Thank you! It always made me feel like I was doing something wrong by not just spitting out the draft but if I do that I lose steam. I remember Fonda Lee talking about this in a way and saying “we all pay the pied piper somehow.” I love your writings about writing.
I love that saying, I've never heard that before "We all pay the pied piper somehow". It makes my skin crawl when people push writers to just get the story out because there's a critical risk and consequence to that. I have a special place in my heart for the writers who take their time to get it right while in the trenches :) Appreciate you!!!!
A refreshing read. Also what I needed to hear today. My first draft is taking ages. I take heart that not all writers churn out the first draft in a few weeks or months.
Worldbuilding, life, story, they're all going on in head and they're growing together at their own pace.
Having said that, I do procrastinate. And I could push, write through some of my hesitations. But, I'm glad I didn't keep writing in the early days of my first beginnings. I feel the characters and the story more fully now. That took time.
Truth. Writing a novel is like building a ladder while you’re climbing it. You can write fast and loose and fashion the rungs from balsa wood, or you can slow down and use oak.
Thank you, AJ! I tried *so* hard to just get the story down/ fast drafting advice. Yet, I can’t move forward if I don’t know where I’ve been (or my characters have been.)
Anyway, I’m sure this is why it’s been so hard for me to write the last part of my story, because I have a wobbly foundation.
And, you are spot on: it does feel insurmountable if I let it. Having this framework, certainly has eased some of my frustration.
I cannot tell you how many drafts I abandoned in my first 5-6 years of writing (Im on year 16 or 17 now) because I was so infatuated with the notion of discovering a story as I wrote it and, when done, having something to be proud of. And certainly it can be the case for some people that it will work that way, edits and revisions considered. But my experience was always running out of momentum, bones of the story misaligning so much that the story is broken in half and the time it would take to repair was sooooo high that it seemed easier to scrap and move on to something else I was more interested in. For some people, myself included, that's just not the way of approaching a story that ends well. And I want to acknowledge that writers are ALLOWED to write the story however works best for them. Force feeding people the notion to "JUST GET IT OUT" is soooo damaging for some of us.
I haaaaaate this advice. I'm a slow drafter and the fast draft, just get it down, advice just ends up with abandoned manuscripts. I embrace my tortoise self now 🐢
I think the part people overlook the most is that momentum and questioning aren't necessarily opposites. Sometimes asking the difficult character questions early is exactly what prevents a massive rewrite later.
Thank you my feelings are finally validated. I can’t just hammer a first draft out for sake of doing so. As I reread parts I’ve written, I must fix issues such as what a character would/wouldn’t do or say right away. Scenes that need fixing, etc. That keeps my story progressing and changing for the better, going against an outline I feel like I was forced to do. For clarification I’m in a MFA program.
Absolutely agree! That’s my approach as well, I want the story that keeps moving to be the best I can do at the time, so the strongest version of it keeps moving forward ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you! It always made me feel like I was doing something wrong by not just spitting out the draft but if I do that I lose steam. I remember Fonda Lee talking about this in a way and saying “we all pay the pied piper somehow.” I love your writings about writing.
I love that saying, I've never heard that before "We all pay the pied piper somehow". It makes my skin crawl when people push writers to just get the story out because there's a critical risk and consequence to that. I have a special place in my heart for the writers who take their time to get it right while in the trenches :) Appreciate you!!!!
A refreshing read. Also what I needed to hear today. My first draft is taking ages. I take heart that not all writers churn out the first draft in a few weeks or months.
Worldbuilding, life, story, they're all going on in head and they're growing together at their own pace.
Having said that, I do procrastinate. And I could push, write through some of my hesitations. But, I'm glad I didn't keep writing in the early days of my first beginnings. I feel the characters and the story more fully now. That took time.
I promise that diligence will pay itself off at the end :) Procrastination is both very easy and very difficult to address LOL!
Truth. Writing a novel is like building a ladder while you’re climbing it. You can write fast and loose and fashion the rungs from balsa wood, or you can slow down and use oak.
Guess which gets you higher.
Love this analogy!!!
Thank you, AJ! I tried *so* hard to just get the story down/ fast drafting advice. Yet, I can’t move forward if I don’t know where I’ve been (or my characters have been.)
Anyway, I’m sure this is why it’s been so hard for me to write the last part of my story, because I have a wobbly foundation.
And, you are spot on: it does feel insurmountable if I let it. Having this framework, certainly has eased some of my frustration.
I cannot tell you how many drafts I abandoned in my first 5-6 years of writing (Im on year 16 or 17 now) because I was so infatuated with the notion of discovering a story as I wrote it and, when done, having something to be proud of. And certainly it can be the case for some people that it will work that way, edits and revisions considered. But my experience was always running out of momentum, bones of the story misaligning so much that the story is broken in half and the time it would take to repair was sooooo high that it seemed easier to scrap and move on to something else I was more interested in. For some people, myself included, that's just not the way of approaching a story that ends well. And I want to acknowledge that writers are ALLOWED to write the story however works best for them. Force feeding people the notion to "JUST GET IT OUT" is soooo damaging for some of us.
Yes! Anddddd. In a world that everything is instant, I’m so pulled to slow the <bleep> down. Art takes time.
Yess!! And it's worth taking that time :)
I haaaaaate this advice. I'm a slow drafter and the fast draft, just get it down, advice just ends up with abandoned manuscripts. I embrace my tortoise self now 🐢
Yessss!!! Turtle writers unite!!! :) :)
I think the part people overlook the most is that momentum and questioning aren't necessarily opposites. Sometimes asking the difficult character questions early is exactly what prevents a massive rewrite later.
Absolutely!!! My own personal approach is, I don’t enter even into writing pages before I have all those difficult questions answered. ❤️❤️
Thank you my feelings are finally validated. I can’t just hammer a first draft out for sake of doing so. As I reread parts I’ve written, I must fix issues such as what a character would/wouldn’t do or say right away. Scenes that need fixing, etc. That keeps my story progressing and changing for the better, going against an outline I feel like I was forced to do. For clarification I’m in a MFA program.
Absolutely agree! That’s my approach as well, I want the story that keeps moving to be the best I can do at the time, so the strongest version of it keeps moving forward ❤️❤️❤️