Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 11

[soph_cat]

In your own space, talk about your creative process(es) — anything from the initial inspiration to how you feel after something’s done. Do you struggle with motivation or is it a smooth process? Do you have any tricks up your sleeve to pull out when a fanwork isn’t cooperating? What is your level of planning to pantsing/winging it?

Great day to do this one! (I got about six ideas this morning and my brain won’t focus on the one I actually want to write…) I have two writing modes. One is “I have an idea and I must get it out before it kills me” mode, in which I can’t do anything until I’ve finished the damn story and it flows really fast. Being new-ish to a fandom tends to put me in this mode. The other is “pulling teeth” mode, which is how I’m currently writing most things - fighting them, and struggling through until they somehow (mostly) work.

I don’t have a consistent planning process. For some fics, I just put stuff onto the page till things stick. For others, especially longer ones, I do more planning and drafting. Mending Wall has involved lots of moving scenes around, for which Scrivener has been fantastic. If you write longer fics and you haven’t tried Scrivener, I recommend it. You can do miraculous things like shifting scenes around, putting them side-by-side on screen, duplicating scenes so that you can attempt a rewrite without losing the earlier form… It’s really great.

I do some planning in my Notebook of Doom too, since analogue writing sometimes gets the ideas flowing a bit better, for me - especially at the early stages. I’ve been listening to the podcast How Story Works over the past few months, and I’ve really got into the idea of setting goals for characters for every scene, and this works best as a quick snapshot on paper, for me.

I know that writing advice generally says just to get stuff down, and then to do all the work in rewriting phases, but that doesn’t usually lead to anything good, for me. I edit as I go (although I do also go back to rewrite and edit). Which makes me a slow writer, but it just leads to better writing, for me. Most of what I do involves playing with words until they work. I’m a poet masquerading as a prose writer. Which is also why I write little short things better than longer fics…

I’ve read a lot of advice that says to leave a story for some weeks between writing and editing. I wish I had that much patience! But there’s something to be said for giving things some space, so you can move from ‘writer mode’ to ‘reader mode’ and better see what might not work for readers. At this point I make lots and LOTS of comments. Scrivener is good for highlights and comments, but Google Docs is too. (I try to make comments from the beginning, too, since I don’t want to forget the random thoughts I’ve been having while drafting - they come in really useful for rewriting.) I’ve been trying out this tool called Pro Writing Aid on someone’s recommendation, and I don’t think I’ll end up paying for it, but it’s very handy for finding things I do all the time - like repeating words and phrases. (Oh god, my repeating phrases…) This is the stage where I try to fix all of that. And also try to ADD EMOTION. So that I can preempt 's thette 's comments to this effect.

Then we get to the beta reading stage, for which I usually transfer the fic into GDocs, if it’s not already there. I don’t usually need grammar etc help, but beta readers are so wonderful for highlighting sticky things in phrasing or the story that aren’t working (or are). Then some more redrafting based on beta’s comments, and it’s done! And if only it was this smooth and easy every time…
Notebook of Doom is doom-y. There are a lot of lists and categories. About EVERYTHING - from writing, to which days I need to do laundry. Even if I regularly forget to use it...

Comments

writing

[oldtoadwoman]

I can relate to both of your writing modes. Some stories just flow and some are a constant struggle and I'm not even sure why it's true.

I think there's almost an inverse relation to motivation. The more I want to write the story the harder it is and the more I'm just noodling around at the keyboard the more it flows.

Some of the easiest stories to write have been the ones that have started with a conversation that went, "No, I could never write for Fandom X. The canon is too huge and I don't think I could write any of the main characters. Like, the only way I could make it work is if I picked one of these minor characters and then maybe backed up and explained how he got in that situation before his first appearance on the show and..." and the next thing I knew the story was written. All of my "No, I could never write that because... of a list of reasons that I will now turn into a story" projects went smoothly. Meanwhile, all of my, "This should be super easy because it totally makes sense and I can picture it clearly" projects somehow end up being the headaches.

Re: writing

[soph_cat]

Hah, yes - I can relate to a lot of that. You're right that there's sometimes just something about a story where you think you can see it all clearly and it works in principle, and then you come to write it, and it just... goes nowhere. Whereas some things where I've thought "I have no idea what I'm doing" have been easy to write, just appearing on the page. It's the strangest thing.

[purpleyin]

Interesting to read about your process. I can relate to the "poet masquerading as a prose writer" because I started off writing poetry long before I did prose and I always get a bit worried it really shows in some of my works (I know some people like that but I get self-conscious of it because some people really don't). Thanks for linking to the podcast too, that looks pretty cool, will have to check it out.