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I get an idea. I start writing. I think, "Hey, this isn't too bad." Then I re-read it, and gag. I can't get beyond a few pages without ripping everything I've written to absolute shreds! (metaphorically speaking...)
So, does this indicate I really DO stink at writing, and should just give it all up? Or do I just need to chill out and not read any of it until it is DONE?
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Oh yes. This is my ultimate problem. I only usually get about 2 paragraphs in before I start thinking it's worthless dribble. Then I start thinking my entire story idea is worthless dribble, and then....
Definitly need to chill out. In my experience, you are your own worst critic. Before totally throwing it out, I would say, give it to someone to read. They will almost always have something positive to say and then you know that it's not hopeless. I am so glad sometimes when my roomate says, Hey, whatever happened to that story you were writing about... and I get it back out.
If the only way you can actually finish writing a story is to not read it before it's done, then do it! Finishing something is one of the best things you can do and editing can come later. Editing is good, but only if it is constructive and not totally paralyzing.
posted
Happens to me. Just keep going. I'm on revison six of a 1k story. Just hope I don't beat all the life out of it.
Posts: 497 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Been there, done that. Every now and then, I get an attack of "Why would anyone ever want to read anything I write?" My favorite antidote for that is to have my husband ask to see the latest chapter of whatever I'm working on. (He's been getting the novel chapter by chapter as I finish each.)
Failing that (which really hasn't been an option on the short story I just finished five minutes ago), I just refuse to look back and keep pushing forward. I read someone's theory somewhere that we all have to write a certain number of words of utter garbage before we produce anything worthwhile. I'm not sure it's true, but it's very comforting on some days! I just tell myself if I get the garbage over with now, it's that much less for me to write later. I'm that much closer to my goal!
And usually, if I finish the project and give it a little while to sit, I find it isn't so bad after all. Of course, it's never as good as I sometimes think it is, either.
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This doesn't happen ALL the time, does it? Surely you're just having a bad day and wanting to vent? Here's what I do. Either I a) go back and read something I've written that is really pretty darn good; b) send a short story or chapter to my sister/editor who will gush all over about how great it is after she's picked the heck out of it; or c) read something published that totally stinks. I always feel better after doing one of those.
Posts: 1672 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Yeah, I kept getting 30-odd pages into a novel manuscript and stalling because I kept rereading and picking the hell out of everything. I finally forbade myself from rereading. Next book I started? Completed now, at 90,000 words. (Of course, that doesn't mean it isn't still crap. But that's another story entirely.)
Work through the pain, and don't ever look back. It gets better, I think-- I've been looking back on my current WIP, albeit after some time and in a very limited fashion, and I'm still nearly at the halfway mark. (Knock on wood. Being superstitious. Not taking this for granted.)
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And now, Phanto, in keeping with the Rules of Online Discourse, someone will come and argue with you. (Can't be me, you're agreeing with me... have to watch that in the future.) Posts: 253 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
Okay I'll bring it on, I hear Mantagano never suffered from any form of doubt. His storys were all just so perfect that there is no purpose for any other writing at all. We should just burn all the rest of it. Mantagano is perfect and can do no wrong. A bit more brainwashed ranting then I say just kidding.
(Interesting idea for a story about a Writer cult though.)
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You're problem, LL, is that you're letting the editor in you get involved too soon.
When you write, you must allow the writer to write without the editor getting involved. And when you edit, you must allow the editor to edit without the writer getting involved. (And the writer does get involved when you don't let yourself cut something simply because you think it's good.)
This is hard to do. It takes some practice, yes, but it's not impossible.
I generally don't let the editor-in-me touch a story until its finished and sat in my drawer for a week or two.
posted
I solve this by keeping my sketching process entirely distinct from my text creation process.
When I've assembled a great deal of information that is specifically intended for my own use in writing the story, then I start working on the text itself.
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I do the same things, sometimes. I have been at the story I'm working on since june 15th or so, sent it out to a few people, and gotten some really harsh but great critiquing. I have thought a few times about giving up, but not on this story. But yes, in the past I have been a little discouraged about writing, but now, I'm giving it my all(when I can that is)
If this doesn't make sense, I'm sorry, it's 0129 in the am. Been awake for about 18 or 19 hours.
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I don't write every idea I have right away. When i have them, they're too small or too big to work for a story, and they're just not ripe yet. Hence, I call them green stories, and throw them in a file in my head or my computer where theycan stew a little till they're ripe.
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As far as rereading one's own work, I got a pleasant surprise today! I was working on a synopsis of my novel (the one I finished recently), and had to look up a few details. Two hours later, I was still reading--not editing or worrying, just reading because I enjoyed it!
Now I have to wait a day or two more, and then polish up the short story I did in the time since finishing the novel. I hope it's as pleasant!
posted
The same thing happened to me when I was reading the rough draft of my novel. For the first half, everything was "eh." Then I reached this very vivid psychological torture scene--one of the few chunks of my early writing that I am proud of--and I was reading like a reader.
Posts: 697 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
That's why I started writing again. I'd written in high school and college and somewhere along the way stopped. Two or three years ago I cleaned out my filing cabinet and came across some of my old work. I didn't remember writing most of it, and it didn't suck. Some of it was actually good. I was startled. Now I'm hooked again.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Actually, this is so much of a bother when I edit...I have three persona: the writer, the editor, and the reader. I manage to put the writer on hold when I edit, but I find myself getting hooked by my own story (let it be said that I'm not boasting, I'm an incredibly easy reader to hook, because I'll read about anything), and then I'm reading like a reader, and not doing any editing. I can't manage more than one chaper of editing at a time, because the rest of my editing is just inefficient... Does anyone else have this problem here?
Posts: 121 | Registered: May 2002
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All the time! I need to just edit a small bit at a time. I'm really bad for getting hooked. It starts with the "You know, this isn't too bad..." and I have to catch it there. Otherwise I'll just read without really processing what I'm doing.
Posts: 284 | Registered: Feb 2004
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The other day I actually deconstructed a part of my novel like it was one of those "theme" assignments from school and I was "discovering" what the author "truly" meant by it.
UGH!
I promptly deleted it, shut the computer off, and tried to forget the pain in my shoulder (must have dislocated it patting myself on the back)
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Feh, I think "analyzing the text" is just something non-writing english buffs came up with to make themselves feel important.
No, but seriously, since I started writing last year, I've been rather dissapointed that the english majors I've talked to know so much about analyzing novels and writing essays, and yet so little about writing fiction.
I mean, I think most writers (at least I do) just want to write a good story. People who over-analyze litterature ruin themselves a good book to find stuff the author never intended. I knoe I never intended the "discovery" I made about my book. I was just reading it and thought: hey, I said something cool I wasn't thinking about saying at all.
Which basically tells me that most "theme analysis" is bogus. It's just stuff that comes out because it's natural.
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Yes, but be careful not to dismiss the notion of theme altogether.
The problem with English programs is that they transform literature into something propostional. Hence, you get statements such as, "The theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is....," or "In The Old Man and the Sea Hemingway discusses...."
Theme in literature is more or less the idea the story explores, and the only way to "discuss" that idea is by using the story to discuss it. For example, a "theme" in Ender's Game is power. But there's no way to discuss OSC's view of power outside of discussing the novel. Literature isn't philosophy--though it may be philosophical--and it seems to me that too many Enligsh majors turn it into philosophy by making these true or false propositional statements. Rather, they should say, "A concept Dickens discusses in Great Expectations is that of social class," and then use the rest of the paper exegeting scences and passages to elucidate Dickens' ideas.
Should you analyze your own work? Absolutely! If Stephen King hadn't analyzied The Stand he never would have finished it (see King's ON WRITING). And if Orson Scott Card hadn't analyzied Ender's Game it wouldn't be the novel it is today (see Card's essay in The Best of the Nebulas edited by Bova).
Knowing what your story is thematically about will help you revise. It's probably not a good idea to start a novel with a theme in mind (like Steinbeck), but you should have some fairly good ideas of what you're saying before you start your first revision.
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I felt like some kind of weirdo deconstructing my own work. Thanks for showing me it's not that bad.
Actually, I do have themes. I was analyzing a subplot and discovered an unintended sub-theme in it. Which actually saved the subplot from extinction. I was rereading that part because I was considering killing it. Now, the presence of the unintended themis not the ONLY reason I kept it.
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