Writing what you want
I had a strange moment while writing last night, but it wasn't the first time. I was trying to work on one of my many projects, and I just got the nagging feeling that I didn't want to work on this story because I wanted to be working on something with a different tone. Problem was, I had no idea what that something was.
I ended up pulling up another project and getting absorbed in that. It wasn't quite what I was looking for, but it was good enough. How do you handle it when what you're writing isn't what you feel like writing? Start something new, push through it, or do you take it as a sign that what you're writing needs to sound different and incorporate what you're looking for into that?
2 comments:
I get that feeling sometimes, too, although it's more in the general sense of, "I wish I were working on something different," as opposed to a more concrete, "I wish I were actively writing something other than what I'm currently writing at this moment."
In that case, I tend to take a break from whatever it is I am working on and try to work on something else, which is invariably some sort of short (usually silly) story.
Actually, some to think of it, that's where most of my short and goofy pieces come from (you know, the ones that people seem to like way more than the serious ones I actually toil over).
You once said, Tim, something about starting with the part of the story you want to write and going on. HP Lovecraft once said that you shouldn't ever decide to sit down and write, as only "hack-work" could result, and you should only write things that demand to be written. I take that to mean what you *want* to write. Impractical, yes; but let us not forget that he was a commercial failure in his lifetime.
I just wander away, sort of like I wandered away from the writing I am doing for work to write this and now it isn't what I want to write either...
NED!
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