Did I Write This Week – The Perspicacious Geek
As promised, my weekly log/confessional about whether or not I managed to make time to write.
Did I Write This Week?
Yes!
What Did You Write?
I finally got around to writing Part 14 of Fear and Loathing after the Bomb. That’s exciting, right? Remember in 2012 when zombies were all the rage?
I thought it would be fun to take my own little spin with the zombie genre and inject a little gonzo style journalism into the mix. I wrote 13 parts between April 2012 and March 2013, which, all things considered isn’t too bad.
Anyhow, I’ve got a pretty big problem creatively and that’s that I can’t finish things. When I start a story, I’ve got this idea of an outline. I create the characters, the premise, the setup but I almost never know how it’s all going to play out. I enjoy letting the story breathe a bit and let it grow a little before I actively think how I’m going to tie up all my plot points.
It’s probably not the best way to write, but I’ve never really claimed to know what I’m doing.
At some point or another I figure out my ending and then I stop actually writing. Part of the joy of writing for me is figuring out exactly what story I’m trying to tell and I’ll admit, once I figure that part out the process loses some of it’s luster.
This has pretty much been a problem for me for as long as I can remember. My first “serious” attempt at writing something was some kind of a sci-fi epic about a space station built around the remnants of Earth that had been blown apart in a nuclear war. The explosion had knocked Earth out of the orbit of the Sun so humanity could no longer actually survive on its surface so humanity built this space station around the remnants of the planet. I’m sure the science doesn’t hold up. I’m also sure I was about 13.
Anyhow, as soon as I figured out that ultimately, the station was going to be pulled into the orbit of another star and humanity was going to rebuild and prosper I got bored. I’m not saying this is a great story, I’m just saying that as soons as I knew where I was headed, I put it down and moved on.
Same goes with a play that I wrote back in high-school. I got about 2 full acts written and the final scene. Once that final scene was written I had no interest in actually writing the in-between to get the characters there.
That’s probably not going to bode very well when I try to sit down and actually flesh out a novel, is it?
A few months ago I re-read everything I had written in the “After the Bomb” series to get my head back into the story. I then sat down and figured out how many parts it would take me to get to the ending that I had planned (the answer is 6 I think).
All I would have to do is actually flesh out each part and voila, the story would be complete! Not quite that easy. That whole “what’s the point” thing crept into my brain and those notes just sat there for months. Neglected. I knew exactly how the story was going to play out, I just didn’t seem to care enough to write it for the rest of you.
My plan for this little novel is kind of similar. I want to basically plan out my story arch in note form from start to finish, and then backtrack and flesh out the story into chapters.
So if I’m not able to do exactly that with something I’ve already started, I’m pretty much setting myself up early for disaster. In the name of you know, actually finishing something, I’ve gone back to the story started writing 4 years ago.
The idea will be to finish up the remaining 6 parts and then share them with you as soon as I can. Once I’ve gotten 2-3 written I’ll start putting them online and in a month or two from now I should have actually finished a story.
Call it a practice run.
See you next week.
Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
