I can't write lyrics for shit.
I have 3 hardcover notebooks on my bed right now, one on my desk and one in my bag, and a giant whiteboard in my room. I like the finality of pen to page, I tend to edit as I work and get nothing done when I use a PC. I tend to come up with a bunch of smaller ideas and eventually combine the complimentary ones into a larger story. I make a basic synopsis and think about what themes are emerging and which, if any, are worth intentionally pursuing. I then revise constantly with a big emphasis on story structure, and try to apply the same structural examination to the characters, find their soul and their story arcs and how they best intermingle with one another. Most of this is done in note form across a bunch of different notebooks, so I end up getting lazy or spread myself too thin and not finishing anything.
I used to have a real problem with writers block, but I find that taking a more analytic look at everything and not writing it in order help a lot with it. Now it's more just a problem with motivation. I will get completely obsessed with something but by the time I should be doing the boring laborious tasks, I'll find or come up with something else that I end up getting obsessed with. I still find the creative process really rewarding so it doesn't really bother me that nothing is completed (though it used to bother me greatly).
Does anyone know of any good applications for creative processes? The closest thing I've used is Celtx, which is pretty great for script writing, but it's eaten my data a few times so I'm wary to use it again.
I have no good method. It has always been a problem. I am a ridiculously slow writer. Slow reader, too.
... maybe I'm just retarded.
Link is in Pancakes.
Clever wordplay.
When I write, which I should reall get back to, I keep a composition book close to me at all times in case an idea pops in my noggin. Rough ideas go in there, and then I transfer them to the digital realm.
I need to get out of this depression funk and put pen to paper again. It's been far too long since I've worked on my book project and screenplays.
I'm not a devious man by nature... but when you're unarmed, your tactics might gonna be downright Archimedean.
I think I'm starting to develop a habit for more productive writing.
So I spent some of the last few months as a college writing tutor. I think I helped some people a lot and some people no lots. After a while, I noticed there was something most of my unproductive sessions had in common: a laptop.
Working with a hard copy, sentence-level revision often went like this: if I saw a lot of sentence-level problems, I'd point to a single problematic sentence and ask the student to explain it to me. Almost always, their explanation said what the sentence said much better. So we'd talk about the reasons why it was better, then I'd point to another sentence. This time, I'd give them a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and ask them to rewrite, from beginning to end, the entire sentence using whatever we just talked about, be it active voice, transitioning, avoiding a run-on, whatever. For the rest of the paper, we'd mark sentences that had the same problem. Those sentences were to be revised after the session so we could focus on the big picture.
But with a laptop, the writer would get bogged down revising during the session. This not only presented all kinds of ethical issues for me in their constantly asking for my input or at least approval, it prevented us from working on more pressing stuff. Revising a sentence only to find that the revision necessitates a change in the next sentence is a great way to not get any actual writing done.
I realized a couple weeks ago that this is exactly what I do when I write. With a laptop, I labor over sentences, deleting and inserting until I get it just right before starting the next sentence...which often forces me to go back and change the first. My new method is to treat my laptop like a typewriter. Once a sentence is done, it's done. Next sentence. Then, once a paper--or at least a paragraph or argument--is "done," I go back and revise. I then try to explain what I wrote. If the explanation is not already contained in the writing, I add it on the next revision.
This is how writers used to roll. They produced drafts of entire works, not drafts of sentences and half sentences, before revising. Those guys were really smart.
At the risk of going full douche, I might even get myself a typewriter this summer.
Last edited by A Robot Bit Me; 08 May 2015 at 01:20 PM.
If I don't constantly make sure I'm staying the course, my papers can get lost on a tangential cul-de-sac fairly easily. There have been times I've had to erase three or four paragraphs because I lost myself in where the paper was taking me rather than guiding it where I needed it to go.
I've been researching Romanticism for the last 6 weeks. I have a 7 page paper due Sunday. I've more than enough notes to fill twice that amount. But even though I've a thesis (which I no longer care for since we were instructed to formulate one before we really researched) I have no idea of what I'm going to write. Paper is due Sunday.
When is your paper due?
All that means is that you care enough about me to read my whole post. Smooches.
Bookmarks