Processional

[larryhammer]

I'm a seat-of-the-pants type of writer. I work best by putting some characters at cross-purposes in an interesting situation, and running with it to find out what happens. Sometimes (especially when working off a myth) I start with a vague idea of where it's heading, but often enough I don't get that till at least halfway through. And I don't detail what happens next until I'm about to write it, because knowing too much kills the talespinning impulse. Perhaps not the most efficient process, but it's mine. The only way it can work is to trust myself, to believe that by the time I get just a little further on, I'll have figured out the next little bit. Sometimes, of course, that doesn't happen, so, yes, I do have a trunk of stories that died partway through. And sometimes I take wrong turns and have to back up till I find where I veered.

All of which is prologue for nattering about the mess-in-progess, "Atalanta's Races." To whit, it took two days to realize the reason I'd been bashing my head over the current stanza was that I shouldn't be writing it: I'd switched into the wrong point-of-view. But of course, I didn't figure this out until I'd written some lines I really like and now can't use. So, in the spirit of a tyop of the day started by some writers, an outtake of the day:

      He didn't want to want this heroine,
      But wanting her, he wanted now to win.

Such are the joys of the writing life.

---L.

Comments

[msagara.livejournal.com]

<wry g>. I can understand why you don't want to lose them.

I love the way our subconscious works for and against us. Another friend of mine will occasionally hit these head-bashing-wall moments, and they can last a long time. She dislikes talking about process most of the time, but her instincts are always spot on, and any time she hits a snag and keeps running at it, it eventually becomes clear that it's a structural problem, an underlying difficulty that isn't immediately clear.

But I think it's easier to see that from the outside than it is when you're in the middle of it.

(I work in a similar way to you except that for novels I'm pretty clear on the ending I think I'm aiming for at start -- otherwise, the process is similar, and involves that sense of trust/faith that the next step won't be off a cliff).

[larryhammer]

The thing is, sometimes struggling for a little bit merely means it's simply being difficult at the moment, or it's been a couple rough workdays and I haven't enough brains to figure it out. Makes it hard to tell the difference at first.

---L.