Some musings
Feb. 3rd, 2006 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wordwhackerSo I just fixed a glaring error in the story I posted yesterday, and in the process, I discovered something.
That story sucks.
And you know what? That's GREAT!
No, seriously. Stay with me for a minute, here.
I don't have any delusions as to whether or not I'm some phenomenal writer or other. I put words on paper, or on the screen. They don't stink beyond comparison to anything that has ever come before. But I ain't no Oscar Wilde. I ain't no Hemingway. Not even a Stephen King or Ann Rice or what-have-you.
And you know what they say: "The first step is admitting that you have a problem." Or, in my case, the first step is in saying, "You know what? This isn't very good. I can do better." If I was in a writing course and I handed that in, that's what I'd want my professor to say. (Well, okay, I'd want him to say, "you can do better." If he said HE could do better I'd be, like, "Um. Duh. That's why you're teaching the course, and I'm flunking through it, remember?)
What I'm happy about at the moment is that I can recognize the general lameness of it with less than 24 hours away from it. It's often really hard for me to see my work from the outside, and I'm sure I'm nowhere near alone in that respect. In this particular case, I'm getting a distinct feeling of, "So what?" The story isn't original, in content or presentation. It's as bland as soda crackers with 60% less salt. Just because it's two minutes long and G-rated doesn't mean it has to have no flavour. I think I got into a certain mindset with it, though, and the end result is what you see linked above.
My first instinct is to change the whole format of it. Eliminate the sappy prose and the endless references to my lame MC's "heart". Gag. I think I could make almost the exact same idea work better with almost nothing but dialogue, a series of messages, maybe. That's actually closer to my original idea, but the two-minute time limit scared me away from it. Which is a shame. I think I COULD have made it work for a two minute slot, and it would have been a lot more original.
Will I actually re-write it? Maybe. It's tempting to see how much better I can make it. At the moment I think I'm just going to let it be, and work on a more meaty piece of writing (one that hopefully won't be such a soda cracker.)
That story sucks.
And you know what? That's GREAT!
No, seriously. Stay with me for a minute, here.
I don't have any delusions as to whether or not I'm some phenomenal writer or other. I put words on paper, or on the screen. They don't stink beyond comparison to anything that has ever come before. But I ain't no Oscar Wilde. I ain't no Hemingway. Not even a Stephen King or Ann Rice or what-have-you.
And you know what they say: "The first step is admitting that you have a problem." Or, in my case, the first step is in saying, "You know what? This isn't very good. I can do better." If I was in a writing course and I handed that in, that's what I'd want my professor to say. (Well, okay, I'd want him to say, "you can do better." If he said HE could do better I'd be, like, "Um. Duh. That's why you're teaching the course, and I'm flunking through it, remember?)
What I'm happy about at the moment is that I can recognize the general lameness of it with less than 24 hours away from it. It's often really hard for me to see my work from the outside, and I'm sure I'm nowhere near alone in that respect. In this particular case, I'm getting a distinct feeling of, "So what?" The story isn't original, in content or presentation. It's as bland as soda crackers with 60% less salt. Just because it's two minutes long and G-rated doesn't mean it has to have no flavour. I think I got into a certain mindset with it, though, and the end result is what you see linked above.
My first instinct is to change the whole format of it. Eliminate the sappy prose and the endless references to my lame MC's "heart". Gag. I think I could make almost the exact same idea work better with almost nothing but dialogue, a series of messages, maybe. That's actually closer to my original idea, but the two-minute time limit scared me away from it. Which is a shame. I think I COULD have made it work for a two minute slot, and it would have been a lot more original.
Will I actually re-write it? Maybe. It's tempting to see how much better I can make it. At the moment I think I'm just going to let it be, and work on a more meaty piece of writing (one that hopefully won't be such a soda cracker.)
