I've been meaning to comment on your writing difficulties, Peg, but I haven't been able to think of anything insightful to say.
I find that each new project I take on informs me how it wants to be written. Some books I've written have demanded careful, regular toil on a daily basis. Some have wanted to be worked on every few days for longer periods. Fanfic almost always wants daily attention, obsessive outlining and frequent rewrites. The book I'm writing now seems to want to be written in spurts. I'll go a long time (once it was three months) without working on it, but then when I come back to it I'll write a great deal in short order. After those three months, I came back and wrote fifty pages in three days.
My point is that you can't force your creativity to conform to some kind of meaningless external idea of how it ought to be behaving. Creativity is the ultimate rebellion against structure. It's organic, it flows, it waxes and wanes and takes its own sweet time. Maybe your ice palace book only wants you to keep it in your mind for now, and when it's ready to be written, it'll start tapping you on the shoulder and suggesting words and scenes and phrases into your mind.
People think writers sit down and create. But really, it's the work that finds us. It's amazing how little control we actually have over the process. Don't fault yourself. When it's time, it will come.
And now before I lapse into total Yodaspeak, can I ask you if you have a site where all your LotR icons are located? I'd love to gack a few.
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Date: 2004-03-27 11:40 pm (UTC)I find that each new project I take on informs me how it wants to be written. Some books I've written have demanded careful, regular toil on a daily basis. Some have wanted to be worked on every few days for longer periods. Fanfic almost always wants daily attention, obsessive outlining and frequent rewrites. The book I'm writing now seems to want to be written in spurts. I'll go a long time (once it was three months) without working on it, but then when I come back to it I'll write a great deal in short order. After those three months, I came back and wrote fifty pages in three days.
My point is that you can't force your creativity to conform to some kind of meaningless external idea of how it ought to be behaving. Creativity is the ultimate rebellion against structure. It's organic, it flows, it waxes and wanes and takes its own sweet time. Maybe your ice palace book only wants you to keep it in your mind for now, and when it's ready to be written, it'll start tapping you on the shoulder and suggesting words and scenes and phrases into your mind.
People think writers sit down and create. But really, it's the work that finds us. It's amazing how little control we actually have over the process. Don't fault yourself. When it's time, it will come.
And now before I lapse into total Yodaspeak, can I ask you if you have a site where all your LotR icons are located? I'd love to gack a few.