Writing’s going well at the moment, which means that despite the dilemmas, I’m still getting words on the page.
Todays puzzle: New or old? When should I start a new story and when are my efforts best spent on an existing, but unfinished one? I went with the former option. In this case, the new story is a kind of sequel to the old one. I’m not yet sure that it was the right choice, but like I said, it’s still words on the page.
That’s the seduction of writing. Some sentences, scenes or whole stories seem to spring fully-formed from my head. It’s such a sweet release to let them out; that, for me, is the best bit.
But then there’s all the sentences, scenes and stories that aren’t so easily born. Unfortunately, they make the majority of writing, and they’ve just got to be written. Otherwise, all you have is a stack of half-written gobbets lying on the hard drive or stuffed into an expanding file, like diced meat on the chopping board, waiting for a stew. No one can eat that raw meat, and no one can read those unfinished stories.
As is often the case, Neil Gaiman reaches out through the magic of RSS to say that if what you are doing works, that’s fine. But if you’re not getting anything finished, then it’s not working. Fortunately, I have been getting things finished. So far, my work style is passing the Gaiman Test.
(Neil Gaiman is a cool dude. The posts on his journal are like cookies: you don’t always need what they have to offer but they are always welcome.)
The second best bit is polishing a piece, a paragraph or a preposition and seeing some shine. Sure, it’s not all shine. Hell: let’s be realistic. I’m surely still in that 9-year-old, “But why can’t I take the rocks out of the rock polisher now?” phase. But if it reflects a little light, if I see some illumination (never mind anyone else), then I’m happy.
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28 May 2008 at 11:20 pm
Rip Patton
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who has chopped meat fermenting on my hard-drive. Is there a test to see if a half-finished story has “gone bad” beyond use? Does it smell funny? Does it make you feel sick when you read it? And that dilemma of “starting fresh” or not wasting what you’ve already put so much effort into.
What’s the longest you’ve let something alone and then come back to finish it to your satisfaction? Just curious.
29 May 2008 at 7:43 am
Benjamin Carnys
Good questions. I’d like to see some refrigeration or freezing process that can preserve stories for later. Then, defrost in a microwave and it’s ready to work on again. But probably the best thing to do with rotten stories is compost them and use the resulting goop as fertiliser to enrich the next story.
I have some handwritten notes from about 5 years ago for an ongoing project — which in fact I’ve hardly started. In my defense, I’ve only recently started writing seriously again, but I fear that this one might still be a ‘composter’.