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Oct. 23rd, 2003 02:14 amHe kisses you before you climb from the car, his lips still sticky with apple juice. You can taste him for the rest of the night--ashes and apples and him.
300 words. plus some moving arounds, so it's a total of 3600 words long tonight.
I'm figuring out background of the story slowly, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to background before I know what's happening now, so it's something I need to fuss with, even when it bothers me because I'd rather be writing than futzing.
I'm also figuring out why this story is bothering me so. It's a multi-faceted problem--first off, my lovely shiny idea calls to me and wants to be appreciated for being lovely and shiny, but a story is more than an idea, so I have to keep reminding myself of that. This is why Firing the Dead sat around for 4 months before I wrote the story--lovely shiny ideas often think they're all the story needs, and you end up with something stupid and ordinary. I had to rejuggle this story already because my lovely shiny idea had become just...wallpaper for a completely mainstream story. And it's not supposed to be mainstream, or wallpaper. So that's one of the problems.
I'm also thinking it's going to be longer than I want it to be, that I'm just a third done or so, not halfway. (well, the 3600 mark maybe halfway, but the 2600 continuous words are a third or a quarter)
But I think my biggest problem is that suddenly I've got too many balls in the air. This is all working out really well, overall. But I know that I don't know how to handle plot and setting and details language and characters and all the rest of them at the same time. So I'll handle it all in pieces, but overall, it's paralyzing me when I think about it. And that's when I need to get out the dragons, instead of staying stuck somewhere and fretting. Because as soon as I get past the stalling point, I'm usually okay. And as soon as I'm writing, it's beautiful. And as soon as I'm past the stalling point, I usually figure out how to handle the part I skipped. But I get too caught up in being paralyzed, and can't take a deep breath and skip it. I got too worried about my tendency to write in a non-linear manner that now I don't want to skip around, even though I'm not everyone else, and I'm allowed to write the way I want to write.
Things I'm doing right so far: Language. Voice. Telling details. Setting--well, better at least. That's what I've got to look at, not where I'm stuck.
300 words. plus some moving arounds, so it's a total of 3600 words long tonight.
I'm figuring out background of the story slowly, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to background before I know what's happening now, so it's something I need to fuss with, even when it bothers me because I'd rather be writing than futzing.
I'm also figuring out why this story is bothering me so. It's a multi-faceted problem--first off, my lovely shiny idea calls to me and wants to be appreciated for being lovely and shiny, but a story is more than an idea, so I have to keep reminding myself of that. This is why Firing the Dead sat around for 4 months before I wrote the story--lovely shiny ideas often think they're all the story needs, and you end up with something stupid and ordinary. I had to rejuggle this story already because my lovely shiny idea had become just...wallpaper for a completely mainstream story. And it's not supposed to be mainstream, or wallpaper. So that's one of the problems.
I'm also thinking it's going to be longer than I want it to be, that I'm just a third done or so, not halfway. (well, the 3600 mark maybe halfway, but the 2600 continuous words are a third or a quarter)
But I think my biggest problem is that suddenly I've got too many balls in the air. This is all working out really well, overall. But I know that I don't know how to handle plot and setting and details language and characters and all the rest of them at the same time. So I'll handle it all in pieces, but overall, it's paralyzing me when I think about it. And that's when I need to get out the dragons, instead of staying stuck somewhere and fretting. Because as soon as I get past the stalling point, I'm usually okay. And as soon as I'm writing, it's beautiful. And as soon as I'm past the stalling point, I usually figure out how to handle the part I skipped. But I get too caught up in being paralyzed, and can't take a deep breath and skip it. I got too worried about my tendency to write in a non-linear manner that now I don't want to skip around, even though I'm not everyone else, and I'm allowed to write the way I want to write.
Things I'm doing right so far: Language. Voice. Telling details. Setting--well, better at least. That's what I've got to look at, not where I'm stuck.
