"Just Write"

[mark_asphodel]

So I didn't make my goal of having Chapter 13 of "Starchild" out by tonight.  Oh, well... there are a number of personal goals I didn't meet this weekend.  Like buying a new vacuum cleaner.

Part of the problem is that a couple of weeks back, I followed a piece of writing advice that I normally avoid like it's poison.

"Just write.  Don't worry about it being good-- you can edit it later.   Just sit down and write."

Well, I did, and now I have a block of textual crap entitled "Chapter 13"-- or did until I excised that entire block of text like a tumor, dumped it into the slot labeled "Chapter 14" in case I needed to refer to it, and started over.  And since I did try to convince myself I could work with said textual crap, I wasted a lot of time with it.  I guess I could argue that the delay allowed me to refine the sequencing of certain events in Chapters 13 and 14, but I'd like to think I could have gotten there without writing junk text as a self-installed roadblock.

I'm sure that advice has its utility for professionals writing to deadline.  But in the case of someone writing for fun, it has always caused me more harm than good.  

-x-

Also, I did take an Eliwood/Fiora detour, but the junk-text issue was already ongoing when I wrote that.

-x-

Also, the squirrels have raided and feasted upon my carefully-planted canna lilies.  Evil little rodents.

Comments

[hooves.livejournal.com]

You clearly need cats. I'd be so pissed if my cannas (which...we dug up and the entire bucket of bulbs DISAPPEARED) were eaten by squirrels.

But never fear, squirrels stay the hell away from our property or they uhh end up with their head in the flower bed and the body by the front door. A gift, from my sister's indoor/outdoor cat. How lovely. At least they aren't creepin' 'round in my walls and chewing on wires. Those bastards are as bad as mice.

Also, the just write thing? Yeah, never, ever worked for me. I could BS stuff but if I REALLY couldn't get in the mood to write something? I'd get a bunch of textual crap myself.

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

I recommend the $37 basic Bissell if you need a good vacuum cleaner at a low price. The suction is good, the filters are easy to remove and clean, and the features are all easy to use. Been a great investment for my apartment!

As for the "just write it" approach, it does tend to work strangely well for me. ^_^; No idea why.

[sailorvfan10.livejournal.com]

That "just write" advice that practically everyone seems to swear by? Yeah, never worked for me, either. At least not for fiction. It's worked great for essays that I did twelve hours before the due date, but those are essays and I can bullshit my way through those. I can't bullshit through my fanfiction or originals without feeling like it's a cop-out. Although I must say, I started off chapter three of "My Sins" with a random line Marth says at the end of the game (in his talk with Nyna) and then I went through the scene from the end to the beginning (I never work in order it seems). But that's different than writing a text-block of crap. I do that every year--it's called NaNoWriMo. I don't need to do that all the time, you know?

Besides, my inner perfectionist is up my arse until I make it not suck, and sometimes it's just really hard to salvage something from a really bad draft. (My first draft is usually almost always complete rubbish--it's just to get down my ideas in a somewhat coherent manner and that's it. My second draft is where it's at.)

Besides half of the time I just can't think of anything to jot down, and then next thing I know I am finding patterns in Word's background from staring at it so hard.

The thing I usually do when something just isn't working with one fic is I just go on to something else. I have been slowly cranking out that Marth/Merric fic, but whilst I was agonising over chapter three? I finished 90 percent of the fic. I guess it's a form of procrastination, but I have to admit, it helps get the juices flowing.

Squirrels are evil rodents. They're cute and fuzzy to deceive you, and meanwhile they are secretly plotting to kill everything. Back when I used to garden, they liked to, uh, eat everything. That's when I started getting friendly with the local stray cats. That was a particularly smart investment. (There was a squirrel population problem in my hometown anyway due to the huge amount of trees. They were EVEYWHERE, and for every tree there were like twenty squirrels. There were at least fifty trees on my block. ...Yeah.)

Also they somehow got into the walls of our house, so when our hamster went out on an adventure, chewed a hole into the wall, and went exploring? My brother was going to kill every last squirrel if they ate her. (We found her safe and sound, but he still wanted to kill the squirrels, because they liked to try to burrow through the walls and into the living quarters.)

Also I read 'canna lilies' as 'canas lilies' on first readthrough, which was an interesting mental image, to say the least.

[sarajayechan.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem is that a couple of weeks back, I followed a piece of writing advice that I normally avoid like it's poison.

"Just write. Don't worry about it being good-- you can edit it later. Just sit down and write."

See, to me that advice only works during NaNo or if you actually, um, FEEL like writing. Trying to force yourself to write when you're not in the right mood? This is what happens. (http://winds-nocturne.livejournal.com/165383.html) Sure, TECHNICALLY it's decent and doesn't suck, but I wasn't happy with it. And it's a writer's right to be happy with what they churn out.

Also squirrels are definitely evil. Why else do they run in front of cars at just the right moment? XD You may wanna put up a fence around your plants.

[myaru.livejournal.com]

The "just write" line is a load of crap. It's good for very specific problems - for example, if someone is shying away from writing something out of fear that they'll suck. Letting fear stop you is a bad thing. But when you're blocked? Give me a break.

I sympathize. The same thing has happened to me.