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capri0mniWell, I finally finished the story I promised ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alryssa, and mailed it off to her yesterday.
This story was the first piece of solo-written fiction I'd written in over 2 years, and it took a lot longer than I expected (The only other fiction I'd written were
alryssa, and mailed it off to her yesterday. This story was the first piece of solo-written fiction I'd written in over 2 years, and it took a lot longer than I expected (The only other fiction I'd written were
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Well, I finally finished the story I promised <lj site="livejournal.com" user="Alryssa">, and mailed it off to her yesterday.
This story was the first piece of solo-written fiction I'd written in over 2 years, and it took a lot longer than I expected (The only other fiction I'd written were <a href=""http://profun.roundrobins.info>Pro-Fun Troll Hoedowns</a>, and all of those have been round robins). I'd <i>expected</i> it to be completed in a matter of weeks, instead, it took months.
This was the first project of my 2003 New Year's resolution, which was to write some form of fictional narrative every day, even if it's only writing part of a scene.
<lj-cut text="Some stuff I said about this before, but wants saying again">I've done a lot of writing in the last few years, but every bit of writing I've done (on my own, that is, not counting the Hoedowns mentioned above) has been either poetry or essays, and my mind has been freezing up when I attempt fictional narrative. And I began to see that freezing up as a red flag.
I realized (when I paused long enough to pay attention, that is) that even <i>thinking</i> of writing fiction was triggering a <u>fear</u> response.
Writing essays and poetry allows a writer (well, me, at least) to stand at arm's length from the subject -- to view it within its context and see the overall pattern an aesthetic quality in the abstract. But writing fiction requires getting <i>inside a character's mind</i>, and <i>feeling</i> the specific events of the story --all the uncertainity, the sorrows, the pains -- without knowing how it will all turn out.
Writing essays and poems lets us see the forest -- often from the air, or pictured on a map... Writing fiction means actually hiking through the forest, getting our faces slapped by tree branches, finding ourselves at the edges of cliffs, hearing wild animals scream in the darkness around us... And it was that emotional/psycholocial requirement that was scaring me off...
And where there's fear, there's generally power (otherwise, there'd be nothing to be afraid of; we don't get scared of things that we genuninely believe to have no power over us). And so I decided to face my fear, and reclaim that power I used to be so comfortable with (I used to think of myself as a storyteller first, and a poet/essayist second), and to get at least some fiction into words every day.</lj-cut>
Well (confession time), I've all ready failed at the "every day" bit of that resolution -- in the process of writing Alryssa's tale, whole clusters of days would go by without my writing a thing. <i>But</i> over the past 3 and a half months, or so, I've spent more time thinking and working fictively than I have in 3 and a half years... And <i>that</i> feels very good.
Now that the story is over, I have to regird my loins and enter a different forest, with different, and unknown pains and terrors... I think I'm ready.:::deep breath:::: (reties shoes, adjusts belt, puts on pith helmet). Here I go!
This story was the first piece of solo-written fiction I'd written in over 2 years, and it took a lot longer than I expected (The only other fiction I'd written were <a href=""http://profun.roundrobins.info>Pro-Fun Troll Hoedowns</a>, and all of those have been round robins). I'd <i>expected</i> it to be completed in a matter of weeks, instead, it took months.
This was the first project of my 2003 New Year's resolution, which was to write some form of fictional narrative every day, even if it's only writing part of a scene.
<lj-cut text="Some stuff I said about this before, but wants saying again">I've done a lot of writing in the last few years, but every bit of writing I've done (on my own, that is, not counting the Hoedowns mentioned above) has been either poetry or essays, and my mind has been freezing up when I attempt fictional narrative. And I began to see that freezing up as a red flag.
I realized (when I paused long enough to pay attention, that is) that even <i>thinking</i> of writing fiction was triggering a <u>fear</u> response.
Writing essays and poetry allows a writer (well, me, at least) to stand at arm's length from the subject -- to view it within its context and see the overall pattern an aesthetic quality in the abstract. But writing fiction requires getting <i>inside a character's mind</i>, and <i>feeling</i> the specific events of the story --all the uncertainity, the sorrows, the pains -- without knowing how it will all turn out.
Writing essays and poems lets us see the forest -- often from the air, or pictured on a map... Writing fiction means actually hiking through the forest, getting our faces slapped by tree branches, finding ourselves at the edges of cliffs, hearing wild animals scream in the darkness around us... And it was that emotional/psycholocial requirement that was scaring me off...
And where there's fear, there's generally power (otherwise, there'd be nothing to be afraid of; we don't get scared of things that we genuninely believe to have no power over us). And so I decided to face my fear, and reclaim that power I used to be so comfortable with (I used to think of myself as a storyteller first, and a poet/essayist second), and to get at least some fiction into words every day.</lj-cut>
Well (confession time), I've all ready failed at the "every day" bit of that resolution -- in the process of writing Alryssa's tale, whole clusters of days would go by without my writing a thing. <i>But</i> over the past 3 and a half months, or so, I've spent more time thinking and working fictively than I have in 3 and a half years... And <i>that</i> feels very good.
Now that the story is over, I have to regird my loins and enter a different forest, with different, and unknown pains and terrors... I think I'm ready.:::deep breath:::: (reties shoes, adjusts belt, puts on pith helmet). Here I go!
