Good Tidings and Cheer to you all!

I hope the approaching holiday season finds you all looking forward to enjoying the company of good friends and family and all that good stuff. I figure now is a good time to do some rumination on writing, and talk about where I’m at and where I’m going. I’ve been writing for a little while now (over three years and 50-odd stories!), long enough that I feel comfortable looking back and trying to draw some lessons from experience. Partially this is for my own benefit, but I hope some aspiring or active writers can find something here to relate to.

Most of my stories begin as a single coherent idea from which everything else grows. I have more stories that exist only as ideas or shattered word files than I’d care to admit, including 3-4 stories that are big enough to be worth calling ‘unfinished’. There are usually two distinct failure modes:

1. The original idea wasn’t good enough for a story.
2. The idea was good, but the execution was poor.

#1 is disappointing but ultimately unavoidable. I usually get the feeling before the first or second big chunk is complete that the story isn’t interesting or doesn’t have any good place to go, and that is always a huge red flag. If the idea isn’t interesting to it’s *author* you have a pretty good idea of what your *audience* is going to make of it. But moreover, forcing boring and uninspired writing is slow and painful work, and the end product is almost always dull, confused, desultory or worse. Sometimes you can surprise yourself writing the idea into places you never thought it would go, but after it’s withered on the vine for a few days the best thing to do is cull it and start on something fresh.

#2 is way more complicated.

It’s always easy to *feel* the possibilities a really good idea might spawn, but the process of choosing and executing the burdensome details is where a story really thrives or dies. A surfeit of enticing possibilities can asphyxiate writing as easily as a dearth of them. There is a really fiendish art to knowing when to stop thinking about possibilities and choose one that works, but it is so important to KEEP WRITING when you’re working on a story that I find it supersedes almost all other concerns. If you aren’t happy with a section this can be tough to swallow, but it’s absurd to let an otherwise good story die for the sake of one or two parts. Think about your favorite movies or books or games and I’m sure you can come with a few things that could be improved (sometime drastically!), but whatever those flaws are they haven’t kept it from being your favorites, right?

Leonardo da Vinci once said that art is never finished, only abandoned. Sooner or later whatever you make has to leave your hands and be judged (and hopefully enjoyed) by the public. But the proper time to nitpick is NOT when you’re in the process of writing- it’s during editing, once you’ve got a coherent whole in your hands. The most important thing to do when you have an idea burning its way through your synapses is to hold onto it and give it life, and worry about the finer details later.

Another important point: it is impossible to work with interruptions. That’s just something you have to deal with before you can write. This does not just mean your parents / roommates / friends butting in when you’re trying to work but the things you do to interrupt yourself (facebook / FA / vidya games / ect.)

Anyway I am a terrible horrible no-good procrastinator and I’m open to any advice y’all might have.


**** Updates ****


Stuff I’m working on in no particular order:

1. ‘Release Day’ – ‘Beta Test’ sequel; much the same as the original story but far grander. I’ve been collecting ideas for this for some time now, but I just began the writing proper.

2. ‘Transcendence’ – Old commission, sci-fi / future with really heavy transhumanist sociological / philosophical themes. I spent a decent chunk of time working on this over the summer that pushed it up into the 40k range but kept hitting stalls. Nonetheless, the commissioner had a really good idea and I really want to do justice to it. I’m going to finish this if it kills me :P

3. [redacted] – [redacted]. It is a surprise : >

4. Short dragon-y story for  Foulfrost

- I’ve also struck upon an idea for a larger piece, an anthology of stories set around the same time in the same continuity. I’m somewhat ambivalent about my ability to write something in the right word range, but I suspect that breaking it up into a series of loosely interconnected tales would keep things fresh and interesting long enough. The core of the idea is a near-future timeline in which transgenetic technology has just been introduced, and the resultant effects on society as seen through the lives of a few representative individuals and a few extraordinary ones.

- Somewhat considering offering a single commission slot in the medium (10k) range. The range thing is just a guess- the last commission I did was ‘Black Oath’ and my original target was 6k... that turned into 15k. I’d probably ask about $50, but be willing to trade for a good piece of art or a story, in any case : >


**** Misc. ****


I have a Saints Row 3 franchise pack and a copy of Spacechem sitting in my Steam account doing no one any good. Anyone wanna trade for something? : >