...

You know what writing is? It's this:



You go in through the entrance knowing what you have to do: get to the end. Complete the maze. The final product seems to be obvious. Dur.

It's actually getting there that's the bitch. Because when you're writing you can't actually see the maze from above like this. You get glimpses of the whole thing, of course, and you know enough to know that the exit is in one direction and not another. But generally speaking you can't see more than a couple turns ahead.

Then you realize, like that damned Windows 95 screen saver, that you're going down a dead end, so you have to turn around and backtrack until you find the spot where you made the wrong turn.

It's the backtracking that drives me crazy. And the persistant fear, as I'm writing, that I'm going to run smack into a wall. That, or one of those floaty silver things that turn everything upside down.

(no subject)

*scares the animals cheering*

I know it's only the 3rd inning... but 6 consecutive hits! A double for Bengie! A homer for the n00b! It's exciting!

ETA: 8-0 in the 4th.

This is kind of cool

Story Idea Generator

(no subject)

I've downloaded some outlining software, and it seems pretty nifty.

I just hope I don't get so involved with outlining that I never get around to writing the actual story.

In the past I have never outlined. In the past, outlining = death for the story, because I get bored. But in the past, I've written fanfic, and my attention span with fanfic is pretty short to begin with. Even my long stories (Andromeda, et al) were written as WIPs where I just wrote and wrote like a crazy person with only half an idea of where I was going and hoped that people would be happy at the end, but if they weren't, well, it was just fanfic. But my original fic story idea has been building for so long, and going through so many versions and iterations - it was going to be a story about... oh, Lord, I don't even remember the character's original name -- ooh wait, it was Lorelei! - and how she pulled a Mulan and wound up in the middle of a war against impossibly advanced invaders. Now it's a story about Gil - originally just another character's bodyguard who wound up being Lorelei's love interest - and how he goes from being a country bumpkin (bitterly clinging to his guns and religion and family, bwahaha) to someone prepared to lead a resistance against unknown but impossibly advanced invaders.

Anyway, after all this work - even if most of the work has been in my brain - I want to do it right, not just fly by the seat of my pants and then have to go back and rewrite hundreds and thousands of words of crap. Rewriting annoys me even more than outlining.

So I'm outlining. Gil and Miri (formerly Lorelei) and Nathan and the Governor and Ivah and all the other characters who haven't been born yet.

Wish me luck.