writig hard

[melannen]

When you see this post, feel encouraged to post something in your journal. Short or long, trivial or profound, it doesn't matter, just something. And if you like, you can pass on the token by copying this notice at the bottom of your post.

...via various people.

One of the posts that's stacked up in my head not-being-written is in response to that article about what is wrong with write every day and the responses to it that I saw on my reading list, and on the one hand I agree with them, and on the other hand now that I've gotten into a habit of 'write something every day' (not 'write 750 words', not 'write for 1 hour', but 'write at least two words for goodness sake even if you erase it immediately afterward') I really get thrown off when I break the habit for a couple days. Like I did last weekend when I went away for four days, and I'm still all blocked about 'oh I can't make tonight be the night I start the habit again, it doesn't feel right'.

On the other hand I've been *thinking* a lot about my wips, even if not writing them. Also: the 'write every day' thing has gotten me writing more on days when I'm not really feeling it, and so for the first time I'm consistently getting drafts of stuff where I can already see what revisions I need even as I'm writing it. Which on the one hand is scary and I don't know what to do, on the other hand feels like a big step forward in writing.

So here, have a list of the stuff in my wips file in scrivener and what I currently think is most wrong with them:


Primary Failure (aka 'the Enjolras and Grantaire Primary Election AU') : My scene list calls for a transition/logisitics scene here but the transition scene, as it is shaping up, is both a) boring and b) I don't actually know how to work the transition, so I should probably just skip to the next interesting scene, the party at the Corn Palace where Dr. Feuilly came dressed as Zombie Joe Hill, only idk if I have the courage to actually skip ahead that far without explaining how they got there.

Everybody Loves a Wedding (aka 'the Guardians of the Galaxy get group married') : The action scene I've been stalled in the middle of for ages is basically working fine as an action scene, it just... feels perfunctory for me, I think I need to re-write it with the rest of the team standing back and just Groot running into the fight by himself, except I think I may be getting comics!Groot characterization too mixed up with movie!Groot.

I <3 Boobies (aka 'Marius is a literal booby and Eponine is an animal control officer') : I finally got Marius, Eponine and Cosette in the same room together but now that they're in the same room Eponine is having way way too many feelings at the same time, and I can't fit them all into the narrative, and meanwhile Eponine's intense desire for Cosette to just go away so she can call her little brother and process the feelings is, I think, making me rush Cosette out of there too fast when really we need more interaction first.

Good Ship Bini (aka 'the Les Mis Pirate AU') : I am at the point where I need to resolve some stuff and reveal some backstory but I can't figure out the right way to do it, and also at this point I have so much headcanon for these people that I can't judge how much effort I need to put into selling the audience on them.

Logovore (aka 'librarians vs. ancient evil') : I am 4000 words and about 1/3 of the way into what is supposed to be a 5000 word original short story, help.

Natashenka (aka 'the one where four-year-old Natasha and the Winter Soldier have to go on the run together') : I want this to be really good and it's a really hard story to do justice to and I'm scared, and also I've kinda broken up with MCU canon so I still really like the story but it's hard to be as enthusiastic about it anymore. :l

Fari (aka 'i finally actually write something in the genderqueer sword & sorcery universe') : I'm pretty sure one of my main characters is doing absolutely nothing plotwise except being decorative and sarcastic and I should write zir out, but I don't want to. Also, I really need to properly figure out how wandering soldiers of fortune work in a society where monetary exchange has not been invented yet.

Paris Lui-Meme Imite (aka 'the modern e/R AU') : I need to figure out how I'm structuring the sewer digression before I try to actually write the thing, just rambling for thousands of words is not flowing as easily as I expected.

Arayeli (aka 'the one where pain is power'): I feel like all I am doing is playing with worldbuilding, which is fine, but do I need more focus storywise? Or is it fine for a secondary-world short story to have a pretty barebones plot/very little character arc in order to demonstrate the worldbuilding?

The Valjean/Montparnasse Kinkporn (yeah this one doesn't even get an aka) : actually storywise there's nothing wrong with this, I just need exactly the right mood and exactly the right time and space to write from this far down in my id, and that hasn't happened lately.

baseball, america, apple pie (aka 'the one where Bucky is a Yankees fan') : I keep adding bits onto this and even have an ending sketched out for it now, but I think the problem is that really deep down I just don't ship Steve/Bucky in my heart of hearts, just dump the bastard and run away with Sam (yes that applies to both of you)..... also see above about falling out of love with MCU

Raven Swallows the Sun (aka 'the one where the Winter Soldier was sent to seduce Captain America instead of kill him') : I. Is it possible to write trope-tastic au otp slashfic that ends with them confessing their eternal love and then Steve admitting he'd rather date Sam and Bucky agreeing with him? LOOK I HAVE. PROBLEMS.

Mars Needs Women (aka 'Nanette and Dolph are a, 100% ace and b, DEFINITELY had sex while marooned on Mars, are you kidding me Blish') : Needs to somehow be shoved from a massive amorphous feelsdump about just how much I identified with Nanette and turned into something resembling an actual story before I can even figure out what comes next.

Jean-the-jack (aka 'the AU where Valjean and Javert rule the Paris underworld with a velvet glove. and punchings.') : I'm not actually ready to commit to writing this tbh but I do have two paragraphs of it and, well, I needed a burglar so we wouldn't be 13. <_<

...ok I don't know if that actually helped but I do feel better now that I've gotten that out.

p.s. if anybody read one of those and went 'oooh, I can fix that' I would be delighted to send you what I have in return for you telling me what you think.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I am not sure Logovore as described is a thing I can fix but it sure sounds like an intriguing thing.

[melannen]

I started it for an anthology solicit for 'tales from the miskatonic library' (which passed its deadline months ago...) and combined that with a bunny from long ago about a small-town library and a monster that can suck the information out of books. (Not the words, the information. So you read it and your eyes skim over the words but they don't mean anything, and then you get a headache and feel exhausted. And of course the library staff are the first ones to notice that this is something happening to certain books, not just business as usual...)

It's been fun to write, so far! But there's not enough story there for a novella, and yet if I want it to pass for a short story I will definitely have to cut the wordage by at least 1/2 by the time it's done. :/

[alexseanchai]

Ohhh huh okay cool. Is there a pattern to what books this happens to? Like, is the monster trying to suppress certain types of information?

Novelettes are a thing, I observe.

[melannen]

That would be a cool story! But nah, for this one I was *trying* to keep it simple, so it's just feeding on whatever it can get, and it decided a public library was a free lunch.

[alexseanchai]

Also shiny!

[the_rck]

With regard to Arayeli (which sounds very interesting), I think that it is possible to construct a good short story that focuses on world building. It will have a different audience than a story focused on character or on plot would, but the audience does exist.

I don't know how you've approached the story. You might be able to give it more immediacy by using a first person point of view, but that runs into the difficulty that the character will be dealing with things that are normal to them and wouldn't be likely to explain them. That can still work and make for a powerful story, but it's a delicate balance and works better if the character is doing something that has a great deal of meaning for them or that they feel strongly about.

If first person POV doesn't work, you might try present tense as an experiment. That's a controversial choice that will lose you some readers, but it is one that can pull readers in very deeply if you handle it right.

With regard to Natashenka, would filing off the serial numbers help? You're diverging from canon anyway, and making it into an original fic might give you some distance from the MCU, enough to make what annoys you about that recede in importance. Are you picturing this as a character focused piece or a plot/action focused piece? You'll want to do different things depending on your answer, but choosing one doesn't mean entirely discarding the other.

My general experience with projects like that is that they're something I write a bit of and then leave be for weeks or months before writing more. I'm also likely to write things out of chronological order because I'm figuring out what's important and where the actual pivot points are for the characters.

[melannen]

Natashenka is built to resonate off very specific stuff from MCU, so while I could probably wrench it into something non-fanfic, it wouldn't be doing any of the stuff I want it to do anymore. :/ (And it doesn't actually diverge from canon currently, AFAIK? At least not mainline-movie canon; it's set in a blank spot in their backstories. And they're not going on the run from their handlers, they're what's left after a mission-gone-very-bad.)

With Arayeli, I'm writing in close-third-person, and it is mostly is her daily life, but since her daily life includes being lead on an emergency magical rescue mission, it's not like there's not rising and falling action and stuff? I think I've just read too much writing advice that's all about needing important character arcs and she really doesn't have one, she's got too much other stuff to deal with.

[trobadora]

'write at least two words for goodness sake even if you erase it immediately afterward'

This has been the second most useful thing I've learned about my own writing this year. (The other is writing sprints.) I'm sure it wouldn't work for everyone, but OMG has it ever worked for me, even (or perhaps especially) through months of being ill this spring, when I wrote no more than a sentence or two a day. It was still something, and I wasn't completely giving up.

Also: the 'write every day' thing has gotten me writing more on days when I'm not really feeling it, and so for the first time I'm consistently getting drafts of stuff where I can already see what revisions I need even as I'm writing it. Which on the one hand is scary and I don't know what to do, on the other hand feels like a big step forward in writing.

I'm in the same place, actually! This kind of thing (writing something where I already know how I'm going to revise it) usually only happens when I'm writing to a deadline and I'm counting on being able to edit before reveals. Otherwise I never used to do that at all, and it does feel like a step forward.

[melannen]

Yes! I think a lot of the stuff I was seeing about how "write every day" doesn't work was people who were reading "write every day" as "make significant writing progress." Partly because the people giving the advice are often full-time pro writers working to deadline, for which "write X words or X hours" might be good advice, and partly because the people who take it to heart are the kinds of people who take things to heart. But. no. that will not happen with me.

But even the original article, the author said "on my busy days, I wasn't even going to think of writing anything longer than a tweet" and I was like... dude, writing something the length of a tweet is huge...

Just. Check in every day, and then you never get in the place where you've been out of touch for so long that you don't know what to say and it's weird and awkward to start again.


And man. MAjor revisions. On the one hand, big step forward. On the other hand, whole new skill set....

[trobadora]

I think a lot of the stuff I was seeing about how "write every day" doesn't work was people who were reading "write every day" as "make significant writing progress."

Yes, I got that impression too.

On a bad day, adding something like "He nodded." totally counts. (It's words! I wrote them! Therefore I have written something that day!) I know I can manage that any day, and it saves me from just letting the whole thing slip away from me for weeks and months.

[beatrice_otter]

a YANKEES fan? from BROOKLYN?

TRAITOR!

Worse than being a brainwashed Soviet assassin any day.

They all sound interesting.

[melannen]

I put the first bit of the Yankees fan one up. ^_^ The One Where Bucky Barnes Was a Yankees Fan All Along. It's got one of my highest hits to kudos ratios, oddly.... (bucky's not actually *from* brooklyn, you know, he just moved there. :P)

I just keep feeling like it should be a proper steve/bucky story and writing a scene or two from the timeline, and then going 'yeah but wouldn't it be more interesting if it was actually about sam throwing up his hands and going upstairs and talking to tony and rhodey instead.' or, you know, equivalent.

which is GREAT, don't get me wrong, but doesn't contribute to finishing an actual story that has any relation at all to that original premise...

[kiezh]

I am strongly in favor of stories in which Steve and Bucky decide they'd both rather date Sam. Especially if it ends in polyamory! I think they could handle sharing Sam (and having an extremely close relationship that is not romantic).

Sorry, that's probably not helpful. But if you do write those, there is an audience! :D

[melannen]

The problem is that everybody should date Sam because Sam is the best. But. You know. Sam doesn't deserve that. So I try to write that and then end up with just, like. Sam going flying with Rhodey instead. (Also good! Also not a story.)

[zlabya]

I don't see anything I can help with atm, but thanks for the inspiration to write, and to work on my own wips!

[melannen]

Yay! I hope it works for you better than it's worked for me so far.

[miss_morland]

*chinhands at Valjean/Montparnasse Kinkporn*

[melannen]

Someday! Someday its time will come.