January writing

[prillalar]

Just did my check-in for getyourwordsout: 16,039 words for the year to date, which is more than double what I need for my goal. (I'm trying to front-load my total to allow for slumps later on.) That's a lot of words for me, so I'm feeling pretty good!

One of my goals for writing this year is to be more wordy. That's a bit odd -- I think people are usually striving for the opposite -- but I generally have a fairly cut-down prose style that can be, well, inaccessible. A beta charitably told me it "requires close reading". I'm trying to "tell" a little more than I do now, at least most of the time.

I also feel like a lot of my work in the last six months has been fairly downbeat. Not sad, necessarily, but with a more sober mood. I'm trying to get back to a breezier mood and plottier stories for a while.

What are your current writing goals? Wordcount? Stylistic?

Comments

[musesfool]

My goal is to post at least one complete story a month. I feel like anything beyond that is gravy.

[prillalar]

That seems balanced for productivity and not going nuts. :)

[musesfool]

I used to be much more prolific, and when that stopped, I was beating myself up over it, which didn't increase productivity, so I've tried to be much more generous with myself the past couple of years.

[dylan_mx]

Happy to hear abour your wordcount, go you!

My goal is "simple", I want to try to write something. I've only ever drawn so I'd like to try writing a fanfiction :) If you have any tips on getting started feel free to share please x)

[laurashapiro]

I am surprised and intrigued to hear that you're working on filling out your prose! Look forward to talking with you about it.

[spywindow]

Congratulations! That's a serious chunk of words. I hope the next few months are equally good to you, creativity-wise.

My goal is to finish literally anything at all. Am also trying to avoid cliche phrasing (X surged up to meet Y, A hollowed his cheeks and sucked, blown pupils, etc) as much as I can, which is making writing smut challenging. ;)

[prillalar]

That's really great! It's hard to know what kind of tips would be best. Do you have something in mind you want to write? Or are you still trying to generate ideas?

[prillalar]

We'll see how it goes!

[prillalar]

Do you have a bunch of WIPs you're working on? I know the fear they can bring!

It's so hard to keep the sexytimes fresh. I've given up on trying to avoid repeating myself.

[flonnebonne]

Heh, I'm one of those aiming to be less wordy. I've always loved your streamlined prose style, personally. My current goal is to be less sentimental and more plotty.

[naraht]

That's a bit odd -- I think people are usually striving for the opposite -- but I generally have a fairly cut-down prose style that can be, well, inaccessible. A beta charitably told me it "requires close reading". I'm trying to "tell" a little more than I do now, at least most of the time.

This was interesting to read because I also have a prose style that leaves a lot out. Mostly I like being allusive – and I'm too lazy to explain everything in minute detail in my prose – but reader reaction can definitely vary. My last fandom was Mary Renault, who is a very allusive writer and so most people in the fandom expect that they're going to have to read between the lines. Whereas YoI fandom is more prone to the 40k epics that are all about Victor and Yuuri's first time... and haven't gotten to the first time yet.

So to some extent I think it depends which audience(s) you're writing for. It's good, I suppose, to have a range of stylistic possibilities that you can deploy as you see fit.

Personally I'm enjoying the chance YoI has offered me to write more humour. (Black humour, speaking of people not understanding what you're getting at.) And to try out a more colloquial register. I think I've written "fuck" more times in the past few months than in the last five years of my fannish career. By my standards, now, I'm writing more fluff, but even my fluff ends up being bittersweet.

[thawrecka]

My writing has gotten increasingly spare over the years, to the point of feeling a bit empty and dry, and when I try to counteract that I tend to exposit about feelings instead, so I'm working on adding a bit more description. Also, trying to remove excessive jokeyness as a crutch. My writing mantra for the year is "what would you write if you weren't afraid" so I've been writing fic for anon memes and seeing what's shaking out.

Also, trying to write at least twice every week.

[spywindow]

So many WIPs! Some of them are only a few weeks old and some of them are years old, and they all feel equally far from completion. But I'm trying to do a little bit of daily writing whenever I can, in the hopes that I can get at least one of them to the tipping point sooner rather than later.

[prillalar]

That's great to hear! I'm trying to be more plotty too, at least with my YOI fic.

[prillalar]

Expectation varies so much between fandoms -- I haven't been primarily in a book-only fandom (LotR was the closest) but I imagine the style and mood for fic is more similar to the canon. YOI is so huge it's bound to have a lot of different styles; the problem is how to get your fic in front of the people who want to read it. (I miss LJ-community centred fandom a lot.)

Humour is one thing I haven't found my voice for yet in YOI. Which is strange to me; it's usually a staple of my writing. I'm hitting that bittersweet note a lot too. What do you think it is about the canon that brings that out?

[prillalar]

I really like your motto for the year! And good idea about the anon writing. That sounds like a great way to test out different styles.

[prillalar]

Well, when I said I hadn't been any primarily book fandoms I apparently forgot about Harry Potter. Please picture me facepalming and embarrassed.

[dylan_mx]

I have a bunch of ideas but I don't know where to start, so maybe tips on getting organized before writing/composition? Like how do you know you have a plot that works and where to put the climax moment?

[naraht]

Yeah, with books you have some sort of a guide – though more so in smaller, more canon-oriented fandoms. (I guess megafandoms like Harry Potter are more inventive.)

I miss LJ communities as well. For conversations and meta as well as finding/sharing fic. Most of my YoI fandom action has been on FFA, which has *relatively* discerning recs, but it's not the same. And no good for making new friends!

Bittersweetness seems to be my modus operandi as a writer, so that's the background for me. But why YoI specifically? Maybe it's something about the sweetness of the show, which is a feature rather than a bug for me as a viewer – but as a writer it's so easy to tip over the boundary into saccharine. So to balance it out, for colour, you have to pull on some of the darker themes that the show very generously gives you scattered throughout. It's easy, if you like the fluff, to miss or ignore those little touches, Victor feeling like skating is a shackle around his neck, fears about ageing and growing up, the inherent brutality of elite sport... but it's all there to draw upon if you want it. What a great playground.

(Forgot to say, my own next planned major fic is going to be both darker and plottier. I just have to work out how to handle the plot. Not my usual strength as a writer. I often rip it straight from the headlines – as I've done in this case...)

[naraht]

Harry Potter transcends genre at this point. It just... is.

[sophia_helix]

I feel weird not doing GYWO this year, because I spent last year trying to make wordcount and knock off all the stories I'd listed as to-do in my pledge, but my big goal for this year is to take the first 4 stories of an RPF series and edit/rewrite them for original publication, so wordcount isn't really appropriate.


...so naturally this year so far I've written one YOI story and am wrestling with the sequel. *eyeroll*

[prillalar]

I haven't done a wordcount challenge before -- the frantic pace of YOI fandom is really helping my motivation there. :)

Good luck with your re-write! And your YOI fic, of course. :) If you're enjoying what you're doing, I say go for it!

[prillalar]

Hmm, these are bigger questions than I know how to answer! My process, even for plottier stories, which I'm not writing much of now, is pretty disorganized. Most books, articles, etc on writing are usually about novels, but the structural stuff probably applies to short stories too.

[dylan_mx]

I see, thanks.
I'm too used to art where you plan the composition from the beginning and then proceed, now with writing I feel lost XD