Post Pico December check in #3

[elmey.livejournal.com]

One more week has passed! Have you been writing, editing, hitting the panic button on your holiday stories?

Here's the post for your snippets, comments thoughts.

Check in any time during this week of busy schedules.

Comments

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Now that Christmas break is there, I hope to make some serious headway.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I'm working on it--if only I had another month or two :D It won't be the worst story in the bunch, but that alone doesn't make me happy.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Some stories are just not going to reach their full potential, I'm pretty terrible at dealing with other people's prompts!

[elmey.livejournal.com]

It'll be ok. It just won't be the pearl in my oeuvre ;)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Muses are nasty things, aren't they!!

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Daddy Long Legs! That's an interesting choice.

Holidays don't seem particularly conducive to writing, I'm surprised you've gotten this far.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the small fandom curse. You put as much if not more work into the stories but you pretty much have to settle for your own satisfaction and maybe one or two others'. There are no answers. What you've excerpted at pico is very very good though.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

Does your Mum sing too?

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I genuinely enjoyed the excerpts.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Earthsea used to be a lot less dead, but after years of banging the fandom drum I've accepted my parrot rescusitation skills have been inadequate.

I suspect from what others have said at Pico & elsewhere about writing original work for potential paying publication that it can be just as heartbreaking.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I re-read DLL in the summer, had a period of reading All the Things about it (and versions - gosh, the stage play is of its time, and yet contains some interesting lights on the characterisation), wrote a fic, and promptly moved on to something else.

I find holidays terrible for writing, because I want to spend time with people. I may get bits done, but it won't be a lot.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I certainly hope so! I shall treat it as rest and recuperation to gear me up for putting the effort in in January.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I warn you, I had the idea for this fic some time around 2006 :-) Disciplined for short periods and then it goes to hell sounds very familiar. Somehow this time I might actually be feeling I could be on the home straight, but the intervening period has had its longueurs...

The big advantage of finishing one novel would be finishing one novel

This I think is certainly true. My first (original) novel, was frankly crap. I suppose I learnt to keep going. I also learnt you can't polish a turd. And at greater remove I can see that it was doomed because I wasn't really interested in the central story, so much as the bits on the side, i.e. that you should probably pick which of the multiple plot threads you like best and not have that as the D plot. I think I've got that sorted better this time round, and with plot-lines that I'm actually interested in have learned more about handling them.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

She used to, but she no longer does actively so (unless doing it over the washing-up counts). She's almost 84, after all. But she has a very good ear, and she can tell you when something's off, even if she doesn't know the piece in question. I envy her for that.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I find it very hard to keep writing when feeling discouraged about my output, and being self-critical & very thin-skinned that's a lot of the time, sadly. (This Yuletide has been sheer hell on that front.)

My first (original) novel, was frankly crap. I suppose I learnt to keep going. I also learnt you can't polish a turd.

I do wonder whether the Nano idea of just writing a novel's length of crap and then polishing it up is at all viable. I can't imagine it working for me, but others do seem to swear by it.

And at greater remove I can see that it was doomed because I wasn't really interested in the central story, so much as the bits on the side, i.e. that you should probably pick which of the multiple plot threads you like best and not have that as the D plot. I think I've got that sorted better this time round, and with plot-lines that I'm actually interested in have learned more about handling them.

First finish a novel, however terrible it turns out to be, then work out why it isn't very good, then write one that works... I might be finished by my nineties, if I'm very lucky...