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[PUBLIC POST] Writing to clear my head
Mar. 31st, 2016 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwrites“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
- Winston S. Churchill
When I'm in the middle of a writing project I'm also in the middle of an obsession. Scenes and ideas from the project play in an endless loop in my head in different variations as I come up with new ideas and make adjustments to older ones. It's a pleasure, in a lot of ways, but often inconvenient; in the case of my current project I find myself in tears at the most inconvenient moments, like when I'm walking down the street. How would I explain that it's because I'm putting fictional characters through the wringer in my head?
The only thing that helps, I've found, is to write out those ideas into real scenes--not just fragmentary notes, but as part of a coherent story so I can stop gnawing on them like a dog with a bone. It's such a relief to get them out of my head and onto the page, not to mention a huge rush to write out something that's lived in my head for, sometimes, years.
Some ideas don't make it into writing, of coures, and some change, and sometimes an idea will make it more or less intact but the meaning and context will have changed completely in the meantime. It's all part of the process. Mostly, in my current case, I'd like to be able to go to work without welling up at random points. #DORK
How about you? How do you interact with your writing ideas at the planning and writing stages? Do you ever find them burdensome like I do?
(This post is presently open to the public, and will be taken private within a month.)
- Winston S. Churchill
When I'm in the middle of a writing project I'm also in the middle of an obsession. Scenes and ideas from the project play in an endless loop in my head in different variations as I come up with new ideas and make adjustments to older ones. It's a pleasure, in a lot of ways, but often inconvenient; in the case of my current project I find myself in tears at the most inconvenient moments, like when I'm walking down the street. How would I explain that it's because I'm putting fictional characters through the wringer in my head?
The only thing that helps, I've found, is to write out those ideas into real scenes--not just fragmentary notes, but as part of a coherent story so I can stop gnawing on them like a dog with a bone. It's such a relief to get them out of my head and onto the page, not to mention a huge rush to write out something that's lived in my head for, sometimes, years.
Some ideas don't make it into writing, of coures, and some change, and sometimes an idea will make it more or less intact but the meaning and context will have changed completely in the meantime. It's all part of the process. Mostly, in my current case, I'd like to be able to go to work without welling up at random points. #DORK
How about you? How do you interact with your writing ideas at the planning and writing stages? Do you ever find them burdensome like I do?
(This post is presently open to the public, and will be taken private within a month.)
