Thanks to the gods of communications who decreed that fixing my landline = breaking my adsl I am without Internet at home and can only get online via the iPhone (have I mentioned how much I love my iPhone?)
So I'll be tweeting a bit and checking emails but otherwise scarce as things like blogging are tricky on teeny screen. Plus I can't update my template on the phone so here's the latest wordcount....45k!!! Yay that is hopefully over half way of first draft page count! Aiming to get to 50k by tomorrow night which should be doable given have less ways to procrastinate with no Internet on the computer!
More when I'm back in the land of the wired.
Showing posts with label argh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label argh. Show all posts
March 13, 2010
May 09, 2009
Out of order
I've talked before about the fact that I'm generally a pantser and a little bit about the fact that I can write out of order (aka when I'm stuck on a scene the easiest remedy for me is generally to jump ahead to the next part I "know" in the book). When it comes to writing, everyone does it differently and while your process will morph a little over time and yes, vary from book to book, I tend to be in the camp of you've got to learn to work with the hand you're given. Which means trying to accept your process whatever it is and also working with the stories/themes/ideas that your brain is going to want you to write (I have a perfect genius for coming up with plot elements that involve complicated stuff I know nothing about).
The last six months or so have hardly been a gushing well of productivity, writing wise for me. More than the writing of scenes has been out of order. I have written nothing like my usual output and what I have written, apart from the odd random burst, has been completely painful and felt lame and flat and boring with every word. I've kept trying to write but it was hard. And it's not something that's easy to talk about. Saying "the words won't co-operate" feels lame. After all, aren't they just words? How hard is it to sit in front of a keyboard and wriggle your fingers? And also feels like you're tempting fate for more of the same. But not talking about it doesn't help. It just makes you think that you're the only one with the problem. I've done a few classes that deal with keeping creativity flowing (most with Barbara-the-goddess) and I know that sharing with others this stuff is a good thing. So maybe someone will read this and feel better.
I know some of the reasons for being blocked. I don't know all of it. And I don't know why this was the week that I was finally able to push through and put my foot down and start making progress again. Because I'm not published, I've had the luxury of being able to pull back a little and sew and do other things to try and refill the well. I'm well aware that if I was facing deadlines, I would've had to suck it up and crack the whip on myself long before this point and fill the pages with writing that felt as comfortable as walking over broken glass. In a way, I'm lucky this has happened before then, so if it happens again I can try some of the stuff that's helped this time. I know my process well enough now to know that I always have a bit of a slow patch after I finish a book and another in December/January. I know how to work with those. Working my way through a longer spell when I couldn't really pinpoint why has been hard. I know I feel better when I write. The books were talking in bits and snippets in my head but I just couldn't get it down on paper consistently. Which makes me cranky and makes me feel guilty and stressed and that's hardly a recipe for happy writing or happy Mel.
Because I have been writing in snippets and bursts, a lot of the work I've done this week on Witch 2 has been stitching those snippets I'd managed to put together. Inevitably when I leap ahead, I'll write something in the scene that changes something or tells me something that lets me go back and fill in the gaps. Sometimes it's not in the scene itself, it's just that the girls finally let me in on the secret when I'm not trying to force them to give up the info I need. It's a handy technique but I'm not sure it's any faster in the end. Amongst my crit buddies there are plotter and pantsers and those like me who grudgingly write down very vague snippets of outlines when they get stuck after pantsing for a bit. Some of us write fast messy first drafts and then spend a lot of time revising and really changing the story around. Some of us can't move on to the next bit until they've got the piece they're working on right and get to the end of the book more slowly but with something pretty clean. Some of us write first drafts where the story structure is there but there's a lot of laying and tweaking needed. We all get there in the end and we all whine equally about our individual processes. We all forget that our way is our way and try and fight it or forget how to work with our processes at times.
Like I said, I'm a jump around all over the place kind of writer (even though when I'm motoring things become more linear, then again, when I'm motoring that means the girls are co-operating and I'm not getting stuck). But even though I'm used to this, I still don't get it right all the time. Like today when I sat down and re-read a little of what I'd written yesterday, I realised that I'd added something to an earlier scene where my heroine finds out something that another characters has done which confuses her and somewhat pisses her off. Yesterday I'd worked on the scene where she next sees that other character (with a gap of maybe two hours) and yet had completely failed to work in anything that dealt with with her anger and confusion. *head desk*. I think that a lot people think that writers just sit down and brilliance flows from their fingertips over a couple of days and a book is born. As a writer I know this isn't the case but it's still hard not to think that this is how it works for everyone else for me when I'm struggling. There is a point somewhere in this long rambling post. Writing is hard work. It can drive you a little nutty. But even in the bad times it's still what I spend hours thinking about and doing and what I need and what brings me more pleasure than most other things in the world. Writing is hard. That's why God invented chocolate. (Which is a whole 'nother post about balance and how out of whack my exercise and eating routine is right now.....)
The last six months or so have hardly been a gushing well of productivity, writing wise for me. More than the writing of scenes has been out of order. I have written nothing like my usual output and what I have written, apart from the odd random burst, has been completely painful and felt lame and flat and boring with every word. I've kept trying to write but it was hard. And it's not something that's easy to talk about. Saying "the words won't co-operate" feels lame. After all, aren't they just words? How hard is it to sit in front of a keyboard and wriggle your fingers? And also feels like you're tempting fate for more of the same. But not talking about it doesn't help. It just makes you think that you're the only one with the problem. I've done a few classes that deal with keeping creativity flowing (most with Barbara-the-goddess) and I know that sharing with others this stuff is a good thing. So maybe someone will read this and feel better.
I know some of the reasons for being blocked. I don't know all of it. And I don't know why this was the week that I was finally able to push through and put my foot down and start making progress again. Because I'm not published, I've had the luxury of being able to pull back a little and sew and do other things to try and refill the well. I'm well aware that if I was facing deadlines, I would've had to suck it up and crack the whip on myself long before this point and fill the pages with writing that felt as comfortable as walking over broken glass. In a way, I'm lucky this has happened before then, so if it happens again I can try some of the stuff that's helped this time. I know my process well enough now to know that I always have a bit of a slow patch after I finish a book and another in December/January. I know how to work with those. Working my way through a longer spell when I couldn't really pinpoint why has been hard. I know I feel better when I write. The books were talking in bits and snippets in my head but I just couldn't get it down on paper consistently. Which makes me cranky and makes me feel guilty and stressed and that's hardly a recipe for happy writing or happy Mel.
Because I have been writing in snippets and bursts, a lot of the work I've done this week on Witch 2 has been stitching those snippets I'd managed to put together. Inevitably when I leap ahead, I'll write something in the scene that changes something or tells me something that lets me go back and fill in the gaps. Sometimes it's not in the scene itself, it's just that the girls finally let me in on the secret when I'm not trying to force them to give up the info I need. It's a handy technique but I'm not sure it's any faster in the end. Amongst my crit buddies there are plotter and pantsers and those like me who grudgingly write down very vague snippets of outlines when they get stuck after pantsing for a bit. Some of us write fast messy first drafts and then spend a lot of time revising and really changing the story around. Some of us can't move on to the next bit until they've got the piece they're working on right and get to the end of the book more slowly but with something pretty clean. Some of us write first drafts where the story structure is there but there's a lot of laying and tweaking needed. We all get there in the end and we all whine equally about our individual processes. We all forget that our way is our way and try and fight it or forget how to work with our processes at times.
Like I said, I'm a jump around all over the place kind of writer (even though when I'm motoring things become more linear, then again, when I'm motoring that means the girls are co-operating and I'm not getting stuck). But even though I'm used to this, I still don't get it right all the time. Like today when I sat down and re-read a little of what I'd written yesterday, I realised that I'd added something to an earlier scene where my heroine finds out something that another characters has done which confuses her and somewhat pisses her off. Yesterday I'd worked on the scene where she next sees that other character (with a gap of maybe two hours) and yet had completely failed to work in anything that dealt with with her anger and confusion. *head desk*. I think that a lot people think that writers just sit down and brilliance flows from their fingertips over a couple of days and a book is born. As a writer I know this isn't the case but it's still hard not to think that this is how it works for everyone else for me when I'm struggling. There is a point somewhere in this long rambling post. Writing is hard work. It can drive you a little nutty. But even in the bad times it's still what I spend hours thinking about and doing and what I need and what brings me more pleasure than most other things in the world. Writing is hard. That's why God invented chocolate. (Which is a whole 'nother post about balance and how out of whack my exercise and eating routine is right now.....)
January 19, 2008
A minor concert going rant
Okay, so the rain cleared up for most of the concert (thank you weather gods), Jon Bon Jovi is, as a given, hot, hot, hot to the nth degree and the boys were obviously working their hearts out and putting on a damn good show. They even did Shout by Johnny O'Keefe and a tres sexy version of Twist and Shout (mainly due to the aforementioned hotness of Jon twisting his little butt). However I have two quibbles with the whole thing...
1. It wasn't LOUD!!! WTF???
I don't know about you but when I got to see a unashamed, good old ROCK band, I want LOUD music. I want bass that vibrates through your chest and drums that, to quote Bono, feel like they're giving you a good kicking and general wild and crazy noise. Maybe it's a hangover from the fact I grew up playing in 40+ person concert bands and love, love, love that feeling of being absolutely inside the music but I want to feel surrounded by music at a concert. I want it to kind of take me over. Which, for anything rockish, also means VOLUME. This was not volume (well, maybe for the 10% of the crowd in the front reserved seats but not for the other 18,000 or so in the general admission on the hill), this was "gosh, I've regularly heard louder music in my living room with my stereo blasting" and honestly, my stereo is teeny. Gah. Truly, I'm not exaggerating to say that the Bon Jovi in my car on the way home seemed louder.
All I can think was that they were put under a decibel limit because of the tennis (Screw the tennis, they can shut the freaking roof, after all, it was freaking raining, give me my loud rock and roll). And if that was the reason then WHY THE HELL was the concert held at the music bowl when there was a perfectly good empty stadium across town far away from the delicate ears of the tennis prima donnas??? Don't try and tell me Bon Jovi can't sell out a reasonably sized stadium when they haven't toured here for five years. I am baffled by the minds of the concert promoters at this point. Why put a band like Bon Jovi in a venue where they are effectively muzzled? I mean, even at Carols by Candlelight there are extra speakers around the venue but tonight, nope. Not one. I know extra speakers screw with the mix but more on that later.
The other problem with lack of loud is that you lose the crowd energy as well. Which then zaps the general live music experience. Sure there were some songs that went off but given Jon is a showman, the band are great and they didn't play one song I didn't know (and I don't call myself a diehard Bon Jovi fan ie don't own all their albums) the crowd should've been in much more of a frenzy than they were (which is the other part of concert going I love, the crowd vibe) for much more of the time. Having been to many concerts where the crowd has been worked to a fever pitch and kept there, I can tell you, this wasn't that. It hit it now and then but didn't stay there.
Which brings me to the next quibble.
2. The mix was TERRIBLE in the general admission area. So terrible that the only correct technical term for it is (and look away now, I'm about to use language I don't normally use on my blog) MUDDY AS FRAK (there, I substituted the BSG synonym to save all our sensibilities). I mean, I've never been to an outdoor concert with a fabulous mix, it's too hard to achieve. But I have been to concerts with decent mixes. This was not one. When you employ the time honoured method of sticking your fingers in your ears to cut out the echoes and feedback and interference and the vocal still doesn't come clear then there's something wrong. I mean, at times, combined with the volume problem, until the crowd starting singing, you couldn't tell what the damned song was.
Thankfully the mix did seem to come good for the last three or four songs of the encore ( I don't know, maybe the wind shifted or something - not that it was terribly windy). And, thankfully, said encore included a beautiful version of Hallelujah, which is one of my all-time favourite songs by anyone and made up for them not doing Bed of Roses which is my favourite Bon Jovi song and generally saved me from feeling that $130 was a frakkin lot to pay for middling volume blurry Bon Jovi in the rain. Of course, if only Hallelujah had been a bit LOUDER it would've gone from beautiful to spine tingling as you could see from the screens that Jon was singing his heart out and mostly hear it but it lacked the full impact those down the front would've gotten. And once again, when 90% or so of your audience is in general admission up the back you need a mix that works for everyone.
Here endeth the rant. I would definitely go see them again. Just not at the Myer Music Bowl. In fact, getting me to see anything vaguely rocky at the Music Bowl is highly unlikely unless it's U2 and they're not playing anywhere else or unless someone gets me reserved seating (and pays the ridiculous reserved seating ticket price for me). Bah humbug.
1. It wasn't LOUD!!! WTF???
I don't know about you but when I got to see a unashamed, good old ROCK band, I want LOUD music. I want bass that vibrates through your chest and drums that, to quote Bono, feel like they're giving you a good kicking and general wild and crazy noise. Maybe it's a hangover from the fact I grew up playing in 40+ person concert bands and love, love, love that feeling of being absolutely inside the music but I want to feel surrounded by music at a concert. I want it to kind of take me over. Which, for anything rockish, also means VOLUME. This was not volume (well, maybe for the 10% of the crowd in the front reserved seats but not for the other 18,000 or so in the general admission on the hill), this was "gosh, I've regularly heard louder music in my living room with my stereo blasting" and honestly, my stereo is teeny. Gah. Truly, I'm not exaggerating to say that the Bon Jovi in my car on the way home seemed louder.
All I can think was that they were put under a decibel limit because of the tennis (Screw the tennis, they can shut the freaking roof, after all, it was freaking raining, give me my loud rock and roll). And if that was the reason then WHY THE HELL was the concert held at the music bowl when there was a perfectly good empty stadium across town far away from the delicate ears of the tennis prima donnas??? Don't try and tell me Bon Jovi can't sell out a reasonably sized stadium when they haven't toured here for five years. I am baffled by the minds of the concert promoters at this point. Why put a band like Bon Jovi in a venue where they are effectively muzzled? I mean, even at Carols by Candlelight there are extra speakers around the venue but tonight, nope. Not one. I know extra speakers screw with the mix but more on that later.
The other problem with lack of loud is that you lose the crowd energy as well. Which then zaps the general live music experience. Sure there were some songs that went off but given Jon is a showman, the band are great and they didn't play one song I didn't know (and I don't call myself a diehard Bon Jovi fan ie don't own all their albums) the crowd should've been in much more of a frenzy than they were (which is the other part of concert going I love, the crowd vibe) for much more of the time. Having been to many concerts where the crowd has been worked to a fever pitch and kept there, I can tell you, this wasn't that. It hit it now and then but didn't stay there.
Which brings me to the next quibble.
2. The mix was TERRIBLE in the general admission area. So terrible that the only correct technical term for it is (and look away now, I'm about to use language I don't normally use on my blog) MUDDY AS FRAK (there, I substituted the BSG synonym to save all our sensibilities). I mean, I've never been to an outdoor concert with a fabulous mix, it's too hard to achieve. But I have been to concerts with decent mixes. This was not one. When you employ the time honoured method of sticking your fingers in your ears to cut out the echoes and feedback and interference and the vocal still doesn't come clear then there's something wrong. I mean, at times, combined with the volume problem, until the crowd starting singing, you couldn't tell what the damned song was.
Thankfully the mix did seem to come good for the last three or four songs of the encore ( I don't know, maybe the wind shifted or something - not that it was terribly windy). And, thankfully, said encore included a beautiful version of Hallelujah, which is one of my all-time favourite songs by anyone and made up for them not doing Bed of Roses which is my favourite Bon Jovi song and generally saved me from feeling that $130 was a frakkin lot to pay for middling volume blurry Bon Jovi in the rain. Of course, if only Hallelujah had been a bit LOUDER it would've gone from beautiful to spine tingling as you could see from the screens that Jon was singing his heart out and mostly hear it but it lacked the full impact those down the front would've gotten. And once again, when 90% or so of your audience is in general admission up the back you need a mix that works for everyone.
Here endeth the rant. I would definitely go see them again. Just not at the Myer Music Bowl. In fact, getting me to see anything vaguely rocky at the Music Bowl is highly unlikely unless it's U2 and they're not playing anywhere else or unless someone gets me reserved seating (and pays the ridiculous reserved seating ticket price for me). Bah humbug.
June 17, 2007
Frustration
So up until 4pm today, this had not been a good writing weekend. A couple of pages eeked out like yanking teeth from my head with pliers on Friday. Nothing really yesterday, which is okay given it was Lulus. Today I sat down at the computer about six times this morning and the fingers wouldn't move on the keys. Ditto this afternoon. When you're sitting at 311 pages out of 360, that's pretty darn frustrating. Usually the end of the book picks up speed for me. But nope, missy muse and friends were not playing.
Until 4pm. At 4pm, they suddenly went yeehah, let's go. Since then I've written thirty pages. With an hour off for Grey's anatomy and another half hour or so for dinner. Plus a bit of emailing. So now I'm sitting at 341 pages, 19 pages or so to go...just starting the big climax scene and then I have two or so aftermath scenes to finish. Maybe more than nineteen pages but there's no way I can keep typing much longer today. I have to work tomorrow and my brain is getting fried. If this is full of typos, then that's why. But I can feel the story boiling inside my head, just waiting. I haven't had that sensation for most of this book. I'm pretty sure if the muse has just decided to wake up a few hours earlier, I might have finished this sucker today. Instead now I have to go to bed and hope it keeps flowing tomorrow.
For a writer, well, for me, this is one of the most frustrating feelings I know, being so close to the end, with everything working and not being able to just keep going. Thirty pages is a LOT in one day. The most I've ever written was 32 and that was starting a lot earlier in the day than 4pm. So argh. But yay, the end is sight.
And did I mention argh????
Until 4pm. At 4pm, they suddenly went yeehah, let's go. Since then I've written thirty pages. With an hour off for Grey's anatomy and another half hour or so for dinner. Plus a bit of emailing. So now I'm sitting at 341 pages, 19 pages or so to go...just starting the big climax scene and then I have two or so aftermath scenes to finish. Maybe more than nineteen pages but there's no way I can keep typing much longer today. I have to work tomorrow and my brain is getting fried. If this is full of typos, then that's why. But I can feel the story boiling inside my head, just waiting. I haven't had that sensation for most of this book. I'm pretty sure if the muse has just decided to wake up a few hours earlier, I might have finished this sucker today. Instead now I have to go to bed and hope it keeps flowing tomorrow.
For a writer, well, for me, this is one of the most frustrating feelings I know, being so close to the end, with everything working and not being able to just keep going. Thirty pages is a LOT in one day. The most I've ever written was 32 and that was starting a lot earlier in the day than 4pm. So argh. But yay, the end is sight.
And did I mention argh????
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)