Solidarity, friend. My brain can't seem to figure out where the story is supposed to go until I spend a LOT of time in the world and the characters' heads, and I'm stalling out trying to come up with a plot beforehand. Except pure pantsing also didn't work out so well for me, as my first novel was a 300K word monstrosity that needed a ton of time both cutting words and imposing a structure. So I'm hoping to find some middle ground. Did you find any of those craft books helpful, at least conceptually?
Yeah, it's why I don't think of what I do as pure pantsing, because pure pantsing is very "full steam ahead", whereas once I do start actually drafting and not just playing around, I'll also go back, rewrite, reshape as I'm in that process.
There were some useful things in them even if the whole method didn't work out for me. I found the character work in 'Story Genius' to be valuable. On the whole, though, the best writing book I've read recently was Chuck Wendig's 'Gentle Writing Advice', which was much more about caring for myself as a writer than about anything prescriptive.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever finish anything long again; I don’t know whether I’ll turn to short stories or poems, where my writing began when I was a kid. I don’t know whether any of it will get published by anyone except me in forums like this. I just keep writing (fearfully, anxiously, sometimes slowly, sometimes less slowly). I like Scrivener only because it lets me keep watch over all my little mutant writing babies in one place where they can grow up (and maybe grow) together. It’s the attic my friends and fam will stumble on, open slowly, and say, “WTF was he up to?” Then, maybe, “Hey, this is kind of interesting.” That’s the farthest reach of my current writing goals.
I've used Scrivener for ages and love it for so many reasons, but right now it almost feels like too much pressure. Anything I put into Scrivener is supposed to be a Real Project, and then I start getting all twisted up about it, so I think right now just having a chaos document will be freeing.
That makes sense. I have several unfinished projects in Scrivener, but I’m still able to think of it as my chaos document, a place I can dip into and may someday pull material from to develop and finish. Or not. Without it, all those individual bits and pieces would feel wasted. Scrivener let’s me still think of them as possibilities.
Solidarity, friend. My brain can't seem to figure out where the story is supposed to go until I spend a LOT of time in the world and the characters' heads, and I'm stalling out trying to come up with a plot beforehand. Except pure pantsing also didn't work out so well for me, as my first novel was a 300K word monstrosity that needed a ton of time both cutting words and imposing a structure. So I'm hoping to find some middle ground. Did you find any of those craft books helpful, at least conceptually?
Yeah, it's why I don't think of what I do as pure pantsing, because pure pantsing is very "full steam ahead", whereas once I do start actually drafting and not just playing around, I'll also go back, rewrite, reshape as I'm in that process.
There were some useful things in them even if the whole method didn't work out for me. I found the character work in 'Story Genius' to be valuable. On the whole, though, the best writing book I've read recently was Chuck Wendig's 'Gentle Writing Advice', which was much more about caring for myself as a writer than about anything prescriptive.
Thanks! I hope going back to your old method works for you again, I've enjoyed reading your work and look forward to whatever comes next :)
I don’t know whether I’ll ever finish anything long again; I don’t know whether I’ll turn to short stories or poems, where my writing began when I was a kid. I don’t know whether any of it will get published by anyone except me in forums like this. I just keep writing (fearfully, anxiously, sometimes slowly, sometimes less slowly). I like Scrivener only because it lets me keep watch over all my little mutant writing babies in one place where they can grow up (and maybe grow) together. It’s the attic my friends and fam will stumble on, open slowly, and say, “WTF was he up to?” Then, maybe, “Hey, this is kind of interesting.” That’s the farthest reach of my current writing goals.
I hope you keep going.
I've used Scrivener for ages and love it for so many reasons, but right now it almost feels like too much pressure. Anything I put into Scrivener is supposed to be a Real Project, and then I start getting all twisted up about it, so I think right now just having a chaos document will be freeing.
That makes sense. I have several unfinished projects in Scrivener, but I’m still able to think of it as my chaos document, a place I can dip into and may someday pull material from to develop and finish. Or not. Without it, all those individual bits and pieces would feel wasted. Scrivener let’s me still think of them as possibilities.