Tag Archives: on writing

Leave a comment

Just got this message from an Anon, and if it is to be believed, it sounds like AR had an unnecessarily vitriolic reaction to an innocent fan *hugs Anon* 

I know I should have just posted your story without commentary but it got me to thinking about the criticism aspect of your story… I’m always intrigued by these kinds of interactions with Mater Glorioso, if anyone has more, please share!

On criticism: when one criticizes someone’s work… telling them what you don’t like about it… whether they are a Tumblr RPer, or a globally-known best-selling author of incalculable wealth/prestige, that’s a very delicate subject. Especially for THIS best-selling author of incalculable wealth/prestige, who hasn’t had a beta-reader since VC book 4 (that is speculation) and won’t collaborate with anyone (including her best-selling author of a son) because of the level of control she needs in order to craft her stories. Criticism can come across as a personal attack bc an author’s writing is the conduit to their deepest self; some of the best writing seems to be explorations of what they want to explore in their own psyche. 

For this reason, I try not to negatively criticize anyone’s work negatively bc I know I can be vicious. One has to establish a foundation of trust first. Even that is not always enough. That’s why people choose their beta-readers carefully, when they want one, bc it has to be someone that can criticize constructively and if they DO come across as hurtful, the writer knows it’s unintentionally hurtful. 

I don’t mean to criticize you for criticizing her, just attempting to explain why she may have overreacted the way it sounds like she did *hugs Anon again*

And here, the biggest lesson of them all, and a summation of all the problems.

You are in the way of your story.

Hard truth: writing is actually not that important.

Writing is a mechanism.

It’s an inelegant middleman to what we do. It’s a shame, in some ways, that we even call ourselves writers, because it describes only the mechanical act of what we do. It’s a vital mechanism, sure, but by describing it as the prominent thing, it tends to suggest, well, prominence.

But our writing must serve story.

Story does not serve writing.

This is cart-before-horse stuff, but important to realize.

Listen, in what we do there exist three essential participants.

We have:

The tale, the teller of the tale, and the listener of the tale.

Story. Author. And audience.

That’s it.

You are two-thirds of that equation. You are the story (or, by proxy, its architect) and the teller of the story. The telling of the story is most often done through writing — through that mechanical act, and because it’s the act you can sit and watch, it’s the one that is used to describe our role. I AM WRITER, you say, and so you focus so much on the actual writing you forget that there’s this other invisible — but altogether more critical — part, which is what you’re writing.

So, what happens is, early on, you put so much on the page. You write and write and write and use too many words and too much exposition and big meaty paragraphs and at the end all it serves to do is create distance between the tale and the listener of the tale.

It keeps the audience at arm’s length.

Quit that shit.

Bring the audience into the story. This is at the heart of show, don’t tell — which is a rule that can and should be broken at times, but at its core remains a reasonable notion: don’t talk at, don’t preach, don’t lecture, don’t fill their time with unnecessary wordsmithy.

Get. To. The. Point.

Chuck Wendig, Five Common Problems I See in Your Stories (via vickiexz)

*mic drop* 

Source: vickiexz

i am a huuuge fan of your Louis! question: how much do you plot out with the other muns for the long prose threads like “to Suffer Together” ? Like, do you agree on the action and dialogue first before drafting, and/or send eachother a draft of your response before posting?

Leave a comment

merciful-death:

ooc; Thank you so much!  I can’t speak for everyone of course, but for myself, no, that much plotting doesn’t usually go into it.  With that thread with primusdux, we’d just decided to do a catatonic-post-Memnoch thread and go from there.  Some threads are even more spontaneous, ie the mortal!Louis thread I have going with gorgeous-fiend, which we didn’t plot out in general and just happened.

Every now and then a thread will come up where further plot is discussed prior to it happening (generally with a character that’s obviously much stronger than Louis and might bring him harm; which I generally give the other RPer permission to do whatever because I love torturing characters I love), but I tend to usually just go with the flow.  I’ve not sent my replies to people prior to posting them and haven’t honestly had anyone do that to me either.

Think of a book special to you, and how much bleaker and poorer your life would be if that one writer had not existed—if that one writer had not, a hundred times or a thousand, made the choice to write.

You’re going to be that one writer, one day, for somebody you may never meet. Nobody can write that book you’re going to write—that book that will light up and change up a life—but you.

— sarahreesbrennan, on ignoring the doubters. (via toricentanni)

^Take note all the fanfic writers and RPers.

Source: nanowrimo

I’m asked every day for pointers on fiction writing. Here goes: the first thing you have to do as a writer is write. You become the writer of your dreams by writing. Write, write, write. You aren’t a writer until you write, and all the pondering, considering, asking for career advice doesn’t matter until you actually write. Write what interests you, what obsesses you, and not what you think might interest or obsess some one else. Protect your own voice, your own vision, your own characters, your own stories. Go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is. Create the book you want to read, the book you want to live in; the book you love. And then be stubborn. Never cave to rejection or criticism. Just keep going until you find those who “get” what you are doing; and make yourself into the writer you want to be. Ponder the absolute value of individual imagination, individual eccentricity, individual discovery and surprise. And remember: the world needs you. If you don’t write the classics of tomorrow, we won’t have any.

Anne Rice, on writing (5/31/14)

“TL;DR” –> No really, read it. Regardless of what you think of her, it’s sound advice on writing.

Source: facebook.com

Leave a comment

sfuffaboutcomics:

i-want-my-iwtv:

“the writer attempts to show his love by not capitalizing god as a nod to his existentialist boyfriend who is also the editor, even though he himself is a devout Catholic but then sort of the point is that you might not be entirely sure that the writer is actually doing that or if the boyfriend is editing it or if the boyfriend editing is even really doing that or if they’re silently edit warring over it or what.”

#ALL THE FEELS *cries*

Oh, you *airily fans self*.

Well I only gush when gushing is due *hugs*

I really shouldn’t have used up all that divorce angst on Tony and Pepper, because I could have used it in finishing the novel. Gulfport is much more ‘Scenes from Robyn’s First Serious Boyfriend’ than it is ‘Scenes from Robyn’s Marriage’, but at the same time… stuff could have worked there, it really could have. 

You can put the same divorce angst into Gulfport, why not double-dip? If you don’t want to access those feels again, I totally understand. You can find a new source of angst… Trent Reznor (technically also a Published Writer) put it very well in this song: “I pick things up, I am a collector… I have this net, it drags behind me, it picks up feelings, for me to feed upon.” – Nine Inch Nails, the Collector. 

I actually remember my husband saying in interview, back in that weird time when I was doing that other comic and was on TV a couple of times, “you know, when she was doing autobio comics, people used to come up to me on the street and tell me I was an asshole. Lately I’m thankful she’s at least masking our relationship dynamic behind two gay men.”

That’s so crazy, omg. Wow! Well smtg good has come of it, it seems that that relationship dynamic was a major force in pushing you in your creative endeavors. Artists do tend to suffer for their art, n’est pas?

I can’t possibly be the only fic writer who shamelessly uses the medium to work through crap in their own life though, can I?     

Of course you’re not the only one! That’s pretty much the job description of being A Writer, isn’t it? Not all writers have experiences like that to draw from, but when you do, and you write to work though it, it’s like cracking open your chest and letting the readers watch your heart bleed… this transaction is supposed to give you release, I suspect… since I’m merely a fledgling at writing… Take our lord and saviour, AR, for example. She lost a child, a devastating experience. She dealt with that loss (and all the concomitant emotions) in the writing of that short story that became IWTV, giving her the closure she needed.