One of the techniques heavily pimped out to writers is that when you encounter writer's block, the best way around it is to write absolute garbage until the block clears (or is so buried under absolute trash keystrokes that you will have surmounted it.) So let this thread be the place where you dump those garbage keystrokes for the good of the general lollery.
Skin was sure we had a poster by that name. Oh, well. Lanz, whatchoo got? Any good writer's block bustin' stream of consciousness effluvium?
Yeah, when you have WB, just do a "diary" entry. Write a few lines about your day, what you did, how it went, like that. That usually breaks the logjam.
I've heard about writer's block. Not something I've experienced. My problem is more along the line of Too Many Choices. A narrative I thought was going This Way decides to go That Way, and I have to recalibrate. Or it tries to branch off in multiple directions and I have to reel it in. In any case, I can't imagine why anyone would want to share examples of *bad* writing on a message board.
Structure. Ahem: Structure first. Because writing that's bad by accident is an insult to the reader. Writing that's bad on purpose is self-deprecating humor.
For your consideration: Good caricature, as the late, great Al Hirschfeld could have told you, is both detailed and *specific*. It is the ability to exaggerate the subject’s features so that they are, indeed, exaggerated, but at the same time eminently *recognizable*, rather than some bitter backhand that in your mind is as potent as Leonidas’ kicking the Messenger into the pit. JMO. Of course. But not structure only. Structure, for me, is the approximately 4,000-word outline I send my agent, out of which, one hopes, a contract is born. Out of that approximately 4,000 words, I am expected to nurture 90,000-125,000 words that bring the narrative to the concluding scene that the outline promises. Between Word 1 and Word 124,999, the narrative does and should, like a river, find its own path through the landscape. If it fails to at least occasionally surprise the writer, it will most likely not surprise the reader. The impetus for the narrative, for me, has always been the characters. Some are amenable to the plot as presented, others are, well, bossy. Sometimes they can be bargained with, other times they can be given free rein in order to at least see where they’re going with this, and at other times, though more rarely, they need to be reminded who the Omniscient Author is. To hew too rigidly to structure, i.e., to force the characters to adhere to the structure even if it puts them *out* of character, is to end up with, for example, an episode of Voyager. Then again, there is truth in Kirk’s comment on the bus in TVH about the “giants” of 20th century American literature: Writing that’s bad by accident (or by design), combined with high-spend marketing and, if possible, a movie deal, doth a bestseller make. As for self-deprecation, it would be a bit of coals to Newcastle in this venue, wouldn’t it?
No doubt, and any good writer will let his or her characters play -- but only on the playground as mapped in the structuring phase. Otherwise you end up with 5,000 wasted words, or 50,000. Nah. And even if yeah, who cares? The fun of self-deprecating humor, or any other kind, really, is that the teller finds the joke as amusing as he hopes his audience will.
Fair enough, but I never let it get that far. After at most a page and a half I can step back and say "WTF are you doing? Delete that shit!" Now, maybe that's because I used to write first drafts in long-hand, or maybe it's just a function of the fact that I *hear* the words before I see them, but it's how I roll. Agreed. So, pray, continue. [action=garamet]exits Stage Left...[/action]
Hold on now, no need to exit stage anywhere. Also because this statement of your poses an interesting question, and one a (comparable) youngster like Skin can't answer on the Smith Corona crowd's behalf: Do you find yourself doing less work in revision and rewrite than you imagine subsequent generations of writers do? In other words, does the easy out of "I can change that later" afforded by Word 2010, Atlantis Word Processor, Final Draft and the like strike you as something that will encourage laziness in initial composition? Maybe that's a topic for another thread -- or maybe it'd be better asked in "Ask Garamet." But if you'd rather, you can tackle it here, too.
Ah, I miss my Smith Corona. Great question, thanks! Unfortunately, I am the slowest writer on the planet. I rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite, and...rewrite. The only difference in my technique in making the transition from other means to computers is that I don't have to retype the entire page because one adjective in paragraph 3 is bugging me. So is it because I segued from long-hand to typing on a manual typewriter (the kind where you hit the Shift key with your pinkie and it literally lifts the entire carriage to get the upper part of the key, where the upper case letter is, to hit the paper) that was older than I was, then to a Selectric, then to a memory typewriter (it had a little LCD screen that scrolled out the letters as you typed, and could hold approximately 750 words in memory) to a word processor to a typewriter? Or am I mildly OCD about the sense of *permanence* of my words? I'm thinking it's probably the latter, because even after 15+ years of using computers, even with my agent and 99% of editors accepting digital mss., I will still print out what I consider the penultimate draft, edit the hard copy manually, and enter the changes for the final document. I guess that's just how I'm wired. Yeah, I've sat on panel discussions with other writers blah-blah-blahing about how they wrote this novel in a week but that one took 10 days because they had the flu, but I figure they're throwing clay pots; I'm trying to chip the statue out of the marble. I'd like to be able to work faster, but I haven't found the Easy Button. But, again, thanks for asking.
Is that why you've never posted excerpts from "Probe" or "Strangers From The Sky"? Just kidding. :kissandrun:
Good or bad, I wouldn't quote excerpts from either, since I don't own the copyright. But you're always free - literally - to ask me for a copy of Music of the Spheres.
