Struggling with a prompt

[nico1908]

Last month, Actias luna, my dear beta for "Found, Never Lost" (which is largely an info-dump but may be interesting if you want to see a beginner progress from the typical 3rd person omniscient to a limited 3rd person POV), suggested we start what I like to call a "no pressure prompt exchange".

It goes like this: we take turns picking a prompt at the beginning of each month and at the end of the month we exchange our results, whatever they may be - drawings, poems, lyrics, paintings, fanfiction, doilies, short stories, novels, needlepoint... - and in whatever stage of completion (or lack thereof) they may be.

I volunteered to pick the first prompt. It arrived in the form of a message on the back of a Dove chocolate wrapper and read, "Go ahead - have another :-)". I successfully resisted the urge to take the prompt literally but have been literally struggling with it.

I typically write longhand first and then do the first major edit when I type up the material - which results in frustratingly little useable lines; sometimes a whole page of scribbling and crossing out and re-writing yields just a paragraph (if I'm lucky). And then I fuss and fume over it, find it horribly cliche and wonder why on earth I think I may have anything to say that is worth putting in writing.

So here is my question to you writers out there: Is writing a pain or a pleasure to you? Do you wish you could plug your brains into the computer and make your thoughts flow into Word or does the process of typing do something for you? Do you need a certain place and set of mind to write or do you just sit down and type up whatever passes through your head (which in my case seems to be hot air most of the time)? Do stories just materialize before your inner eye or do you have to chip them out of the bedrock of your imagination? - Just wondering...


I'm also wondering why the LJ cuts don't seem to work properly...

Comments

[grey-hunter.livejournal.com]

I'm also wondering why the LJ cuts don't seem to work properly...

And your letters are also sort of very small most of the time. At other times, they are huge.

But to answer the question, I always write on the keyboard nowadays and edit while I write - and rewrite and then edit again when I start over... you can tell that most of the time I don't write smoothly. Probably because there are too many things that divert my attention from it. I never thought I'd wish the times of no internet and boring television programmes back, but there it is. I'm currently struggling with my hp_darkfest fic. I'm only at the beginning which is bad because I gave myself until the end of the month to write it. But I think I'm getting a hang of the voice now and that's when it starts flowing more smoothly. I usually do put down a plot before I start writing - or should be as I generally can't get it right until I know most of what is going to happen. But I have a friend who works a different way: she works out her characters' personalities, motivations and what direction she wants them to develop on the course of the story. I can't really understand how she'll have a story out of that, but apparently it works. She calls my way plot-oriented writing and hers character-oriented (which is probably the official term since she has the appropriate education degree, I don't). Either way, some serious brainstorming does preceed the writing.

On the other hand, when I write a comment... do I talk too much, I wonder? ;)