Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Humpity II.

Two posts in one day?? InconCEIVABLE.

So Ferfe has commented on a post at Boxing the Octopus. And while I'm not necessarily all about theme and subtext in my day-to-day writing -- which is not to say I never consider it, just that I don't obsess over it -- I do think what Ferfe has to say about voice and building characters that breathe rather than cutting out paper dolls is spot on.

Also, my process is fairly torturous (PBW? If you're out there? You might want to look away at this point.) in that I pick apart and rewrite every phrase, sentence, paragraph and scene until it portrays exactly what I want it to portray, as deeply in the characters' voices and heads as I can possibly get. Which means I'm slow. VERY slow. But when I'm done, I have a complete work that may need editorial revisions, but never full rewriting.

So whilst the "just write" thing might work for some, it leaves me thoroughly unfulfilled. And since I'm doing this as much for the serotonin rush caused by accessing the creative parts of my brain as anything else, I guess I'll keep doing it my way, which is apparently the exact definition of "trying too hard."

SelahMarch.com - Romance of Dubious Virtue

3Comments:

Blogger Imp said...

"Just write" doesn't work for me, either. My words are the only shred of control I have left and, damn it, I'm gonna cling to those vestiges.

12/05/2007 9:11 PM  
Blogger Barbara Caridad Ferrer said...

Make me feel like a loser, why dontcha? says the mostly "just write" girl who's in the midst of the closest thing to a rewrite she's ever done?

*headdesk*

:-P

12/05/2007 11:02 PM  
Blogger Eva Gale said...

I think I spoke too soon on Ferfe's blog about these and subtext. For me, that comes later. But it's something I think about all throughout. So that when I go back in, I strengthen it as I tweak. When my chapters hit your e-mail, they're mostly the way I want them. But even months later, as I re read here and there I'll change words around. But I never just write. I turn the scene around in my head and try to visualize exactly where it's going to go.

You know, after I posted that yesterday I realized there's a lot to my method that I do because it's my process and I'm not all to conscious about it. And that when I do talk about it-I miss a lot.

For me, my reasoning is that I don't WANT to delete pages and pages -so I do as much thinking about it beforehand as possible.

12/06/2007 10:03 AM  

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