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Finding the initial POV. The jumping off point. To me, it's the root spot. I don't just mean who is seeing, but how, when, where, and why they are seeing. I find that if I get that first POV wrong several chapters in everything starts to fall apart. The time I take as a writer in my mind going over the several perspective possibilities to me can be very frustrating especially when usually it's not all that thinking that pays off but an ah-ha moment in the middle of doing something stupid, like dishes, or laundry.
second -- Writers spend a fathomless amount of time on researching subjects they never dreamed they would give a darn about, and I don't mean just a lite reading, but need-to-get-this-right type reading and research. Then you're blessed with boring your friends with "Did you know..."
Lastly -- You are constantly striving to reach an editor's level on grammar and style. It's just a must to be taken serious. Logic vs. creativity -- It's an ugly battle, but when someone's spelling "Chilly" for the lunch special, you will be able to correct them, and not use the name of the country.
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How about when you post more than 13 lines and I (as administrator) cut off the excess?
Or when you post the correct number of lines, and everyone says, "nothing happening here" and you try to post the next 13 lines to show them that something is about to happen, and I (again, as administrator) cut them off completely?
Or would those go under "Hatrack River Writing Workshop forum frustrations"?
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Lack of confidence. I still haven't figured out how to overcome this one besides just write and submit and attempt to not worry about whether or not there's a snowball's chance in heck of a story being published.
Posts: 248 | Registered: May 2012
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Lack of originality. I seem to have hit a streak of recycling ideas used by others---realizing it often after months have passed and I've submitted it to a few places...
I can try to "do it my way," but those brilliant and original ideas just aren't coming these days...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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My greatest composition frustration is inadequate translation of my thoughts and intents onto the page. How I transcend those frustrations is through trial and error, focus group responses, a matter of expansive rambled drafts, research and study, and meditations upon and condensations and conflations of the process whole. I especially prospect for comparable and universal human experiences and circumstances and distillations thereof in particular.
For example, an especially difficult essay plan phase I struggled through distilled into a singular intent, and from there expanded into a gamut of focused expression. What I hadn't had beforehand was the emotive and moral center contexts I intended. The essay's a satirical decompression rant about the writing studio workshop model's strengths and shortfalls and intramedial fusions with ironic and farcical intents.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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walexander - I know what you mean about research! I think authors need to love doing pure book-research if they are going to write fiction...oh wait, non-fiction too. Darn.
Kathleen - Great response!
rabirch - I think we all experience this at one point or another.
Robert - Regarding originality, I personally feel like we need another series about a post-apocalyptic world with good-looking teenagers that overcome all odds to save society. Maybe if we can combine that with fifty shades of purple somehow...(awful, I know).
extrinsic - one of my own frustrations is *recognizing* that I HAVEN'T adequately translated my thoughts onto the page and have to rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite.
Outside of actual writing challenges, my own personal frustration is complete lack of time due to a highly compartmentalized life in which any deviation from the norm spells disaster!
Posts: 82 | Registered: May 2016
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One of my personal frustrations is how emotional I can get about my stories. When I know something is wrong with a story but can't figure out how to fix it, I can get fairly upset and start questioning my writing abilities. Thankfully, I have a tendency to talk with my husband about it, and he's good at figuring out what to say/do to help me get back to the point of being able to logic things out (whether or not I solve the story issue at that point).
Lack of time and easy distraction have been a dual problem for me, lately. I'm trying to get used to 45-hour work weeks combined with having six other people in the house and a husband who is freshly unemployed (his company closed down shortly after I got my promotion). I've also long suspected that I have ADD, although I haven't had the money/insurance coverage to get tested. Still figuring out how to solve this problem. Headphones help guard against outside distractions, but it's up to me to find the free time to sit down and use them.
I've also noticed a recurring pattern over the last year or so: I keep wanting to pants stories and then getting frustrated with the results because they don't meet my expectations. I'm trying to shift myself into a more outline-oriented mindset, but it's difficult to maintain that headway because a lot of my early writing habits were formed around a very seat-of-my-pants methodology. Outlines are a learned behavior for me, not my natural writing instinct.
Posts: 745 | Registered: May 2015
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Oh, my gosh, how could I forget Squirrel Syndrome? Basically, I get distracted by anything shiny, and if the internet is available, I can't seem to drag myself away from it. It's TERRIBLE.
My only solution at this time is a product called Freedom, which will block the internet, but the problem is that I have to actually turn it on. Which is so hard to do when I could be checking in on another writing forum . . .
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My next greatest composition frustration is due to an exhaustive vocabulary, not least of which is a vocabulary of composition topics.
If a composition of mine targets a niche audience, I translate somewhat to the niche's vocabulary and comprehension aptitudes. Less or more sophisticated language: diction and syntax, plus a variety of intangibles: beliefs and values systems, life experience, and emotional and moral aptitudes.
My vocabulary is mine, is me, though. The frustration most substantive for me is operation within a known and shared vocabulary no less raises negative evaluation. Many is the occasion more vocal readers disparage my vocabulary. Expression, to me, is both a transmitter's and a receivers' implicit agreement to exert effort to effect shared meaning.
I expend great efforts to be comprehensible and no less oftentimes meet little, if any, effort on the part of receivers. I attribute a portion of the issue to group-think peer pressure learned in family and school life. I own my portion contribution and no less know uniformity and regimentation are banes of creativity.
Of course, different composition types entail different vocabularies; creative expression's performance-type vocabulary best practice calls no undue attention to diction and syntax sophistication degree, yet a large number of passionate readers' vocabularies are above the mean. That reader niche numbers in the millions with a core niche of hundreds of thousands.
The reconciliation of those disparate criteria, for me, is a rule of thumb, more of a guideline, really; that is, few and far between, timely new-to-readers introductions of terms and concepts. Say, no more than one relevant, pivotal, memorable word or concept per narrative. For example, a new word of the day: eleemosynary -- "of, relating to, or supported by charity" (Webster's).
How that word might pass muster is to use it for an emotionally charged circumstance, for instance, characterization of an overly sophisticated vocabulary showoff. A viewpoint persona could overhear a lawyer use "eleemosynary" and then mock and ridicule its use. Never mind the sarcasm is uncharitable. That latter is the point, characterizes the viewpoint persona, too, as uncharitable in the immediate now moment -- room for personal maturation growth therein, though, closely related to a moral complication of such a narrative.
Those and other thought processes are strategies for me to transcend my vocabulary frustrations.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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Sometimes I read something and wonder how this got published. That's pretty frustrating, but it's more of a rhetorical question now. There's too much involved in the publishing process beyond just the writing.
My current annoyance is more trivial. The last notebook I bought is too big and doesn't settle well in the space beside my macbook when I'm writing. It's a great notebook. Very sturdy cover, nice quality paper. With the story I'm writing now, 'Natural Police', I'll have to buy another one before I'm finished as I'm almost out of blank pages.
One can't underestimate the value of a good notebook, or pencil, when it comes to writing.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
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I was a prolific writer; a full 8o-90K word novel in publishable form every three months or so--then it all went away. I know why it went away and I have been on a very long journey to get it all back--minus the obsessive/compulsive addiction to writing I hope.
I call it 'Writer's Block', but it isn't. I can write. I can still craft stories and prose; I can still get the heart racing, the tears flowing and the giggles chortling--I just can't be bothered.
That's what's frustrating the hell out of me right now--I have no demon driving me to write but I know where to find him--I hope. The problem is that not only will there be physical side-effects, it will take six to eight months before I know if it's worked or not. That's how long it takes to re-wire the synaptic pathways that control what's going on (or isn't) inside my head.
My problem isn't a lack of ideas or other writerly problems--it's a simple case of a wonky neuro-chemical/hormonal problem inside my brain. And while it has been interesting looking inside my head as I transitioned from out-of-control psychopath to couch-sitting blancmange to almost normally functioning human being without drive, I really want to get back to writing actual stories--and soon.
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Disgruntled Peony - Lack of time is my biggest obstacle. Up at 6 am, kids to bus stop at 7:30, work from 8-5, get kids, dinner and homework from 5:30-7:30, make lunches, clean up, get kids to bed...and it's 8:30 by the time I sit down for myself. I've been awake 14 hours already and I am just then beginning to write (or play the piano if I need it). It's why it takes me so long to finish anything. Writing one page a night is a big deal. Then rinse and repeat. Sigh.
rabirch - I use the internet all day every day for both work and otherwise. I don't know how I made it through college without it. Actually, thank goodness I didn't have social media in college. It was really coming into prominence when I was in graduate school. Then it was all over for society.
Posts: 82 | Registered: May 2016
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Not sure why, though. I've completed two novels, and am working on my third, by writing only one fresh page at the same time every day. And I always stop at exactly one page. I actually just woke up at 5 am here in Korea, sat down at my desk around 5:15, and finished my single page around 5:45.
I've given this suggestion a lot of times and people always think it's a bit strange. But if you write one fresh page *every* day, you'll have a new, 7 paged short story completed in a week.
Or one 30 paged short story completed in a month.
Or a full 365 paged novel completed in a year by only writing about 30 minutes a day.
Ah well, I just always find it strange when people say they're too busy to write when it takes so little time in an hour to finish so much fiction in a day.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
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quote: I've completed two novels, and am working on my third, by writing only one fresh page at the same time every day. And I always stop at exactly one page.
Great! If that works for you then keep it up. But remember, it might not work for everyone else. Personally, I would rather labour for a month getting a sentence exactly right instead of churning out a page of dross every day for a week. Horses for courses; and every poet's journey is different--and very personal.
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Extrinsic - yes, your vocabulary is impressive, as is your knowledge of the mechanics. Several years ago I read a novel titled "The Ill-Made Mute." It was the first novel in a trilogy and the author had a very extensive vocabulary, but it was entertaining nonetheless. Do you find that you need to significantly alter your word use in your writing to make it more digestible to your target audience?
Denevius - I am very proud of that single page per day! I can't imagine what I might accomplish if it wasn't for that pesky day job.
Posts: 82 | Registered: May 2016
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I adjust my vocabulary for most all of my expression to whatever niche target. I am especially conscious about prose. Testings of my verbal reasoning skills shows a post undergraduate aptitude, about as far as such tests are constructed to test.
However, the present U.S. average verbal reasoning aptitude is seventh-grade level skills and is about par for convention-based genres, like science fiction, fantasy, mystery, western; though, romance, horror, and thriller average about tenth-grade level. Literary fiction spans the grade-level gamut from preschool to post doctorate.
Primary readers, the prose chapbooks packaged for learning how to read, are, curiously though unsurprising to me, as figurative-language intense for their short word count as later learning development prose.
Actually, that curious paradox is a basis for my tutoring challenged readers of any age or skill level. I ask tutelage consumers questions about the figurative language as they read aloud. Why is the frog purple? What does that mean? What does that mean to someone else, a sibling perhaps whose favorite color is purple? What do you want it to mean for you?
A session or two and challenged readers generally then ask the questions themselves. Their reading aptitude adjusts such that they are less challenged; some advance beyond their peer cohort's reading aptitude and stay ahead. Ask questions: who, when, where, what, why, and how, that's my tutoring method, applies to adjustments of my vocabulary, too.
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The prob with vocab. It's either a long or extensive process, usually both. Only time for me does the trick, and usually in the 2nd draft. I hate stopping to wonder over a word, kills the momentum.
quote:Originally posted by walexander: The prob with vocab. It's either a long or extensive process, usually both. Only time for me does the trick, and usually in the 2nd draft. I hate stopping to wonder over a word, kills the momentum.
W.
In order to help stay that particular difficulty, I've started making notes in my rough drafts when I'm stuck on a word and come back to it. [[Insert place name here]] or some such. I don't have to do it often, but it does help when I'm writing in a hurry.
Posts: 745 | Registered: May 2015
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This year it's assassins, pirates, jinn, and a slew of fairy-tale remakes. Last year it was vampires, undead, and a slew of fairy-tale remakes. I think special magics are on the rise and probably will crest next year.
A lot of the fantasy literary agents seem to have a note: Strong female protagonists need only apply. With a side note of LBGT scenarios always welcome.
I remember my first time reading Elizabeth A. Lynn's "Watchtower" and thinking how bold it was for the time. Now it's just become a rising trend.
It's not just the frustration over hunting out that one original idea but trying not to fall into the remake frame of mind. Plus have you read the first thirteen of some of the top trending fantasies? Not much there to say somehow exceptional. It's amazing all the advice about that first page that is so important to editors and agents, and then you go out and read that first page of the best sellers and go, "What-the-heck?" I'm not saying it isn't a great book, but I saw very few first pages that stood out to me. Many started with no hook or a weak hook.
Facts are facts, in this world of social media, apps, and video games, it's girls that are still holding out for most of the reading. So big markets are going to aim right at them. But that leaves the door wide open for another big score like harry potter that can appeal to both boys and girls. Or men and women, like fifty shades.
Who knows, maybe one of us will find that original idea. At least I know we will have a better first page than what's out there. But if you want a foot in the door you better have hermione kill voldamort and harry fall in love with ron.
Lately it has been the opening. I can go through a dozen openings before I find one I like or think will be good from what I have recently learned about openings.
Lately it has also been titles. I just can't seem to think of them as I used be able to. Usually.
What I do about it?
Just keep working until I get something I like or half way like. In both cases.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
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Ironies of ironies, masterfully crafted irony spans a world of disparate social, etc., politics' contentions. Ironic, too, that paying mind to what other writers do successfully with social politics begrudges the human condition's infinite variety and deft writers' ability to compose persuasive narratives from it. Fact is, social politics are a raw, if not the primary feedstock for literature and publication culture.
How to demote one and promote another one or more particular contentious social politics ideology is through use of irony, one type not heretofore labeled by eironists or rhetoricians: poetic irony; that is, poetic justice's wicked selfishness and noble selflessness outcomes reinvented for a twenty-first century schizoaffective Realism. A schizoaffect is abreactive thoughts, words, and deeds and deregulated emotional causation that are proactive and reactive to threatened or actual diminishment of self-identity security. Poetic irony's schizoaffect irony is abreaction and deregulated emotional control lead inevitably toward a new normal maturity, a satisfied life-coping strategy, or a deadfall trap.
Ultimately, such irony is Connop Thirlwall's practical irony: dissimulation that encourages self-learned maturation disciplines through trial-and-error heuristics. However, poetic irony uniquely questions and challenges poetic justice and slips free of presupposed and hypocritically imposed moral propriety notions, plus that ever present dramatic narrative mainstay of contested self-identity affirmation tableaus reinvented for the twenty-first century age. Curious and fascinating -- a notable departure from Postmodernism's conventions, ones which science fiction, fantasy, and horror have not yet caught.
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walexander - My opinion only...but fifty shades was horrid!!! I tried to read it just to see what the hype was all about and it was utterly awful. I guess I really don't understand what people want in mainstream fiction these days.
Posts: 82 | Registered: May 2016
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