually you'll figure out how to get it all worked out.

Hope to see you around again soon. :)

[anyssia]

I tried that once, forcing myself to write so I could revise afterward, but it was such a mess, I knew it'd take me forever to put it to rights, I never finished the fic ^^;;

[littlebutfierce]

No new words written today, but I'm revising a fic that I found surprisingly good when I took a look at my rough draft (after not having looked at it for a while). I feel kinda pleased with it!

I find churning out the first draft of something fairly easy: I definitely feel like I'm the kind of writer that needs to warm up, to write through the crap, & I seem to be all right at turning off my inner censor & just... letting the crap churn out. And then I find myself writing things that surprise me, that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise, & sometimes they're actually things worth keeping & revising. Sometimes they're not! But I do think writing tons of crap helps me find the good words.

The first edits I also find fairly easy; I'm pretty good at clearing away large chunks of deadwood. After that it can get a bit harder for me. I'm good at finding, say, the words that get overused or that are jarring because they're kind of unusual & are used twice in quick succession. I mean, I'm good at finding them w/other people's fic! With mine it's harder, but that's why there are betas. <3

What's hard for me: PLOT. I am most comfortable w/vignettes or short porny things or feeeeelings. I've had a few actual plots present themselves to me this month & I am excited but scared!

I'd be interested in a discussion on the differences between shortfic & longfic writing, especially for people who write both (or who started off w/one & then switched predominantly to the other), too.

[anyssia]

Longfic vs shortfic?

Well, both sides have there bad points for me. Shortfic is good, because you can write more ofter, change subject when one gets annoying, get more feedback from different point of views.
Downside is, not much consistency.

Longfic, well, I like the fact that you might get people who follow you from start to finish and those help a lot to see how your writing evolves, what you could change. But, writing the same thing/plot all the time can get tedious. Plus, if you get stuck at one point, you can get very frustrated ^^;;

Really, the best solution for me is one main, longfic in progress, and sometimes writing a one-shot here and there, to change the scenery :p

[jagnikjen]

Revising is an important part of writing, so I'm glad it's going well for you. And some time between writing and editing is always helpful. Usually the longer you can leave it the better.

And then I find myself writing things that surprise me

Don't you just love it when that happens??? It's such a cool feeling.

And I know what you mean about plot. :(

I'm all for a discussion of long fic vs. short fic, but one of those articles lola_mento linked us to the other day addressed that issue a bit. Did you read it?? If not, then check it out and see if helps any. If not, then maybe we can use the article as a jumping off point for further discussion.

[curuchamion]

'I definitely feel like I'm the kind of writer that needs to warm up, to write through the crap, & I seem to be all right at turning off my inner censor & just... letting the crap churn out. And then I find myself writing things that surprise me, that I wouldn't have thought of otherwise, & sometimes they're actually things worth keeping & revising. Sometimes they're not! But I do think writing tons of crap helps me find the good words.'

I never understood how that could possibly work before, but having had to do it this past two weeks for my not!NaNo, I am amazed at how well it works. I certainly never would have gotten this far into this amazing ride of a novel if I hadn't committed to "I am just going to write 50,000 words about these characters. I can't let myself worry about quality or plot coherence or ANYTHING." And it is being awesome! :D

(And this is my first longfic, so I'd enjoy a discussion on the differences between the two kinds of writing too! But not tonight, I have to get to bed, otherwise I would be spouting off on it. *g*)

[anyssia]

Did you manage to finish the novel and beta-read it? I did Nanowrimo twice, even won both time, but I never got around to correct (or finish, as 50k hadn't seemed to be enough ^^;;;) The amount of work needed always felt crushing.

[curuchamion]

Haha, not yet! ;-) This is the first time I've done anything NaNo-like, and I'm still in the middle of the "write write write" stage. But I'm optimistic that I will finish and beta it eventually... I'm really in love with these characters and this storyline. (And people keep telling me they want to read it when it's done, which is sort of encouraging if scary! lol)

[anyssia]

Oh yeah, encouraging but scary is exactly it! ^^ Well, I hope you'll manage to stay on that story then, I'll be crossing my fingers for you!! ;p

[zippitgood]

Don't you love that? Going back to a fic that you thought was horrible when you were done with it but it's actually quite good on reread. I've done that plenty of times.

I don't find writing the first draft as easy as you do but I do go through a churning out crap process especially after a bit away from writing at all. I'm more in the habit of not getting back to something once I've started it. :-\

I hear you on the plot though evidently my perception of my own abilities is a little skewed. I'm good at coming up with it all, it's once I reach the middle that my commitment falls off.

[anyssia]

So many different combinations! I find plot easily too, but I don't lose interest, it's the opposite: I think too much about it, come up with so many things to add, and then the task seems so daunting, I can't push myself to begin because it will take me years to finish it ^^::

[curuchamion]

'I think too much about it, come up with so many things to add'

I know the feeling! I always hit a point in developing a longish story idea where it suddenly blimps into a novel, and usually I go "Eek!" and scale it back to the one pivotal scene I actually wind up writing (if that scene works as a stand-alone). I'm pretty boggled that I haven't yet gotten completely blocked by that on this project.

*ack, my syntax*

[anyssia]

(^^ don't worry for your syntax, English isn't my mother tongue, so chances are that I won't even see your errors and such ;p)

Sometimes, I wonder how novel writers can manage to write a whole saga and keep it up without trapping themselves in a dead end or going totally off topic.

I'd love if I could do the same thing as you, but I hate deleting, rewriting large parts, so when it's done, either I can find a way to keep it like that, and I keep going, or I definitively can't and then it'll take me days to get up the courage of working it again ;D

[jagnikjen]

Well after three days of no progress what-so-ever, I had an AWESOME writing day. I've cranked out just over 1200 words. If I write more later, great; if not, I'm perfectly happy with what I've done.

I'm still on track for my challenge. The 1200 words I wrote today is part of that challenge and hopefully I'll be able to finish and edit the story and have all ready for posting by Wednesday. *fingers crossed* for myself :P

Like littlebutfierce, I struggle the most with plot. I would love to crank a few more longer fics, but I'm pants at plotting and rarely come up with one good enough to sustain a longer fic. That's why I've just about decided not to pursue writing original fiction for publishing. I enjoy critiquing/beta reading/editing and am actually thinking about going that route instead.

The other thing I struggle with is really getting the emotion on the page.

I'm good with the basics: spelling, grammar, punctuation.

I usually start writing dialogue first and then I have to go back in and layer setting, internal narrative, emotion, etc.

[zippitgood]

Yay on the awesome word count day!

As for plot, have you tried just coming up with a fascinating premise and then exploring what could come of it with no thought for plot? That might help.

I have that same habit with dialogue. It's a crutch I need to stop leaning on so much but it's so easy depending on the characters.

[jagnikjen]

Well, for me it's not so much of a crutch as just my writing style. That's where I start and then layer in the other stuff as I go.

[anyssia]

Funnily enough, dialogs (and emotional scenes) are my pet peeves >.> I have trouble coming up with natural, flowing dialogs and emotional scenes always feel flat and/or rushed T.T
On the other side, I'm good at setting up a plot.

I wonder if the two aren't more or like mutually exclusive, with just a few writers that manage both and actually get to publish and sell.

It would be interesting to see how a collaboration between a writer more focused on plot and another more interested by the emotional part would work out... ^^

[curuchamion]

Yay for an awesome writing day! :D

[zippitgood]

I edited my Kink Bingo amnesty submission and posted it. \0/

I haven't gotten any word count for the day yet but that will change in a little bit. I know how I'm going to begin my HC Bingo fic but I'm still deciding which prompt I want to write from the Love Bingo card.


I struggle the most with follow through/getting distracted by new and shiny ideas. Maybe some thoughts on how to keep focused/what to do with new ideas from others?

I find world building comes pretty easy to me and description.

[jagnikjen]

Yay for editing and posting. Congrats!

[anyssia]

Congrats on meeting your deadline!! ^^

How to keep focused... hum. Maybe write down the plot you want to follow, main idea and a few lines of outline? Then write, and if another idea comes to you, write it down on a separate page, so that you can put it aside for later?

World building, really? That's impressive, I never manage to pay attention enough to focus on the many details/ideas that would be needed to create a world. Thankfully, I only write fanfictions, so I won't have that problem ;p or at least, in not as bad as if I needed to set everything up from scratch!

[curuchamion]

I'm getting back into my story after a long and non-wordcount-productive weekend! (It was productive of other things, though, such as Improved Characterization and Establishing Details and "hello again Mort, I knew you weren't really that angsty! sorry for emo-whumping on you so hard!". So I'm still happy, so far.) I wrote 983 words today!

Also I've begun rearranging a backup of my story file (which is full of scenes written completely out of order) into a chronological order so I can tell which scenes I only thought out and didn't write. Essentially, I've hit the point where a plot outline is beginning to be helpful - I am SUCH A PANTSER in the early stages, but I wouldn't be writing this specific book if I wasn't - so I'm making one. And every time I hit a scene that I thought through pretty clearly but didn't write, I stop and write it.

Hopefully, this will work out pretty well for me! :D I am currently 6547 words behind, so I need to do some serious catching up in Week Three. However, Chris Baty assures me (via his book) that this is indeed what will happen if I am diligent, so I cheer optimistically and forge ahead! :D

(Now I really need to go to bed. I have to work in the morning!)

[jagnikjen]

983 words is nothing to shake a stick at. That's awesome. And other activities related to writing a particular story are always good too.

[anyssia]

Well done! I'm pretty impressed that you got so much done, and especially that you manage to keep track of your story while writing chunk of it here and there. I couldn't, I'd be lost right away, or one part would go in one direction and the other totally at the opposite. ;p

[curuchamion]

'one part would go in one direction and the other totally at the opposite. ;p'

LOL! That's exactly what happened to me on the first two days - I wrote two different sections, looked at them, and said "WTH? These are two totally different genres of book!" But I kept writing (I decided when I committed to this project that I'd count it a win if I had 50,000 words about the same OCs at the end of the month, never mind a plot or anything else), and it started to sort itself out.

I guess it's just the way my brain works, though - I can't write totally in order unless a story's very short, I get stuck. ;-) But I have a knack for beta-checking continuity, in my own stories as well as in other people's. (I was always the one in the school play who'd point out "if we change this line, we need to make these other changes over here", that kind of thing. *g*)

Thanks for the comment! :-)

[anyssia]

Lucky you. I thank Gaia every day that I found beta-reader that could check my stories for that. I'm too close of them so I don't see it when there are plot holes or contradictions or such, and I hate to read fics like that, so I dread thinking that it could happen to me too ;p

Let's hope your novel stays on that track then, you seem to have found your way ^^ good luck!

[dragovianknight]

Tell us how your day has gone, writing wise: OH GOD WHY DID I EVER THINK WRITING WAS A GOOD IDEA WHYYYY?

[jagnikjen]

OH GOD WHY DID I EVER THINK WRITING WAS A GOOD IDEA WHYYYY?

I totally know where you're coming from. I have this thought whenever I try to get serious about writing original romance fiction for publication. It's so hard. That and the fact that I can't plot my way out of a paper bag. :)

Hang in there. Writing fanfic is for fun, so don't let it beat you down.

[anyssia]

As jagnikjen said, you're here to have fun, so don't panic and don't force yourself ;p It's not a life or death situation, so just set it aside for a couple of days, relax, maybe think a bit about your plot without forcing yourself, then go back to your fic. I bet you'll find it easier to concentrate yourself on the story ^^

[bay_alexison]

Ack, hadn't posted my progress the last three days because of drama going on, real and internet life wise, and I also needed to sort things out. However, today I was able to brainstorm a few ideas after reading a book of mine and also finally able to get the first round of editing one of my help_japan fics done. I'll look through the work a couple more times before sending it to my beta.

I tend to struggle getting started and focusing on my writing because of distractions and many things going on in my mind. Also grammar/awkward sentences because I tend to not able to catch them well, so I would always need someone else to look for those for me.

Oddly enough, plot tends to come easy for me. Backtracking a bit, I'm mostly a BP/KP. I'm able to come up with many ideas and somehow make them relate to one another.

[jagnikjen]

Sorry to hear about the drama. I hate it myself. Hope things settle down quickly.

But brainstorming is good as is editing, so kudos for getting something done.

[anyssia]

Aw, life is being a b****? Hang on, it has to get better ;p and nothing is better than fanfic to distract yourself a bit ^^

Distractions, my worst enemy! I have the concentration capacities of a goldfish >.>

[glitteryv]

700 words total. I feel good-OK about how the fic is going.

The hardest thing is getting the words down. Sometimes I might be genuinely tired or feeling meh about my fic. And, it's very easy to procastinate.

The easiest thing is coming up with a plot bunny and figuring the story out.

[jagnikjen]

700 words is great. Keep it up!

[anyssia]

700 words is a good number! ^^ way to go ;p

Ah, concentration, procrastination, and there it's: "oh, I've stent the last four hours surfing the web and not writing my fic... shame on me ^^;;

[linaewen]

I've been away, so this is really my first chance to say something about how the writing is going. I think I shall have to say it's going like crap. :-D Mostly because there were chances all this past week to write, and yet I couldn't get into it. Too many interruptions, too much else going on. I'm beginning to feel a bit worried about my deadlines, but it hasn't helped push me into making time for actual writing. I had a really nice visit with a friend who also writes and our discussion on writing was really encouraging -- but since then, nothing has happened.

However, it's a new day, and if I'm firm with myself, I ought to be able to accomplish something. All my various writing projects have been lurking in the back of my brain, and that has kept me on the verge of writing mode, whew.

Currently, the aspect about writing that I struggle with most is actually making myself write consistently. Also, I have a number of stories going, and most of them deal with similar characters, and I know them well and writing them is easy. However, when a new character comes on the scene, I always struggle a bit in getting the flow of how to write someone out of the ordinary. Keeping my new characters from sounding like my old familiar characters is a bit of a chore sometimes. ;-)

I find it pretty easy to come up with good ideas that turn into excellent outlines for stories, and research adds to this to make for a very solid story premise. It's putting flesh on the bones of the outline that slows me down!

[jagnikjen]

I'm sorry to hear that the writing is going so well. I hope you're able to get back on track soon.

[anyssia]

Ah, characterization. I only write fanfics, so if I stray, I know that I can just surf the web for a moment and find a recap of the characters, to get back on the right tracks.
Original stories, however, are probably really hard to write and to keep true.

Feeling good but not feeling like writing is the worst I think: you know that you could and that you have time and all that, and yet nothing interested you and you don't even feel like opening the Word file. I always feel so guilty after a period like that.
Maybe try writing a short something, in a different setting or with different characters? before going back to your main fiction.