Keeping this in mind, how many of you can sit down at start writing something right away? It depends--are you talking about a "sit down and write, but you can write anything as long as it's a 'new' thing" order, or a "sit down and write on this particular assignment"? I know there's a difference between the two, but I'm not sure I could say one is necessarily easier than the other. The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, but chances are that I will draw on something that's been percolating around my subconscious. With a prompt, I can shuttle that around my head and see if something emerges. (I wrote "Pigeons"-the-story-that-so-needs-a-better-title in two days, with essentially one day of lead-time to think about what to do, from prompt. I wrote "Nevernight," the space-opera-in-an-envelope, in one day, on the very day the idea occurred to me. Okay, so the ending is rather shifty, but for 3000-word-space-opera-in-one-day I'm willing to spend more time fixing it up.) Can do it, have done it, prefer a little more time to think about things, but pressure does occasionally result in stories I am quite pleased with.
How many of you who have many different projects on the go, and who shift between them when one stalls, started those projects without the subconscious lead-in that I have to take? I'm sort of curious because I'm wondering if you're essentially taking that time between multiple projects -- if you're sitting back to let the subconscious work on whichever project has stalled, while moving onto one that has had that backburner time. Some of them were started after the subconscious lead time. Some of them weren't. There isn't, unfortunately, any good way for me to tell you how they differ. Sometimes an idea seems "hot," I stall out midway through, and let it percolate. Sometimes an idea seems "hot" and I finish the rough draft in a week or less. (It helps that my tendency is to write extremely dense stories that then need to be unpacked so the reader's head doesn't implode in the first three paragraphs. Um, for dubious values of "helps.") Sometimes something I was thinking about for a long time and have somewhat planned out still needs more time. And so on.
I take the stories as they come, at this point, since the only thing I have under contract is a RPG piece and I anticipate wrapping up the rough draft by Christmas, more or less. If I have to write to more strenuous deadlines, I have no idea what'll happen to the whole process. Continued ambushes by short stories, like as not.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 12:33 pm (UTC)It depends--are you talking about a "sit down and write, but you can write anything as long as it's a 'new' thing" order, or a "sit down and write on this particular assignment"? I know there's a difference between the two, but I'm not sure I could say one is necessarily easier than the other. The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes, but chances are that I will draw on something that's been percolating around my subconscious. With a prompt, I can shuttle that around my head and see if something emerges. (I wrote "Pigeons"-the-story-that-so-needs-a-better-title in two days, with essentially one day of lead-time to think about what to do, from prompt. I wrote "Nevernight," the space-opera-in-an-envelope, in one day, on the very day the idea occurred to me. Okay, so the ending is rather shifty, but for 3000-word-space-opera-in-one-day I'm willing to spend more time fixing it up.) Can do it, have done it, prefer a little more time to think about things, but pressure does occasionally result in stories I am quite pleased with.
How many of you who have many different projects on the go, and who shift between them when one stalls, started those projects without the subconscious lead-in that I have to take? I'm sort of curious because I'm wondering if you're essentially taking that time between multiple projects -- if you're sitting back to let the subconscious work on whichever project has stalled, while moving onto one that has had that backburner time.
Some of them were started after the subconscious lead time. Some of them weren't. There isn't, unfortunately, any good way for me to tell you how they differ. Sometimes an idea seems "hot," I stall out midway through, and let it percolate. Sometimes an idea seems "hot" and I finish the rough draft in a week or less. (It helps that my tendency is to write extremely dense stories that then need to be unpacked so the reader's head doesn't implode in the first three paragraphs. Um, for dubious values of "helps.") Sometimes something I was thinking about for a long time and have somewhat planned out still needs more time. And so on.
I take the stories as they come, at this point, since the only thing I have under contract is a RPG piece and I anticipate wrapping up the rough draft by Christmas, more or less. If I have to write to more strenuous deadlines, I have no idea what'll happen to the whole process. Continued ambushes by short stories, like as not.