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magnificent7 posted:Maybe it's time to set it aside and just write another book. Cleanse the palate. This is a really good way to feel better about your writing - just move on from your last project. Forget all about it, unless a brilliant idea comes to mind, in which case note it down for when you start editing, and keep on forgetting. Write something new. Read things that have nothing to do with your finished work. Then come back to it with a fresh mindset after a week or two minimum. I started in on my third novel the day after I finished the first draft of my second. It feels really good to be writing new characters and situations. And now I'm editing novel #2 as a break from the writing. Write, revise, write. All the time. And if you come back to a previous work which you think is a stinker, you've been writing a new piece for however long. I've got a ton of stories which I'll never do anything with, but they helped me get to where I am now.
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Jul 10, 2014 22:25
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magnificent7 posted:
Thunderdome? Literary? "Top-level contributors"? CC people's "Overwhelming feedback" is what's keeping your from writing right now? Mag7, I actually like the cut of your jib most of the time, but if the above things are impeding your ability or motivation to write, you need to take a step back from this thread. I don't think anyone gets mad when someone doesn't take their advice. I think people get mad when someone posts a question and then spends more time contradicting people who're trying to help them than they do writing. And at the end of the day, "talking shop" is not nearly as helpful as actual crits, so this thread can feel a little bit like spinning wheels in the mud. Regarding getting motivated to write: I guess I'm one of the rare people who is totally inspired by someone sitting on my shoulder critting my every word as I put it on the paper. As systran mentioned, a bunch of us were in a pretty serious writing group for a while, and I hit levels of productivity that I'd never managed before then and haven't managed since. I miss u WADers I think this thread would work a lot better if we accepted that sometimes it's just a place for people to come vent about their writing, and if people didn't take everything so personally. Just my 2 cents well cya.
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Jul 10, 2014 23:38
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Sitting Here posted:Thunderdome? Literary? "Top-level contributors"? CC people's "Overwhelming feedback" is what's keeping your from writing right now? I get what you're saying but one of of the guys in the sister thread did tell me not to question his critiques before he moved on to the next one.This is odd because some of us want a bit of give or take we can think about instead of simple editing. Ps. He didn't edit anything. I think he meant that I shouldn't get touchy about advised corrections/ "excuses". How would you guys handle train of thought? How does it fare when the writer is playing with omission? Sithsaber fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 23:50
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Sithsaber posted:I get what you're saying but one of of the guys in the sister thread did tell me not to question his critiques before he moved on to the next one.This is odd because some of us want a bit of give or take we can think about instead of simple editing. I saw Broenheim's reply. He was telling you that he, as the reader and critiquer, doesn't want to hear explanations that aren't contained in the story itself. If you were a professional author, you wouldn't be able to sit there and explain "what you meant" to every single reader of your story, would you? So that's why Broenheim said that. Like, this subforum is not full of fascists who can't stand to have their critiques questioned. It's full of (mostly) amateur writers who critique other people's writing in their spare time. For free. That's really cool, and while you're free to not take every crit you get into account, we are still readers telling you what we think. What else can you ask for? Re: Playing with omission: Fine. Omit away. But you're still relying on crits/your readers to tell you "hey, this didn't make sense because I didn't have enough information." edit: wanting to have an active dialog about your piece is fine, but when you mention multiple times "but guys I like omission!" then people are probably not going to be as patient. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 00:18
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Note on the writing group thing: I didn't totally ignore the crits, I wrote each and every one down, reread it later to make sure I understood it, then went off and did whatever the gently caress I wanted, with intent to fix it later. It's important to process criticism, but also understand that sometimes you've just got to power through for your own sake. Mag, we don't hate you because you won't follow the rules. We don't hate you period. We just get annoyed that you refuse to even court suggestions. People blow up at you because this keeps happening: Mag7: I have a problem. Goons: how about x? Mag7: no. Goons: y? Mag7: no. Goons: z? Mag7: no. three days later Mag7: WHY IS NOBODY TRYING TO HELP ME. You want to find your own style and don't want people telling you what to do? Cool. Go do that then, but when you're constantly over here asking questions, people are going to answer them, then get annoyed if time after time after time you totally ignore everything they're saying. Stop asking questions if you don't want to hear the answers. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 02:24
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magnificent7 posted:I don't need hugs and a big gold star sticker on my shirt, but goddamn. What's keeping me from writing right now? Internal conflict between my vision, and overwhelming feedback from people whose writing I admire, but don't understand. The Saddest Rhino posted:
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Jul 11, 2014 02:48
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Let's talk editing and revising. I've read the books--On Writing, Bird by Bird, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, The Art of Fiction, but I feel like my editing is not strong. When I finish a story, I look back and I fix some minor stuff, but I've never rewrote whole chunks and changed the direction of a piece. Obviously, I'm not a super-genius who gets everything right on the first try. What do you do besides take time off from a story in order to really find out if it is saying what it needs to say? Beyond minor stuff, like making a character's behavior more consistent/clearer, but major thematic concerns and the entire arcs of stories?
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Jul 11, 2014 02:58
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blue squares posted:Let's talk editing and revising. I've read the books--On Writing, Bird by Bird, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, The Art of Fiction, but I feel like my editing is not strong. When I finish a story, I look back and I fix some minor stuff, but I've never rewrote whole chunks and changed the direction of a piece. Obviously, I'm not a super-genius who gets everything right on the first try. What do you do besides take time off from a story in order to really find out if it is saying what it needs to say? Beyond minor stuff, like making a character's behavior more consistent/clearer, but major thematic concerns and the entire arcs of stories? That's where other readers are crucial, I think. The overall structure of a story, particularly a big one, will usually make sense in your own head (and if it doesn't then you've got bigger problems boyo), but if other people fail to grasp certain aspects or find other ones pointless then it may be time to bust out the hatchet instead of the scalpel.
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Jul 11, 2014 03:18
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Yeah, I'm transferring finally into a real university (I'm 25) with majors in Rhetoric and Philosophy. I'm really hoping in one of my major classes I'll find a writer who I respect and can form a working relationship with. My area writing groups on meetup are a joke. The creative writing undergrad certificate would obviously be a better a more likely place to find other writers, but it is full for. Maybe I'll be able to add it to my schedule next year if it opens up. By then, though, I may be writing two theses, so chances aren't good. Also: Does anyone here own a usage dictionary? I've read lots of glowing reviews of Brian Garner's Modern American Usage, but I'm not sure whether it's necessary to own. Any questions I've had have been answered with Google, so I don't know is $28.50 is worth it to have a giant book on my desk instead. blue squares fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 03:41
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Brief writing group sidebar, which may or may not help people.systran posted:At least you finished your novel. It's more than I can say for myself. SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Note on the writing group thing: I didn't totally ignore the crits, I wrote each and every one down, reread it later to make sure I understood it, then went off and did whatever the gently caress I wanted, with intent to fix it later. Sitting Here posted:Regarding getting motivated to write: I guess I'm one of the rare people who is totally inspired by someone sitting on my shoulder critting my every word as I put it on the paper. As systran mentioned, a bunch of us were in a pretty serious writing group for a while, and I hit levels of productivity that I'd never managed before then and haven't managed since. I think you, SH and Muffin are all right in different ways. As a different take on a writing group, I was also part of this group, and I essentially went in having never written creatively before, outside of a couple short stories (and they somehow let me join them). For a new writer, the weekly crits and suggestions changed my writing immensely for the better (not to say that my writing ever approached even a mediocre level, the group was very patient with my terribleness). Having weekly feedback allowed me to fix the horrendous parts of my writing and structure. Also, simply writing 1-2k a week was an amazing motivator, for fear of having to come to the group, hat in hand, and say you didn't write for whatever bullshit reason. Much like SH, my writing production since the group folded has essentially disappeared into a sea of excuses. I think Muffin and Systran are somewhat saying the same thing, especially for what I might term mid-level writers, as in people who know the basics of how to tell a good story but something isn't quite clicking yet. The weekly feedback isn't really improving your writing itself, but receiving crits as you write can be a very big help. You just have to take the crits, file them away, figure out what should affect future writing, and then apply most of the crits in editing. That said, receiving crits for an edited work can be great also, but I think getting crits as you write it the first time can be extremely helpful if you understand how to process them. I got to crit Muffin both times, and you could really see the results of the first crit sessions reflected in his more polished go at it. Sitting Here posted:I miss u WADers Me too. I miss our Saturday nights.
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Jul 11, 2014 04:50
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Yeah me too. I really wish Systran had been there for the big crit of my second draft, since he loving hated the first draft and I went about the second trying to fix most of the issues that bugged him. He actually stopped reading at a point and said "I do not understand a single thing that is happening here and I just can't crit it," then he wasn't around to see me making it right. 
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Jul 11, 2014 05:24
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Yeah me too. It was so much better! Did you ever get that artwork commissioned for it?
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Jul 11, 2014 05:27
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Note on the writing group thing: I didn't totally ignore the crits, I wrote each and every one down, reread it later to make sure I understood it, then went off and did whatever the gently caress I wanted, with intent to fix it later.
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Jul 11, 2014 05:35
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blue squares posted:How many of you guys have to drag yourselves to the keyboard rather than away from it? I sometimes get into streaks where I don't want to stop, but often enough one of my last thoughts before I go to bed is "drat it, as soon as I wake up I have to write for an hour." I know I'm good at writing, but sometimes the hardest part of doing it is just doing it. I worry about my longevity. blue squares posted:Sounds like you need to hang a calendar over your computer and punish yourself every time you don't meet whatever daily/weekly goal you should set for yourself. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:I disagree with this, because I find it hard to just sit down and write :P Dr. Kloctopussy posted:You sound like a dick because you don't seem to understand that different things work for different people. It's great that you came home today and wrote a bunch, but not everyone needs to do that every day to become a professional author. And certainly not everyone needs to expect that they should be able to just start doing that or else they'll never make it and should give up. Like...as long as I write at some point today it doesn't really matter if I do it before I play a few video games or not. Sure, for some people taking a break to goof off means they never go back to writing, and those people need to practice both not taking breaks and also getting back to work. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:They obviously don't know how to ignore that inner editor or they probably wouldn't be paralyzed by anxiety. And Thunderdome, while awesome, amazing, the best, and something every goddamn budding writer who stumbles in here should do until their brain bleeds, isn't a magical cure-all for that anxiety. I've participated in several Thunderdomes, plunked out of two, and still have that fear. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:^^^^^ lol Crabrock :/
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Jul 11, 2014 05:58
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Sithsaber posted:I get what you're saying but one of of the guys in the sister thread did tell me not to question his critiques before he moved on to the next one.This is odd because some of us want a bit of give or take we can think about instead of simple editing. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:I think everyone needs to understand that this isn't "a safe place for you to express yourself creatively, free of judgement." This community will kill your darlings, not coddle them. If you are lucky, we will use a scapel. You should post here to find the crucible, not avoid it. Sithsaber posted:How would you guys handle train of thought? How does it fare when the writer is playing with omission? Dr. Kloctopussy posted:When I have questions like this, I usually turn to my favorite books to see how other authors have handled similar situations. Most (all) writing rules are soft. They are guidelines, and cannot be reduced to absolutes. For any rule there will be a thousand exceptions, and an author who broke it successfully. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:As a haven't-made-it writer, I've criticized a couple stories posted here for being too ambiguous. In those cases, I felt ambiguity was used as a substitute for real tension and story development. This ties into the recent "all short stories must have epiphanies" trend discussed earlier. Instead of building to an emotional/plot-based conclusion, they just hide pertinant information from the reader and then stick it in later as a "big reveal." They try to substitude hiding the set-up for the actual plot.
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Jul 11, 2014 05:58
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:If more people read a) this very thread, and b) books, they wouldn't all ask the same questions over and over again. And if you have to pick just one, pick books.
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Jul 11, 2014 05:59
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Just emptyquote Dr. K forever. Incidentally, I'd be more than interested in forming another writing group. I am taking a break from my novel since I was spinning my wheels on it for a month, and have now started a new project to keep the practice up. So if anyone (including my former group mates HINT HINT) wanted to actually get some poo poo done, I'd be down to help organize. Even if it's just a bunch of people meeting in IRC every week or every couple weeks, I think a lot of people would benefit from organization and enforced deadlines. And I am ready to put my writing where my mouth is and get loving published. I mean we can talk shop and bitch and discuss writing "theory" in here all we want, but at the end of the day it's a bunch of vague questions with vague answers ITT. Join me and together we will rule the universe.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:24
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Sitting Here posted:Just emptyquote Dr. K forever. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Yes, this would be sweet. I am pretty unimpressed with the submissions/critique part of the Write About Dragons website. Maybe we can have the whole group sharing google docs and smaller groups for skyping, based on time zones?
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Jul 11, 2014 06:29
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I would be game for this although I will be traveling the whole month of August so I wouldn't be able to start until September.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:35
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I'd love to be a part of a writing group that wasn't afraid to be honest and actually had some semblance of a regular schedule. I'm primarily interested in short fiction right now, but provided that isn't a problem it would be a great opportunity to work on my biggest weaknesses.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:38
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Sounds rad.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:40
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I'm willing to join in as well, at least for the summer while I got time to kill.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:45
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Yeah I could go for that. I'm focusing a bit on shorts right now but the more work I get prodded to do the merrier.
neongrey fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 06:48
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Sounds great.
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Jul 11, 2014 06:50
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Cool. So previously, we'd done Skype. But the number of people who've expressed interest already makes that seem like it'll be really hard to organize. Last time around, we had on average 5 people per week on a Skype call, and that was kind of hard to organize because of time zones and etc. Several people have already told me IRC would be easier. So what I'm thinking is we create some sort of group or forum somewhere, come up with deadlines and a crit schedule, and do a combination of IRC and long-form written crits. Some people work really well with weekly deadlines, some don't. If enough people are interested, we could probably have multiple crit sessions, but it really depends how many people are interested and what their schedule/time zone is. Thoughts?
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Jul 11, 2014 08:45
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Yeah, IRC is perfect for me; my schedule is wacky and shifts around a lot but the only time I'm really unable to be in an irc channel are times when I'm asleep.
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Jul 11, 2014 08:48
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I'm up for giving the writing group a go. I'm GMT.
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Jul 11, 2014 10:40
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I'd like to be in this thing. IRC is great for simultaneous communication, but it can be a bit hard to catch up on after the fact. It would be useful for the crits, at a decided time, but something like google docs or a private forum might be more useful for more general conversation, since it's easier to catch up on the dialogue later on.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:06
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edit: oops somehow i misread stuff
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Jul 11, 2014 14:17
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Okay let me lay out what we did last time and give some thoughts on what worked and what did not. From there you guys can try to decide how you'd like to organize this. I may or may not join in again depending on the format; my goal atm is to finish shorts and I am not interested in getting crits on stuff that isn't at least a finished rough draft. The first "semester" we did it, it coincided with Sanderson's Write About Dragons class. We watched the lecture every week and followed the class schedule, which required a certain number of words per week (I forget how many, 1k-1.5k I think though). We used a googledocs group to post our submissions for the week, which were due on Thursday to give people time to read before Skype calls on Saturday. Written crits were due on Monday. Sanderson had strong opinions of how crits should be, specifically don't say, "I think you should..." He preferred, "This worked, this didn't" type crits. We tried to do this but every one of us was guilty of much "I think you should..." The Skype calls were really long, usually fun, and sort of helpful. We went through each person on the call's submission, and whoever we were critting at the time had to mute themselves and not respond during the crit. The crit was usually about 20-30 minutes, then we'd give the person ~5 minutes to respond or ask questions. If you missed the call that was that. It was optional. The first semester we had most people stick to the deadlines, but people would occasionally go on vacation or make up pretty valid excuses. Some people got lazy and just missed deadlines entirely, but the overall FEELING was that everyone was doing it seriously and trying their best to treat it almost like a university class or something. A few people dropped out midway through, and many dropped out after the first semester. Toward the end of the semester people started flaking the gently caress out though; many were failing to do the minimum word counts and it just felt like wheel spinning. I finished 50k words in that semester but hated my novel. Me, crabrock, and muffin all had over 50k, but I think most people had under 25k words. I got annoyed and the second semester declared that if you missed more than three weeks you were kicked out of the group. People got stressed out and started failing to submit. After maybe a month or two we all just totally burned the gently caress out and started dropping out like flies. I found the idea of writing a novel and getting feedback every few thousand words more or less annoying and not too helpful. We started allowing shorts somewhere in, and I finished a few short stories and got a lot of good feedback getting the finished drafts critiqued, so that's more the direction I would want to go in. If people want to do novels and get crits as they write, I'd say feel free to do so; it didn't work for me but it works for others.
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Jul 11, 2014 14:32
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I am down for some of this action, but I think my work wouldn't allow me to join cause I work every weekend and now I dont know why I even bothered making a post
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Jul 11, 2014 15:27
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It sounds like maybe a combination of IRC and an offsite forum would be ideal (or a dedicated thread in CC, dunno if that's kosher). systran, my interest is also in short fiction, but I don't see any reason a group couldn't offer feedback on both short stories and novels. There's a lot of people that seem interested, so maybe if it's necessary there can be a group for each? Burnout and people just dropping are probably the biggest issues to address, though.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:33
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I'm already in a writing group and I can't recommend it enough; it still keeps me on deadline. And while I post a lot in here without posting my writing, that doesn't mean I'm not writing. I read some sub guidelines that said they wouldn't accept a MS if any part of it had been posted online. To me, that's short sighted. What better way to drum up interest in your book than to expose it to a small group?
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Jul 11, 2014 15:51
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We tried making a separate group for short fiction once but it died because it took us all too long to finish drafts. I think we had a two-week deadline for like 7k-8k word stories, and only three people were participating out of like ~10 from the main group. I think having shorts and novels together in one group is fine, but the trickiest question for me is how to strike the right balance between deadlines that force you to write and deadlines that force you to just poo poo out dumb poo poo for the sake of doing it. This was something we all did because we wanted to write--no one was forcing us to do this--but nonetheless most people were writing their required word counts the night before it was due, and often they were doing the bare minimum required, even cutting off mid-scene cause they had hit the minimum. If you don't have deadlines though, people like me will just decide not to write for a week or two at a time, which also really sucks.
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Jul 11, 2014 15:52
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Yeah, I really like deadlines for motivation, but I think it can get dangerous if it becomes a "turn this in in 2 hours or you're kicked out" type of situation. If everyone is just racing to churn out bullshit, it won't benefit anyone. That said I have no problem working in a group with people that are writing novels. Personally I prefer writing short stories in the 3-5k word range, but provided everyone could settle on reasonable deadlines I think anyone could benefit from an organized group regardless of their goals. Hell, just having a community of people that take it seriously is a pretty good motivator.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:16
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Hell, just having a community of people that take it seriously is a pretty good motivator. It's the major thing I miss about university. Kept meaning to set up some sort of group with those guys but I think a lot of them aren't trying to write seriously any more. Which could be the perfect reason to try and do something with them, but it could also be the best reason to not do that.
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Jul 11, 2014 16:23
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Yeah, I really like deadlines for motivation, but I think it can get dangerous if it becomes a "turn this in in 2 hours or you're kicked out" type of situation. If everyone is just racing to churn out bullshit, it won't benefit anyone. My group meets every two weeks on a Tuesday, and deadline for the next submission is the Tuesday in between. You've got a week after the crits to update your next chapter, and then everybody has a week to go over the other chapters. It's worked out great.
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Jul 11, 2014 17:01
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blue squares posted:Also: Does anyone here own a usage dictionary? I've read lots of glowing reviews of Brian Garner's Modern American Usage, but I'm not sure whether it's necessary to own. Any questions I've had have been answered with Google, so I don't know is $28.50 is worth it to have a giant book on my desk instead. I've got the Merriam-Webster Usage Dictionary and it is awesome. I was skeptical when I first bought it, but the more I use it, the more I love it. I find that when I search stuff on Google, I get linked to random forum post where someone merely repeats the "rule" they learned from their teacher, as if it is gospel. The usage dictionary, however, shows (with sources) the development of all the competing guidelines and the reasoning behind them. It also has recommendations for how to handle different situations. I find it provides helpful information so I can decide how best present my work, and not some random, arbitrary "rule."
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Jul 11, 2014 19:38
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K writergroup people. I'm going to throw up some sort of simple forum hopefully by the end of the weekend, along with a dedicated IRC channel. I'll post a schedule and some general guidelines, and we'll go from there. I am fairly sick right now which is why I haven't done it already (clicking the mouse is hard), but I think getting this idea off of the ground as soon as possible will have the best results.
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Jul 12, 2014 01:24
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I would like to be involved in this writing group, if that works out.
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Jul 12, 2014 03:59
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