I have developed wisdom: I recognize my shoddy workmanship.

[Celebrim]

Yeah. I hate that I can't write up to my level of ambition.

I don't demand that I write with the poetic voice of Gene Wolfe, tell stories with the verve of Mary Bujold, have intellectual power of Robert Silverburg, and the vast creativite force of JRR Tolkien. I'd be more than happy with the writing style of Clifford Simak, the tight stories of JK Rowling, the intellectual power of Robert Heinlein, and the creativity of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Instead, for all my criticism of thier works, I find myself looking on with envy at the writing of RA Salvatore, the story telling of Stephen King, the creativity of Terry Brooks, and the intellectual might of Michael Crichton and being utterly humbled despite myself.

Louise Glück=The fundamental experience of the writer is helplessness. This does not mean to distinguish writing from being alive: it means to correct the fantasy that creative work is an ongoing record of the triumph of volition, that the writer is someone who has the good luck to be able to do what he or she wishes to do: to confidently and regularly imprint his being on a sheet of paper. But writing is not decanting of personality. And most writers spend much of their time in various kinds of torment: wanting to write, being unable to write; wanting to write differently, being unable to write differently. In a whole lifetime, years are spent waiting to be claimed by an idea. The only real exercise of will is negative: we have toward what we write the power of veto.

Oh god that is so true. I think that needs to be my new sig.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Everyone knows I suck. My two failed story hours are testament to that.

However, It's funny how much worse I used to be.

When you get older, you really do level up.

 

[jmucchiello]

Yeah! You need to watch that.

I also procrastinate. Lousy combination.

 

[reason]

...

The way to stop writing junk is to keep writing junk until you stop writing junk...if you accept that today is junk day and just keep writing, sooner or later you'll accidentally get good at it.

(I guess I'll see if that is in fact the case one of these days).

Reason
Principia Infecta

 

[jester47]

I have been told I write good Dialogue.

Apparently, one of the best ways to write somthing is to bang it out and then put it in a drawer and forget about it. That way, when you come back to it in 6 months, you see most of the flaws because you have changed enough to spot them. Its like reading someone elses work.

Reading other Genres also helps. Apparently shouting the words as you type them helps too.

Aaron.

 

[Steverooo]

Hell, I think I constantly find problems with my work. Probably half of the time I spend on any project is reworking the material -- the challenge is knowing when to quit rewriting and start publishing. A very real danger of constantly rewriting exists and if I wasn't under time pressure I'd probably never finish a project.

Interesting... So what, exactly, do you re-write, so much?

I tend to start writing, and continue until I reach my destination. I may re-write to clarify, but rarely re-write anything unless I'm needlessly repeating myself...

 

[James Heard]

Not speaking for anyone else here but: A lot of times it helps to print everything out, the read it and transcribe it back again. Sometimes what you wrote and what you write can diverge in a good way. Another thing I sometimes do is to write everything as blurbs, two or three paragraph (or pages) worth of stuff and then fold it all together. When I write lyrics and poetry these days I generally draw from three or four pieces for each final revision. I've heard about some of the people I've exchanged edits with over the years talk about actually taking things they've wrote and intentionally rewriting it from a different view, third to first person or switching the characters. I personally think that's a little overboard for myself, but I can attest to it having a major effect upon the short story. When I'm painting for myself I tend to paint the same thing a half dozen times in different variations and a lot of people would have a problem with that. Anyways, I don't think it's as important the nature of revision as it is to revise what you create in some fashion. Even when I used to play the horn it was important to play every instrument's part of a piece for me during practice so I could understand it better. Revision helps you understand your own work - why it works and why it doesn't, how it's structured and what you could change to improve it. It's not about clarity, it's about...grokking it I guess.

 

[philreed]

Interesting... So what, exactly, do you re-write, so much?

I tend to start writing, and continue until I reach my destination. I may re-write to clarify, but rarely re-write anything unless I'm needlessly repeating myself...

Everything. The first draft is never what I want it to be. But then I'm constantly worrying over each new release, wondering if this is the work that will reveal to the world that I'm a hack.

 

[arwink]

Everything. The first draft is never what I want it to be. But then I'm constantly worrying over each new release, wondering if this is the work that will reveal to the world that I'm a hack.

I find it's easier to go the other way. I know I'm hack, so I worry that every time I release something someone will actually assume that I have some kind of hidden genius they expect me to live up too

 

[yennico]

the challenge is knowing when to quit rewriting and start publishing.

That is true.