Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Oh Wow! This is Turning out Worse than I thought

Written on May 28, 2018.  After about 5 days of struggling with this.

Okay, so I'm about 5 days into this, and I'm both enjoying it and finding it incredibly frustrating.
I'm enjoying being able to retreat into a world of Fantasy for 15 minutes every day.
(I've been making a point to work on this for about 15 minutes every day, even on days when I'm really busy.  The reason is that I know from past experiences that the momentum of these things will dry up pretty quick if you don't keep working on it.  I have a large file full of unfinished stories that I just lost enthusiasm for because I didn't keep my momentum up.)

But, I'm also finding that my writing is terrible.  The dialogue, the character descriptions... all terrible.
In the past, I've let this frustration stop me from writing.  This time, I want to keep forging on ahead.  (I believe this is somewhat therapeutic for me.)

But... just in case anyone else is reading this, let me just say:
I know it's bad.  I'm sorry.  I know I'm not talented.  I didn't make it bad on purpose, I'm just a person of limited talent.  Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

PS:
After struggling with this for a few days, and turning out awful, awful prose, I'm beginning to feel that it's unfair to criticize writers too strongly.  Sure, going after unreadable prose is low-hanging fruit.  But everyone is just trying their best.  No one is writing bad prose on purpose.
I'm beginning to regret writing all those harsh book reviews  in which I complained about bad story-telling.  Who am I to complain?
(...although, on the other hand, these were all published books that were being sold in stores.  So if the authors are making money off of selling their books, and people are handing over their hard-earned money to buy it, maybe this does place them in a higher position for criticism.)

PSS:
Actually, come to think of it, part of the reason this is turning out so terrible is probably precisely because I'm doing most of my writing in 15 minute increments after I'm tired from a long day.
I've learned in the past (from my other writing - projects) that I tend to do my best writing after I've been at it for about an hour.  The first hour you're just getting warmed up, really.  The second hour is when you begin to find your rhythm, and become comfortable.
But unfortunately I'm older now, and have more responsibilities, and most days I can't dedicate a whole hour to this project.  So I'll just slowly chip away at it when I can.  (I've already resigned myself to the fact that this isn't going to be a great work of literature, just a little something so that I don't feel like I've completely lost my soul to work.)

PSSS:
I mentioned in my initial post that I had no illusions about being a great writer.  I was, however, hoping to write something that would at least be readable.  You know, not publishing level readable, maybe, but definitely blogging level readable.  I'm finding, however, that as the story is coming out, it's pretty much unreadable. 
I think I could make it more readable if I had the time to sit down for a couple hours every day in order to immerse myself into the prose, and re-work it.  However the model I'm currently doing is just 15 minutes a day.  I want to be able to do this in small doses without it taking a big chunk out of my life.  (I'm busy with a lot of other things, at the moment).
It was probably a mistake to think I could write something readable in just short 15 minute segments.  If 15 minutes a day was all it took to write a novel, everyone would be doing it.   The reason so few people write novels is because it takes hours out of your day, not just 15 minutes at a time.

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