A Return to Training Wheels
Feb. 10th, 2015 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
parallax23I've gotten into another show, El Internado Laguna Negra, (Black Lagoon Boarding School), which is the Spanish boarding school version of Lost, and fits as a muse for a few older YA stories I have. Max/Alec fans might enjoy it since Julia/Ivan have a similar dynamic. Personally, Fermin is my favorite character. Since I might be posting some El Internado fics in the future, I wanted to close the curtain for Dark Angel. The reason I decided to put the writing version of training wheels back on is because I really need to rebuild my ability to write. While I don't think it's going to be as prolific as Dark Angel for my writing, I don't want it to be. I stumbled upon El Internado because I was watching Gran Hotel on Netflix, and went through the IMDb list of previous shows the lead characters starred it. For some reason, EILN caught my eye and reminded me of a show I loved when I was younger, and I happened to find someone posting the series subbed in English (oddly fortuitous timing? how can I say no?). Since then, Julia and Ivan have replaced Max and Alec as my muses for scribbling. The show has its faults, but for some reason it's got my imagination in gear because it needs so much "fixing" that I can work with it.
I've always had a thing for TV shows with glaring logistical errors that I could fix through writing, and so I've spent more time writing for myself and making sure I kept up the momentum to write with this new gust of minor inspiration. DA fanfic a few years ago was to keep my writing limber, but I need to feel confident in my writing again. I once read that if a writer restarts too much, it means that she doesn't have faith in the story and lacks the confidence to see it through. Based on what I've lived through, I think this is true. I haven't been able to see my stories clearly, and I keep circling the writing drain of too many cold openings that go nowhere.
In my experience writing, it's clarity of vision that comes through in writing. Scenes that I wrote clearest were always the ones that I could see the clearest. It was obvious when I got stuck writing, the words dragged or got tangled. But clarity comes with confidence. If I can't confidently see what's in front of me, then there's no hope for writing. If I don't believe in what I see, then I can't write it. Watching the show kicked off my muse again, and I had started writing original plots again. I was about to hit a stride when I got some disruptive news that almost stopped my writing again. Instead of giving in, I pushed through to keep writing since my day to day activities hadn't changed. This incident also gave some insight into why I had problems writing over the last few years, which had to do with bouncing around between jobs and going to grad school. My mental energy was getting sucked into finding and learning new jobs so often, my brain couldn't find space for writing.
I'm using the scenes coming to me from the show I'm watching to rebuild my ability to see a scene from start to finish. The first one I wrote, I wrote 3 different versions with different set ups and dialog and events. At first, I felt like I had failed because the first one didn't come out the way I had wanted, but I realized that I could rewrite it as many times as I wanted. I keep small notebooks with me for short scenes and ideas, and I've almost filled up one I bought last November. Usually, it takes 2 years to fill a small notebook, because I'm not supposed to write stories with multiple scenes in them since they can eat an entire small notebook. I changed the rules a bit to keep my writing momentum going and to vent about how things were going. I've made some progress. I'm crossing my fingers for more and bought an extra notebook.
I've always had a thing for TV shows with glaring logistical errors that I could fix through writing, and so I've spent more time writing for myself and making sure I kept up the momentum to write with this new gust of minor inspiration. DA fanfic a few years ago was to keep my writing limber, but I need to feel confident in my writing again. I once read that if a writer restarts too much, it means that she doesn't have faith in the story and lacks the confidence to see it through. Based on what I've lived through, I think this is true. I haven't been able to see my stories clearly, and I keep circling the writing drain of too many cold openings that go nowhere.
In my experience writing, it's clarity of vision that comes through in writing. Scenes that I wrote clearest were always the ones that I could see the clearest. It was obvious when I got stuck writing, the words dragged or got tangled. But clarity comes with confidence. If I can't confidently see what's in front of me, then there's no hope for writing. If I don't believe in what I see, then I can't write it. Watching the show kicked off my muse again, and I had started writing original plots again. I was about to hit a stride when I got some disruptive news that almost stopped my writing again. Instead of giving in, I pushed through to keep writing since my day to day activities hadn't changed. This incident also gave some insight into why I had problems writing over the last few years, which had to do with bouncing around between jobs and going to grad school. My mental energy was getting sucked into finding and learning new jobs so often, my brain couldn't find space for writing.
I'm using the scenes coming to me from the show I'm watching to rebuild my ability to see a scene from start to finish. The first one I wrote, I wrote 3 different versions with different set ups and dialog and events. At first, I felt like I had failed because the first one didn't come out the way I had wanted, but I realized that I could rewrite it as many times as I wanted. I keep small notebooks with me for short scenes and ideas, and I've almost filled up one I bought last November. Usually, it takes 2 years to fill a small notebook, because I'm not supposed to write stories with multiple scenes in them since they can eat an entire small notebook. I changed the rules a bit to keep my writing momentum going and to vent about how things were going. I've made some progress. I'm crossing my fingers for more and bought an extra notebook.
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Date: 2015-02-13 07:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-15 09:04 pm (UTC)