At THAT stage
Jan. 22nd, 2014 05:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdThere is a story call.
I have tried writing this four different times: Nikolai 'verse, Nightside of Memphis (erotomancer needing help for finals), Paul and Dan (werewolves) and now combat mages (being very aware that I'm simply doing SoA fanfic, with CoC). Yes, three tries in the same 'verse.
It sucks. This is a story that should be effortless: just basic m/m BDSM, and a happy ending.
Yet I can't write anything but dreck and even the dreck is hard to write.
Time to live by what I always tell people: write it anyway. Dedication is better than inspiration.
5000 words, that's less than three hours of typing. I can do this.
I have tried writing this four different times: Nikolai 'verse, Nightside of Memphis (erotomancer needing help for finals), Paul and Dan (werewolves) and now combat mages (being very aware that I'm simply doing SoA fanfic, with CoC). Yes, three tries in the same 'verse.
It sucks. This is a story that should be effortless: just basic m/m BDSM, and a happy ending.
Yet I can't write anything but dreck and even the dreck is hard to write.
Time to live by what I always tell people: write it anyway. Dedication is better than inspiration.
5000 words, that's less than three hours of typing. I can do this.
The D-Man Replies...
Date: 2014-01-23 03:15 pm (UTC)Inspiration is loads better than dedication, otherwise you end up with drek, and an otherwise worthy story that both turns out badly--which then either nobody will read, or which people will read because they believe that they know & can trust the author--and trashes your rep' as an author.
Some stories need (and deserve) to be told, but in their own time... when the mood is right, or the phase of the moon is right, or the planets are in proper conjunction, or certain muses are sleeping while others are awake, or whatever. Some stories, like certain muses, take on a life of their own, and just will not cooperate until they are good & ready.
Stephen King wrote a number of flops after he had his accident, before he was ready or was suitably recovered, or had his head back in the writing game, and he pretty much destroyed his reputation by doing so; so much so that he made a guest appearance in the (2001) movie, Monkeybone, to poke fun as his disastrous decision to start writing again, chalking his flops up to how he (the real him) is supposedly trapped in this nutty parallel universe with Brendan Fraser's character, while one of his made-up book character creations inhabits his body & is living his life back in reality, and is now doing his (sub-par) writing.
DON'T DO IT!
Re: The D-Man Replies...
Date: 2014-01-24 05:44 am (UTC)Grinding away. Since it's not like I have a rep to lose.
Re: The D-Man Replies...
Date: 2014-01-27 07:04 pm (UTC)The difference between being an assembly line worker or a short-order cook, just cranking out product, and being an artist or a chef.
Once people begin to associate drek with your name, you're finished.
...And if you have no rep', why do people ask you to sit on panels at conventions?
Re: The D-Man Replies...
Date: 2014-01-27 10:46 pm (UTC)And I found the missing element, so the writing proceeds apace.
Seems all I needed to get me kickstarted was Naomi.
Allow me to quote Edgar Rice Burroughs at you: Write a story a week. You might write one bad story or three, but you will not write fifty-two bad stories.