Writing about writing
Mar. 10th, 2023 02:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
obstinatecondolement(The footnotes are anchor links that you can follow to the end of the page. At the end of each footnote is a return link that will bring you back to where you left off in the post)
I think I have discovered what the difficulty I have with writing fic* longer than 1K words is: I get impatient and want to be done, and in my head I kind of consider 1000 words to be the boundary between "tiny thing I dashed off for fun, carelessly" and a one-shot, so once I got there I mentally clocked off and looked for a point where I could quietly slip out the door. But recently, I have been persisting past points where I could technically fade to black, or end with a scene break and I've been able to produce things that are (slightly) longer. Not, like, 100K or anything, but I knocked out something that was 3K in the first draft and then grew to 4.3K in the second today. Beyond that, I have written a number of things recently that were about 2K. Which I do realise is still short as fic goes, but it is 100% longer than what (I think) my usual word count is.
I think part of what has made the difference is that I've written for a fair few events recently, which has meant I can't post them right away, so I've gone back and fiddled with them for longer and the word count naturally grew as a result. I've also been waiting to have things beta read more, recently, when I have historically been more of a shoot-from-the-hip type who just reads through once or twice for SPAG and then puts it straight on AO3, more or less hot off the presses. When I have to wait a few days for someone to have a chance to look at it for me, I, again, fiddle some more with it and it gets longer.
And like, again, if you look at my AO3, you will see several things that I've posted recently that are less than 1K words, so it's not as though this transformation has been complete and immediate and that I've put out heaps of things that are longer than my usual fare. And in the fics that do reflect this change, it is very subtle, and, honestly, probably only really obvious to me, because I know exactly where I would have stopped before and I can see all the words that I wrote after that point. Also I have a few things that I'm sitting on in my GDocs that aren't on AO3 yet, so the full picture isn't available to The Public yet.
I have always felt an enormous amount of shame about writing shorter pieces and if this is literally all that was holding me back I will be absolutely livid. I've had so many comments that either praise me for "packing so much into such a short little fic" or ask in dismay where the rest of it is and both feel incredibly humiliating to me. Whenever I see people bemoan things "suddenly growing to 10K" I get achingly jealous, because it is such a fucking slog for me to get to a tenth of that and I feel like I'm chiseling out each word in stone sometimes.
I mean... honestly, I do think that it's not Just that I'm being more patient and persisting? Like, words are coming easier to me now, to the extent that I'm finding I have to go back and edit myself down to express things more succinctly. Which has never really happpened before. I tend to be incredibly efficient with the words that I use** (as many well meaning commenters have informed me, lol), but now I'm waffling on for a paragraph when I could say what I mean in a sentence.
But anyway, it is strange to be turning corners with writing, at this point in the game, without having consciously made an effort to change anything. I've also found that I at some point I leveled up my reading comprehension to the point that I can now understand and parse the definitions of various bits of grammar terminology, which has made understanding grammar rules a lot easier, because I don't end up thinking, "Well, I'm sure that would be very illuminating if I knew what the fuck a noun phrase was." I know what a gerund is now, who am I?
*By which I mean, "seat of the pants" fic that I don't plan in detail. I can write longer stuff that I write an outline for. Although each chapter typically does clocks in between 1-2K, every scene is always shorter than it is supposed to be per the outline, and several scenes get axed as I write the first draft, so my final word count is never as long as the planned word count. (return)
**In creative writing, anyway. I often, in real life or when blogging, get stuck in loops of trying to say the same thing in a way that cannot be misunderstood or misconstrued, which can get very wordy. (return)
I think I have discovered what the difficulty I have with writing fic* longer than 1K words is: I get impatient and want to be done, and in my head I kind of consider 1000 words to be the boundary between "tiny thing I dashed off for fun, carelessly" and a one-shot, so once I got there I mentally clocked off and looked for a point where I could quietly slip out the door. But recently, I have been persisting past points where I could technically fade to black, or end with a scene break and I've been able to produce things that are (slightly) longer. Not, like, 100K or anything, but I knocked out something that was 3K in the first draft and then grew to 4.3K in the second today. Beyond that, I have written a number of things recently that were about 2K. Which I do realise is still short as fic goes, but it is 100% longer than what (I think) my usual word count is.
I think part of what has made the difference is that I've written for a fair few events recently, which has meant I can't post them right away, so I've gone back and fiddled with them for longer and the word count naturally grew as a result. I've also been waiting to have things beta read more, recently, when I have historically been more of a shoot-from-the-hip type who just reads through once or twice for SPAG and then puts it straight on AO3, more or less hot off the presses. When I have to wait a few days for someone to have a chance to look at it for me, I, again, fiddle some more with it and it gets longer.
And like, again, if you look at my AO3, you will see several things that I've posted recently that are less than 1K words, so it's not as though this transformation has been complete and immediate and that I've put out heaps of things that are longer than my usual fare. And in the fics that do reflect this change, it is very subtle, and, honestly, probably only really obvious to me, because I know exactly where I would have stopped before and I can see all the words that I wrote after that point. Also I have a few things that I'm sitting on in my GDocs that aren't on AO3 yet, so the full picture isn't available to The Public yet.
I have always felt an enormous amount of shame about writing shorter pieces and if this is literally all that was holding me back I will be absolutely livid. I've had so many comments that either praise me for "packing so much into such a short little fic" or ask in dismay where the rest of it is and both feel incredibly humiliating to me. Whenever I see people bemoan things "suddenly growing to 10K" I get achingly jealous, because it is such a fucking slog for me to get to a tenth of that and I feel like I'm chiseling out each word in stone sometimes.
I mean... honestly, I do think that it's not Just that I'm being more patient and persisting? Like, words are coming easier to me now, to the extent that I'm finding I have to go back and edit myself down to express things more succinctly. Which has never really happpened before. I tend to be incredibly efficient with the words that I use** (as many well meaning commenters have informed me, lol), but now I'm waffling on for a paragraph when I could say what I mean in a sentence.
But anyway, it is strange to be turning corners with writing, at this point in the game, without having consciously made an effort to change anything. I've also found that I at some point I leveled up my reading comprehension to the point that I can now understand and parse the definitions of various bits of grammar terminology, which has made understanding grammar rules a lot easier, because I don't end up thinking, "Well, I'm sure that would be very illuminating if I knew what the fuck a noun phrase was." I know what a gerund is now, who am I?
*By which I mean, "seat of the pants" fic that I don't plan in detail. I can write longer stuff that I write an outline for. Although each chapter typically does clocks in between 1-2K, every scene is always shorter than it is supposed to be per the outline, and several scenes get axed as I write the first draft, so my final word count is never as long as the planned word count. (return)
**In creative writing, anyway. I often, in real life or when blogging, get stuck in loops of trying to say the same thing in a way that cannot be misunderstood or misconstrued, which can get very wordy. (return)