Fic-writing blues
Aug. 21st, 2007 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenMy Slings & Arrows ficathon story is exactly 2400 words of mess. It contains the line: "it all seemed like a clear progression of events that had begun with Anna running into his office mid-sentence and, like the best nightmares, wasn’t over yet", and it has struck me that this does, in fact, describe the story as a whole. It's a big ol' mess. It currently has six sections, one of which is only two paragraphs long and none of which begin and end where they're supposed to, and it needs two more, both of which I don't know how to write because I don't know what's happening in them. And it also needs a dream-sequence which I haven't written yet because I poached the dialogue from it to put into another section, and just, aaaargh.
And does anyone else have that issue where you set out to write a story in the past tense and it falls into the present tense if you're not conscious of it all the way through? I wish there was some handy internet tool which would just put the whole thing into present for me, and back into past, so I could actually see how it reads, but right now I'm trying to cure myself of my addiction to the present tense because I think it's my easy way out, you know? I don't like the and then he did this and then she did that style of telling a story straight, usually; I like texture to language, something beyond utilitarian prose. But it's so easy to do that in the present tense - you have to work at it when it isn't happening right now, when it's done and dusted and you're trying to breathe life in the ashes.
And this may or may not be irrational, but - aargh. Maybe because past tense is good for plotty, comic stories, and present good for plotless meanderings, and this story is rapidly changing from the former to the latter and becoming flatter and more generic with each passing word?
ARGH.
My![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hawkfromhandsaw story is 1437 words of slightly less mess - it makes sense, though I don't like it, and it is the first section of a coherent story. And I know what's going to happen! I know it's in present tense and is going to stay that way, because, hello, time-distorting effect of madness. I know a handful of metaphors I like and will probably use, and I know what I'm aiming at - the punchline, so to speak. But I have no idea how to get from beginning to end. And, apparently, no impetus to do so - the story just sits there, taunting me in ahahaha-I-am-1437-words-long-and-I-have-BEATEN-you fashion.
I'm having my arse kicked by a Word doc, guys. Two of them, in fact. Please to be giving me a pep talk. With lots of pep. And maybe an injunction to stop watching television and do some work would be good too.
Where "work" refers not to fic-writing but to one or more of a) LSAT practise tests, b) actual paid employment or c) actually getting my arse out of the house and passing my fucking driving test.
I fail at life. Lots of pep. Please.
And does anyone else have that issue where you set out to write a story in the past tense and it falls into the present tense if you're not conscious of it all the way through? I wish there was some handy internet tool which would just put the whole thing into present for me, and back into past, so I could actually see how it reads, but right now I'm trying to cure myself of my addiction to the present tense because I think it's my easy way out, you know? I don't like the and then he did this and then she did that style of telling a story straight, usually; I like texture to language, something beyond utilitarian prose. But it's so easy to do that in the present tense - you have to work at it when it isn't happening right now, when it's done and dusted and you're trying to breathe life in the ashes.
And this may or may not be irrational, but - aargh. Maybe because past tense is good for plotty, comic stories, and present good for plotless meanderings, and this story is rapidly changing from the former to the latter and becoming flatter and more generic with each passing word?
ARGH.
My
hawkfromhandsaw story is 1437 words of slightly less mess - it makes sense, though I don't like it, and it is the first section of a coherent story. And I know what's going to happen! I know it's in present tense and is going to stay that way, because, hello, time-distorting effect of madness. I know a handful of metaphors I like and will probably use, and I know what I'm aiming at - the punchline, so to speak. But I have no idea how to get from beginning to end. And, apparently, no impetus to do so - the story just sits there, taunting me in ahahaha-I-am-1437-words-long-and-I-have-BEATEN-you fashion. I'm having my arse kicked by a Word doc, guys. Two of them, in fact. Please to be giving me a pep talk. With lots of pep. And maybe an injunction to stop watching television and do some work would be good too.
Where "work" refers not to fic-writing but to one or more of a) LSAT practise tests, b) actual paid employment or c) actually getting my arse out of the house and passing my fucking driving test.
I fail at life. Lots of pep. Please.
