I am leaving the office
Dec. 12th, 2005 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
electricland...see me leaving? Good. But before I leave, one thought:
I love Jennifer Crusie's books. Love them. Now I love her blog as well. One recent post sums up her writing process so beautifully (go read it -- there's an illustration, and there's no point me excerpting just part of it), and it made me smile. When I was in high school, and wrote for fun, that was kind of what I did. I lived with these characters in my head, and I would write down scenes that struck me on loose-leaf pages (often during class) and put them in a binder where they seemed to fit, and eventually I wound up with a story. (It was an Anne McCaffrey pastiche, I realized much too late, but never mind.) I put together family trees and maps and all kinds of supporting material as well. I don't think I ever got as far as a second draft, which is kind of a shame (if only because it prevents me carrying this thought all the way to its conclusion). But the scenes I wrote were good -- at least, I thought so, because I knew these people and I could see and hear what was going on so clearly in my head that I hardly ever had to search for a word. I just knew. I miss that. I miss trusting that I knew where I was going, and just writing. I started to second-guess myself for a variety of reasons, and then I got short on time, and it was No Good.
(The collaboration thing is kind of funny too. Back in university I was writing a tacky romance novel -- I should dig it out and see if it still strikes me as any good -- and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crankygrrl asked if she could come in on it and I said sure, and our writing styles COULD NOT be more different. She likes to write a scene. The first scene. Then she rewrites it. And rewrites it. And rewrites it. And I'm saying Good God, woman, it's DONE already, can we PLEASE move on? As a collaboration, it was kind of a disaster. Although we did have a lot of fun at one point with file cards and outlining the structure of the thing.)
This year I want to get back to writing for fun. I say that a lot, but this time I want to do it. Perhaps it needs to involve some loose-leaf paper and a binder.
I love Jennifer Crusie's books. Love them. Now I love her blog as well. One recent post sums up her writing process so beautifully (go read it -- there's an illustration, and there's no point me excerpting just part of it), and it made me smile. When I was in high school, and wrote for fun, that was kind of what I did. I lived with these characters in my head, and I would write down scenes that struck me on loose-leaf pages (often during class) and put them in a binder where they seemed to fit, and eventually I wound up with a story. (It was an Anne McCaffrey pastiche, I realized much too late, but never mind.) I put together family trees and maps and all kinds of supporting material as well. I don't think I ever got as far as a second draft, which is kind of a shame (if only because it prevents me carrying this thought all the way to its conclusion). But the scenes I wrote were good -- at least, I thought so, because I knew these people and I could see and hear what was going on so clearly in my head that I hardly ever had to search for a word. I just knew. I miss that. I miss trusting that I knew where I was going, and just writing. I started to second-guess myself for a variety of reasons, and then I got short on time, and it was No Good.
(The collaboration thing is kind of funny too. Back in university I was writing a tacky romance novel -- I should dig it out and see if it still strikes me as any good -- and
crankygrrl asked if she could come in on it and I said sure, and our writing styles COULD NOT be more different. She likes to write a scene. The first scene. Then she rewrites it. And rewrites it. And rewrites it. And I'm saying Good God, woman, it's DONE already, can we PLEASE move on? As a collaboration, it was kind of a disaster. Although we did have a lot of fun at one point with file cards and outlining the structure of the thing.)This year I want to get back to writing for fun. I say that a lot, but this time I want to do it. Perhaps it needs to involve some loose-leaf paper and a binder.
