Tag: writing is hard

Dets- the sneak peek was AWESOME. (I want to simultaneously hug and hi-5 Orla now.) And I just have to ask- do you have any advice on how to handle the drain of energy and motivation to create that seems to come hand in hand with a full time job? I do have time to draw or write every day but I can never quite muster up the energy or motivation to do it once I get home from work. Any pro tips? (Pls publish, I think it’s quite a common problem)

Awwww, thanks! Orla has her own Opinions, and isn’t up for being a sacrificial lamb (as the common trope goes)! She’d totally go for a high-five 🙂

Arrrgh, Rippy – this is exactly my problem. I am not sure if I have ANY advice worth following, as balancing my very busy, exhausting job with my family obligations AND the onus to write is something I struggle with, all the time.

I come home from work knackered, and still have to be a mum. Even when the Dwarfling is in bed I am often just too tired (or I have too much lesson planning and prep) to even consider knuckling down and writing at all. 

So idk. If I have anything relevant to add to this, it is maybe to keep thinking about your writing, even when you don’t have the spoons or energy to actually do it.  I’d appreciate any thoughts from others in a similar boat, frankly. I’d really like to find a better way myself. 

Sorry I can’t be more help, Rippy 😦

im also drunk and i also love you!!! and i think you should do what YOU want with the chapter and fuck anyone who says else. i love your writing n your music and youre great and awesome!! i love the sneak peek n im looking forward to orla n thorin stonehelm n gimli being wonderful and eloquent and smart and blowing thranduils small mind!!! i love you!!

Thank you, Nonnie *hugs* I’m just a bit irritated atm. I keep getting pushy ‘suggestions’ in my inbox about what I “should” write, and I’m over it. It’s been happening for months. MONTHS. Totally sucks the wind out of my sails.

I’m glad you like it! Awwwwww, and I love you back – have a FAB night, have a drink for me! *raises glass* Cheers!

Hey! I was just wondering, you wonderful, beautiful, and downright inspiring person, what are your favorite books (including fanfic)? I really adore your writing, and in order to become a great writer and hopefully become like you someday, I’ve got to read like a madwoman!! Thank you!! *hugs* (P.S. If you don’t have the time, what about favorite writing tips?)

omg okay, this is actually – both of these are really hard to answer, for me! 

Here’s all my fic recs for LOTR (Gigolas and Bagginshield). 

It’s easier for me to name authors, rather than books. Because I tend to fall in love with the way a person writes, as well as the story they tell, and the two become conflated in my weird head somehow 🙂

Notable fanfic authors whose works I ADORE include @elenothar, @scarletjedi, @poplitealqueen, @emilianadarling, @culumacilinte, @yubiwamonogatari, @salviag, @themarchrabbit, @bgtea, @alkjira, @avelera, @lindzz, @notanightlight, @diemarysues, @urbanspaceman, @bigmamag – and honestly this is only the tinest and most partial list, bc there are so SO many wonderful authors and works out there.

On AO3, I adore icarus-chained, enigmaticblue (THIS AUTHOR IS MY FAVE SCIENCE BROS/DR PEPPERONY AUTHOR), thehoyden, keelywolfe, astolat, winterhill, rageprufrock, waldorph, versaphile, and ohhelpme so many more.

Published authors include Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Ursula Le Guin, Diana Wynne Jones, Guy Gavriel Kay, John Birmingham (read Leviathan if you want to see how history and people shape a place, and vice versa), Jasper Fforde, Robin Hobb, China Mieville, TE White, CS Lewis (OF COURSE), Ben Elton, Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Christopher Koch (Highways to a War was a formative read for me), GRRM, Vikram Seth, Alexandre Dumas, Joseph Heller, Spike Milligan, Agatha Christie, HG Wells, Gregory David Roberts…

… I have a LOT of books. A LOT of books. My house doesn’t need insulation: every room is covered in bookshelves, basically! I’ve chosen mostly fantasty/sci fi authors here, assuming that that is what you are into, Nonnie. 

Poets I love: Edna St Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney.

eep Nonnie, I am occasionally asked for advice, but tbh I don’t feel like I am up to the challenge. I try to rise to the occasion, but I feel that advice is an odd sort of beast: sometimes a tip from a reputed writerly-type source will work for you, and sometimes it doesn’t. I suspect it is because we are all different people, with different minds and ways of succeeding. So idk, maybe try them all out: read all the advice out there, there are so many blogs, so many forums. I read the advice sometimes too, and sometimes it is the opposite of helpful for me – but sometimes it is great. 

So, there we go, a list of awesome authors for you! But this is a tiny, tiny drop in the ocean of all the work out there. I began hiding in the school library during lunchtimes when I was 8 years old, and I think I left a part of me there – or found it, pressed amongst all those pages.

(1/?) Since I just finished the most glorious fic of our fandom, and am now in awe of your glory, I have questions about your editing process, if you don’t mind; My dream is to be a published novelist, and I am so curious…! So, if I may ask…?

(2/?) How do you like to edit your works? Chapter by chapter, scene by scene, entire work by entire work? Is it all on the computer, or do you print it out and red-pen it up? Do you let other people beta-read, or is it just you aiming for perfection?

(¾) Sorry if that’s so much, and you don’t have to answer, but the editing process is one that has been a serious struggle for me, and one that most authors seem kind of secretive about… But your works are a joy to read and a great inspiration, 

(4/4) that I would be foolish not to ask to pick your brain a little. In the meantime, thank you so much for everything you’ve done and written! I hope things are going well for you, your dwarfling is healthy, and your muse never fails! ♡

Hey Nonnie!

Awerhwlkejhfglsjhdfs honestly!! *fans face* that is super nice of you to say, thank you SO much, aaaaah

I think that is a wonderful dream. Go for it, with all your heart and all my love and encouragement. 

Okay, well, bear in mind that this is all very subjective!

I do edit A LOT. I am constantly editing, frankly. There is a little bit of everything: sometimes a sentence or a single line of dialogue needs revising, and sometimes a whole scene needs re-writing. It’s not that it is BAD, per se, it is just that perhaps it isn’t adding anything. Or perhaps it is just clumsy, and so rewriting it will refine and distil it.

I do try to “zoom out” on occasion and look at the work as a whole, trying to find the weakest sections. I know I am not impartial when it comes to this, so it can sometimes be a challenge. I feel this is probably my weakest editing skill. 

My strongest editing skill is most likely polishing scene by scene. It is sort of like music to me, or art, in that every scene has a sort of… shape, like a flow or a contour. I often think of the shapes of musical phrases, or like, musical structures, for instance. I build them up, remove the ones that interrupt the pace and the flow, re-write the ones that feel like they don’t belong. To me, every scene has to have a point to it, even a short scene. It has to have a reason. Otherwise why are we looking at it? So everything has to fit that shape, that contour. If it deviates, it has to have a REASON to do so. So, if a scene is a slow-building tension before a fight between two friends, and then there is a joke of some sort? That joke diffuses the tension. Why? For me, it would be in order to begin building it again, even higher than before. The joke gives the reader a moment to breathe and relax after all that tension – and then I can ramp it up even more, because the breather means that they have the stamina to come with me.

When editing and re-reading, if I can’t point to a scene and say: “the reason for this scene is [character development/plot advancement/relationship development],” then it doesn’t have a point, and it is time to go back to the drawing board.

I don’t really have a beta-reader. Sometimes one or two friends will be kind enough to look over a draft for me, to check for mood and pacing and stuff – and to reassure me that it isn’t a steaming pile of donkey-doo! But mostly it is me chipping away at it on my own. That’s okay, though: I don’t think there’s a wrong way to do this bit. As long as it is edited.

I don’t print it and red-pen. I do a LOT of highlighting on the word document, and I keep a notebook by the computer for ideas, character tidbits, snippets of dialogue that might get orphaned, etc. 

I do read scenes aloud on occasion, to see if it builds properly, if the shape of it is as I hope it is. I also try reading the dialogue alone, without the description/exposition that may now and then happen between lines of dialogue, to hear whether it works as a play would. (Playwriting is honestly an amazing way of learning to condense a LOT of meaning into dialogue ALONE. Reading and performing plays has made me a better writer, I stg.)

Sometimes I look at timing in my scenes or in a chapter, and go URGH. That is when I start to think, “all right – break it down into CAMERA SHOTS.” This helps find the pace of it. For instance, I am not intimidated by battle scenes, because I control the camera. I can remove half the ‘takes’ later on, if they’re not helping. But just having them to begin with will give my battle-scene more space and more life and fullness, rather than simply describing blow after blow after blow.

I edit as I write. I edit after I’ve written two sentences. I edit after I’ve written a paragraph. I edit after I’ve written a whole scene. I edit after I’ve written a chapter. I edit after I’ve posted a chapter. I edit a previous chapter after I’ve tweaked the last one I posted. I edit like a madwoman. 

Very often, the editing starts the words coming out again in a faster current, and I have the impetus/inspiration to add a bit more to the end of the work. And off I go again, editing furiously 🙂

This strategy might not help you, though. Some folks do better to write while the words are coming, and edit when they’re finished. No way is right, no way is wrong! 

culturalrebel:

bistiles:

today is fanfiction writer’s appreciation day, and I thought about what I wanted to do for today, but I decided that the best thing I could is this.

here’s for the writers that didn’t receive any asks today

here’s for the writers that didn’t make any appreciation list

here’s for the writers that weren’t mentioned anywhere

here’s for the writers that aren’t popular

here’s for the writers whose fics are never rec’ed

here’s for the writers whose fics have a low kudo/commenting rate

here’s for the writers that don’t get reblogs/likes

here’s for the writers that abandon their work half way because they think it sucks (spoiler: it does not)

here’s for the writers that were bashed for whatever they wrote

here’s for the writers that feel like giving up 

here’s for the writers that feel anxious when they post a fic

here’s for the writers that struggle to write

here’s for the writers that never publish anything

here’s for all writers. No matter who they are, what fandom, what ship: you guys are amazing and you make fandom a better place. 

Keep writing.

@determamfidd

TBH I’m at the point where it is sometimes difficult to write LOTR fic because I have to sit back and ask myself “Wait, is that character canon or are they a determamfidd OC?” See also: Vili, Hrera, Mizim, and various other assorted parents and spouses. And then I have to COME UP WITH my own OCs and they’re never as cool as yours.

YES THEY ARE – THEY ARE ENTIRELY AS COOL AS ANY ONE OF MINE, they are, promise and cross my heart, bc they came from your mind and imagination and love, and every character that comes from that place is 1000% amazing

(sorry if mine tend to be a bit on the pushy side…! I believe that ‘Vili’ has become a sort of fandom-wide accepted name, though 😀 )

The merit of your writing.

bead-bead:

awfullythick:

starlinghawke:

thatgirl-who:

So, you’ve read something that has resonated with you. It’s everything you’ve wanted in terms of characters, prose, plot and pace. It’s the best you’ve read in years. You reread your favourite lines. You have to take a break just to absorb every meticulously crafted line. You are in awe of how something so small can seem to take up so much space.

And in a perfect world, it would inspire you to go out and create. To work on that story that is languishing in your save files, to pick up that WIP you abandoned, to make you want to write something different and new and better. 

Instead, it makes you feel inferior. The words are too good. You could never write like that. The characters are too perfect. You don’t have that insight. The story is too captivating. Your ideas are boring, cliche, plain. The insight is remarkable. You can barely string a thought together coherently. 

Why even bother, you think.

Don’t fall into that trap. I have been there so many times. I have abandoned writing for years because of “why even bother”. I have let it destroy my confidence, only to patch it back up in a cheap imitation of what it once was, just to let it invade my thoughts again. I have questioned every thing I’ve written, every choice, every line, because why even bother if someone is so much better. 

YOUR WRITING HAS MERIT. What you don’t realize is that it’s not in terms of better, but different. Different style, different story, different interpretation, different mind.

Someone out there will love the way you describe the night sky in poetry. Someone out there will love the way you describe the look on someone’s face when their heart breaks. Someone out there will love your idea, that strange one that seems impossible or already done, because it’s new and exciting or they love endless amounts of that same story. Someone out there will love your interpretation of that character, whether more gentle or bitter or broken or healed. Someone out there will love the words you write, the grandiose use of adverbs (my guilt) or the minimal scattering of dialogue. Someone out there will love your abundance or lack of something you saw in that story you so loved, the one that rendered you speechless and snuffed out your fire. 

Someone out there will love your words. And you need to share them. 

Speaking as a writer, no one sets out to create something to discourage others. No one wants to dominate their corner and be the only one there. No one wants to be alone in their craft. If they do, they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Speaking as a writer, I would never want you to read my writing and think, why bother. 

I want you to think, why bother waiting?

Your story matters. Your writing matters. It’s beautiful and defined and gorgeous and a work in progress and growing and already there and insightful and mysterious: it all has merit. 

Never stop. Never stop writing and practicing and doing and creating and learning and loving the words you weave.

You may think someone has done it more beautifully or better or too many times or never because who wants to read it? 

They maybe have done all those things, but they lack one thing: they haven’t done it like you have.

Thank you, I needed this.

One thing that helps me get over this is to go back and re-read my own fics. Usually not the newer ones, but the older ones, where I’ve forgotten the exact gist of the story and no longer have a really strong impression of what I wanted that story to be (and thus a strong impression of how short it fell once it actually existed) to get in my way. Nothing makes me want to write more than going “wow, I wrote this, and it’s pretty decent!” about fics I wrote a year or more ago.

Comparing myself to other writers is a very, very bad idea. Enjoying my own past fics, while at the same time thinking about the ways I would improve on them if I were to write them now, is typically pretty inspiring.

Thank you, thank you. I needed this, too.