GAH.

Why does writing always, *always* have to go so slow for me - even when it's going comparatively fast?

Take today and yesterday: I actually wrote some 250 words in the last 24 hours. That's actually pretty damn impressive for me. But. For nearly any other writer that would be what they'd manage in a few minutes, maybe half an hour at most. So why does it take so long for the next sentence, the next emotion, the next action, the next image to reveal itself to me? What is wrong with my brain?

I got most of the way through a new scene today. But not quite to the end - because I *don't know* what happens next. I just. Don't. Know.

What does Sam feel? What does he do? Does Annie come home? What does she say (does she say anything? Does he?)

Gah. Driving without a map, with the brakes on, in the fog. As per usual. *sigh*

Another 282 words.

Yes, in the short while between the last post and this. I really *am* phenomenally productive today.

Sadly, this was another fic.

And now I really have to go to bed; and tomorrow I need to do all the awfully important, urgent RL stuff I've neglected for the sake of geeky creative endeavors this week. Because there's half a dozen important deadlines coming up, and I'm already, probably, too late to meet some of them - unless I manage to be phenomenally productive in all areas tomorrow, and all through next week.

Paging HL writers/betas

Anybody wanna help me fix a very old (2001!) story with an interesting concept (a quickening, seen from both sides) and somewhat flawed execution? I just noticed that I took this offline for a rewrite *years* ago, but I haven't managed to improve it so far, so I guess I need help.

Frell, I can't concentrate on anything but fic.

I just sent off a FS ficlet nine years in the making to my beta. Don't expect anything grand - the main reasons it took me so long was the fundamental uninterestingness of the fic. There was always something more interesting and urgent to write.

But I wanted to finish something, this week. It's been a year and a half since my last published story, and that was a fairly insubstantial one (The Last Lost Generation, aka fanfic-based fanfic). It's high time I published something again.

I have this crazy idea of publishing three stories this year. It's crazy because my average, over the last ten years, has been well under two per year (1.7, and that's counting the one I just sent off). But I have amassed so many WiPs that I feel I really need to get some of them off my to do list now. Also, some of them are mainly stalled because, well, they're not all that spectacular, and so I've always been tempted to work on something else first. I have several somewhat redundant, three-quarters-finished FS fics on my hard drive, for instance. The idea is to get two of those out there, and, in addition, finish one of my more ambitious fics. That one probably being the Back to the Future LoM thing.

I really, really hope I'll be able to pull this off. It would feel so good...

The last time I managed three fics in one year was 2003.

In line with a tendency for déjà vues (or déjà écrits) today...

I'm going to say something I think I may have said here before, but just in case I haven't, is worth writing down here.

I think the problem with my writing is this: I am essentially a bad writer - at least if we measure such things in term of innate ability/talent. What I have, instead of talent, is (preternatural ;-)) persistence, and a highly developed sense of quality control. Through the combined application of these two traits, I manage to whip initially poor material into a shape that ranges from 'decent' to 'quite good, actually'. But that takes time, and lots of energy. Frequently, it takes years.

I am glad that I have that ability for quality control. It's the only thing that stands between me and cringe-worthy badfic. The ability is actually so finely honed that a lot of the time I don't even have to write the crap down anymore. I know, before it comes out, that something is not worth writing down. I also know when it *is* worth writing down. That is also part of my quality control sense - I recognise my own, brief flashes of competence as they happen. But since 99% of the time, crap is all I have, that means that 99% of the time that I'm trying to write, I'm just sitting staring at the screen testing stuff in my mind and, well, deciding it's not worth being converted into pixels. (Mind you, a lot of the time I can't even come up with crap.)

I've just reread the very earliest draft I have of the beginning of Back to the Future... It made me cringe. It's barely recognisable; it's hard to believe it was written by the same person as the current version. If a novice writer showed me that draft, I'd have doubts if it could be converted into something even remotely worthwile by said writer. But it has been converted into something worthwhile; and by the same person who wrote the first version, hard as that may be to believe.

I'm a very good editor to my own, very bad writer. Editing is the largest part of the work of writing for me.