What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?

HeavilyMedicated said:

I'm concerned that I'm not descriptive enough.

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I know the feeling. I struggle with the balance.

So, this YA contemp I keep prattling on about is rather freeing. I'm writing in notepad with word wrap off. I have no idea how far I am. No idea what the word count is. I just write and then stop. Then pick it up again.

I wrote words! 1580 of them!

I know that's not much compared to what some of you do on a daily basis, but for me it's a major accomplishment!

This scene is turning into chop suey. Three hours and I've revised/rewritten only 10ish pages. Blargh!

ETA: Scratch that. FIVE. FIVE PAGES. The part of my brain devoted to numbers has shriveled and been absorbed into the editthiscrappus.

Have had awful troubles with motivation to continue the WIP.

So I just started to write a scene with no idea where it would go.

Wouldn't you know, I just found out six impossible things before breakfast, and the story is going again.

I really am a pantser.

I'm doing the fantasy/sci-fi story swap. I just finished my story and I'm really pleased with it. At the time I left it with an unsatisfying ending, but in some weird awful way it needs to end right there. If I added more the story would become something completely different.

Finding the right place to end can be just as challenging as finding the right place to start.

E.F.B. said:

I wrote words! 1580 of them!

I know that's not much compared to what some of you do on a daily basis, but for me it's a major accomplishment!

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Snoopy dance all you like!

Did a little bit of writing today.

And sent out four queries!

Now I've started revisions on Watersong. So far, I'm pleasantly surprised. These first couple of chapters are better than I remembered.

I can't seem to stop mixing up "waste" and "waist". Earlier I wrote a line about a character grabbing another by her waste and it summoned a terrible mental image.

shs22 said:

I can't seem to stop mixing up "waste" and "waist". Earlier I wrote a line about a character grabbing another by her waste and it summoned a terrible mental image.

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*snorts water out nose*

Yes, I can see how that would be a problem! Oh dear, oh dear...

No publisher contact in the inbox for the past couple of days. I hope it picks up. I hope it's not a rush, though. Those days when there's four rejections are hard to stomach.

tri

shs22 said:

I can't seem to stop mixing up "waste" and "waist". Earlier I wrote a line about a character grabbing another by her waste and it summoned a terrible mental image.

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Now I have that image in my head...

Am I the only one who sometimes gets weirdly frustrated with the limitations of writing normal prose stories?

Every time I write or try to write anything involving magic (which is the vast majority of the time) I have to actively fight the urge to include over-the-top magic battles. I'm a big anime fan and I love the ludicrously OTT fight scenes those have and would love to include something like it, but I just can't but feel like to do so in a novel would be a hurdle I just can't cross.

Every time I write genre fiction, there's this nasty little voice coming over my shoulder that tells me I'm not a real writer because I'm not writing literary contemp.

tri

shs22 said:

I can't seem to stop mixing up "waste" and "waist". Earlier I wrote a line about a character grabbing another by her waste and it summoned a terrible mental image.

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LOLOLOLOLOLLLLLLLLLLLooooh, I think I hurt myself!

Reservoir Angel said:

Am I the only one who sometimes gets weirdly frustrated with the limitations of writing normal prose stories?

Every time I write or try to write anything involving magic (which is the vast majority of the time) I have to actively fight the urge to include over-the-top magic battles. I'm a big anime fan and I love the ludicrously OTT fight scenes those have and would love to include something like it, but I just can't but feel like to do so in a novel would be a hurdle I just can't cross.

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It can be done. I have four authors I'll recommend (if you haven't read them already.

Read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn and Stormlight Archive. They both have some pretty wild magical battles.

Read Brent Weeks's Lightbringer series. The magic gets pretty crazy here.

I also recall some pretty powerful magical battles in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, especially later on in the series.

The same goes for Rachel Aaron's Eli Monpress series. I believe the author actually mentioned somewhere that she got a lot of influence from anime.

Reservoir Angel said:

Every time I write or try to write anything involving magic (which is the vast majority of the time) I have to actively fight the urge to include over-the-top magic battles.

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Back in the Olden Days, big over-the-top magical battles were more the rule than the exception. Even if they weren't literally huge, they often felt huge... which was part of their magic. So write what your story needs and don't worry about it. If the story develops properly up to the battle, the battle will fit.

Resurrecting my YA. Had to read it over to reacquaint myself.

...And it sucks. And now I'm also wondering if I should switch it to past tense. When I started out it was in past, but my brain kept switching it to present tense, so I switched. But now that I've re-read it, it feels stilted.

Decisions, decisions...

Oops. I think I fell in love with my mc's romantic interest.

AshleyEpidemic said:

Oops. I think I fell in love with my mc's romantic interest.

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Isn't this ideal?

AshleyEpidemic said:

Oops. I think I fell in love with my mc's romantic interest.

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AW has a support group for that.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9322139#post9322139

Today, every time I sat down to write it's like the rest of humanity had heat seeking missiles and had to intercept me. They don't understand what "I'm writing" means.

I'm really considering telling everyone I'm sick tomorrow. I'll be in my room. Don't bother me FOR ANYTHING.

Has anyone else ever used that excuse?

Blinkk said:

Today, every time I sat down to write it's like the rest of humanity had heat seeking missiles and had to intercept me. They don't understand what "I'm writing" means.

I'm really considering telling everyone I'm sick tomorrow. I'll be in my room. Don't bother me FOR ANYTHING.

Has anyone else ever used that excuse?

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I should try that on my three year old. I'm sure she'd totes understand.
http://absolutewrite.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

Right now, I'm in one of those existential writing crises. I'm trying to decide if my epic fantasies are really what I should be writing. There's so much more out there.

Maybe I'll start reading some other stuff to see what else I might like. I feel like I'm getting into a rut with my reading and my writing.

I'm also trying to decide if now is the best time to go full-out for my writing career. I'm going to be returning to school in the fall (and working). Between the two, I doubt I'll have much writing time (or energy for that matter).

I've just realised that if evolutionary biologists are correct about the reason why we evolved vertical foreheads, and you factor in the idea of hybrid vigour, the female neanderthals in my story would find the main character (who's half neanderthal half Homo sapiens) very sexually attractive. After being totally ignored by all the Homo sapiens women in his tribe, this might come as a bit of a surprise to him.

Shame I suck at writing sex scenes.