On Writing

[extrapenguin]

Summer is coming! My new place has a thermometer. Based on observations from that, while 21°C is a perfectly valid temperature to do stuff in, 22°C is too hot and my brains want to melt.

I have written a lot of words for Guardian. I still have more to write. I've also read 55 chapters of Sha Po Lang and holy fuck I love it so much, it's got so many MilSF-type feels from Gu Yun loyal to his country despite the crap happening to him. A+ would recommend.

However, the title of this post is On Writing (instead of On Sha Po Lang) because I have over the past few weeks discovered two posts on writing I wish to share!

One Free Trick: How to Use the Writing Skills You Have to Learn the Ones You Don’t (Arkady Martine) is mostly an essay about how we all have something we're good at, so we can use those bits to push through the harder bits. Then I spent some time wondering what my "free trick" is. Humor, maybe? That seems to come easily to me.

How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day (Rachel Aaron) is exactly what it says on the tin. As a hobbyist, I can't do 10k per day, but method one (write a more barebones outline summary of what has to happen in the scene) has so far worked really well when I'm a bit stuck.

Anyway, I am now off to write even more words for the 520 Ex assignment (yay) and then sleep. Mayday is a public holiday here, so I'll probably dedicate Wednesday to words as well!

Comments

[rheasilvia]

Yeeees, I cannot with the heat, either. O_O Just... not.

Thank you for reminding me of Aaron's book! I read it a few years back and - while much of it wasn't applicable to me and my writing is never going to be that fast, no matter what - the barebones outline thing is exactly what really helped me, too. I should re-read the book! She definitely does have some helpful pointers.

I'll check out the Free Trick, too! :-) Who knows, it may help. (Although I wrote 3k words yesterday/today on another WIP, which I hope will be the 520 fic. That's a record for me lately, so I am cautiously optimistic that my writing mojo may not have abandoned me permanently. *g*)

[extrapenguin]

Ooh, I haven't read her book - are there any other helpful pointers applicable for ficwriters? I went through a dive of her blog, and a lot of it was more geared towards selfpub pro authors. There were also bits I outright disagreed with - she introduced some frankly boring sentences as sublime, and her counterexamples of terrible sentences were much more interesting, because they at least had something to think about.

I'm not sure whether the Free Trick will *help* per se, but it's a thing that is interesting to introspect about. I suspect my free trick of Humor bleeds into (or is created by) Insight and Turn of Phrase. Also an imagination that has no problem coming up with the absurd. As for actual writing-related free tricks, well, I probably do have one, but fuck if I know what it is. Probably not Theme, and likely not Plot, either.

I also wrote a lot of words for my 520 assignment! If someone actually manages to write something longer than me, I raise my hat to them. My fic is, uh, *long*.

[rheasilvia]

Oh, that's her blog! I saw the title and just assumed it was her book, since the title is the same, but now I realize you did mention "posts", which was definitely a clue. ;-) I will check out the blog to see what else she has on there - I don't remember any example sentences from the book at all.

The book is definitely geared towards pro writing, but much of it applies to fanfic too, I think. I only really remember the parts I tried right now, namely rough outlining and tracking word output. Most of the tips in the book weren't right for me, either, but it was because of my personal writing ways - I will never be able to do 10k words a day, and that's okay. Not everyone is that fast a writer.

My fic is, uh, *long*.

Coolness! :-) My story will not be particularly long, sadly, but at least I'll have finished something over 1k again. Maybe it's a trend? *g*

Mostly I just need more hours in the day, and days in the week, because argh. *headdesk*

[extrapenguin]

I will never be able to do 10k words a day, and that's okay. Not everyone is that fast a writer.
Yup, not even the pros. Yoon Ha Lee, frex, only does 2k a day because he needs to digest the work before writing it, and he's a full-time pro.

My fic has exceeded the minimum wordcount by an order of magnitude. I hope to end it before it exceeds the minimum by *two* orders of magnitude...

Yup, more leisure time would definitely be a plus! Maybe then I would be bored enough to actually clean something.