Here to Create

We are here to create not merely survive.

Apr 10

Flailing Around

by CSS

I’m in a bit of a rut. Or maybe it’s a plateau. Whatever it is, I’m stuck in place, spinning my wheels and not producing much of anything.

I’m stuck on some aspect of four different stories. I’m overwhelmed by the revising I need to do on Sword and Knife so I thought, ok, I’ll work on something else for a while. And that worked for revising and submitting a draft of Devil, a short story. But now I’m stuck again. I went back to Nyx with the hope that being away from it for six months or so would help me figure out what’s wrong with it. And maybe I have, but I still don’t know how to fix it. So I skipped to another short story, about vampires. And remembered it has no plot, as well as a host of other problems. I gave it a plot, but now I’m overwhelmed with worldbuilding. So I turned to a newer idea I had a couple of months ago, nicknamed Nightwalker. And I’m thrashing around with that too.

It hasn’t been that long since I wrote something from scratch. Just November, in fact. But it’s like I’ve forgotten how to build a story from the bottom up. And it’s driving me crazy.

This is one of those times I have to remind myself that I’m writing because I like it, not because I expect it to bring me fame and fortune. I don’t even want fame, though I wouldn’t mind the fortune. But sometimes I’m disappointed when it seems like I haven’t gained any ground, like this newest story is just as hard to write as the last.

I have to slow down, take a deep breath, and remind myself that I’m learning, and it’s ok if I don’t learn each new skill at the same rate. All stories are different and they all take different skills to write. So I’m in a phase right now where I’m learning a lot. It’s not that I’m stagnating, it’s that I’m working away at the problems in the back of my head and thrashing them out on a computer screen.

Instead of expecting perfection or even readability with each new project, I need to slow down, breathe, and just write.

I know this, and yet I resent that I have to chant those words like a mantra every time I hit a new plateau.

Breathe. Write. Breathe.

Creativity Writing

3 Comments »
Dec 31

Obligatory Retrospective and Goals for the New Year

by CSS

Well, as usual I’ve completely ignored any kind of logical progress toward clearly defined goals.  Last year, I decided to go easy on myself and just make it my goal to keep writing and keep learning.  That, at least, I’ve done.

Writing-wise, I finished the first draft of my 2008 NaNo, HUNTED MOON, around March.  I still haven’t finished the second draft though.  For some reason I’m completely bogged down on the antagonist parts, perhaps because they’re merely plot devices and not people to me in the same way the main characters are.  Sigh.  It still needs a lot of work.

While I was waiting for HUNTED MOON to cool, I attacked NYX again, trying to get past my obsessive tweaking and get some real work done.  Working on NYX, I realized that feeling my way forward wasn’t working for me, so I wrote an outline.  Surprise!  It’s a trilogy.  It’s not my fault; I only read epic fantasy as a child and the series structure is imprinted on my brain.

Over the summer I also worked on what was supposed to be a short story with a July anthology submission deadline.  But I just couldn’t get the structure to glue together, so I let the deadline go screaming past.  I looked at it again recently and decided it’s probably a novel too, or perhaps a novella.  Oh well, I never wanted to be a short story writer anyway.

I also came up with the first seed of this year’s NaNo over the summer.  As always, NaNoWriMo gave me a good kick in the butt as far as writing goes.  I managed to finish a complete draft of my 2009 NaNo, SWORD AND KNIFE, by the middle of December.  It’s also the longest piece I’ve ever written at 100,000 words and counting.

This year, especially November, has been all about trying new things and expanding my writing comfort zone.  I took on some really big thematic ideas in NYX, I tried to write a short story this summer, and with SWORD AND KNIFE I tackled epic fantasy for the first time in years, as well as multiple first person narrators.  I doubt all these experiments will pay off by themselves, but I’ve learned a lot just trying new things.  All I really want is to be able to look at my most recent story and see that it’s better than the one before that.  And I have confidence that the next one will be even better.

That’s all I’m really trying to do in 2010.  I want to get better, and the way to do that is to keep writing.  I want to learn how to revise this year, and I want to always be producing new ideas.   I want to continue to learn about the art and craft and business of writing.  I want to read more, both new and old.  Pretty simple on the surface, but it’ll be a lot of hard work, I guarantee.  And a lot of fun.

Happy New Year and good luck to you, whether you have your own list of goals or not :)

Writing

No Comments »
Brand New Day Theme by Caroline Moore | Copyright 2013 Here to Create | Powered by WordPress