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There's a lot to be said about user-friendliness for DW - I realised when drafting this entry (writing, not drafting, damnit work) that I don't know how to do an LJ cut on DW, and thought - what's the most logical tag for it, and thought - it must be <cut>. And so I'd just clicked on the help/support link, when I realised that the post page has a link to site-specific markup tags, right in a corner where you'll see it, and that it points you straightway to the information you need. Very impressive.
And the relevant tag is, of course, the most simple and logical thing possible. (And even better - they actually support lj-cut as well). I love how DW just makes sense.
I've had this list of "things to take note of when writing" in my head for the last five or six years, technical notes on how-to-write-good-fic. Every now and then I read something I like, or I write something that turns out better than expected, and I make little notes and footnotes on that list. I've probably forgotten a lot of it, seeing that I never wrote it down and my memory (or lack thereof) has literally made my teachers despair.
In the last few weeks or so, I've come to realise that at the end of the day, there's really only one item on that list. And that's: Writing well, like doing anything else well, just boils down to a lot of hard work.
Unless you're one of those exceedingly talented people (and my f-list is filled with them), in which case, just go away.
Otherwise, for the rest of us mere mortals, there's really no substitute for writing a lot, reading a whole lot across many different genres (and I freely confess that I don't do this anywhere near enough, because reading fanfiction just isn't enough, which is why my writing will always be less polished than I would like), research, and living and breathing the characters until you know them like the back of your hand (whether it's research, for fanfic, or character/world building, for orig fic). I've been writing in the Vorkosigan fandom for ... what is it, slightly over a year, now? Started reading the series when I was still a teenager? And I still don't feel like I have anywhere near the grasp I need to attempt a fic about the main characters.
ETA: And to forestall possible arguments - I'm not one of those exceedingly talented people. I just had hundreds of thousands of words of orig fic under my belt before I even burst onto the fanfic scene (come on, I wrote my first "fic" when I was 5. It was about rabbits) which gave me an unfair advantage - and went to my head - and ten years later I'm cringing at the garbage I used to put up, back in the day. (omg I've really been writing fanfic for 10 years. Ancient of days indeed).
The problem with me, my Achilles' heel, even at work, is that I simply have no patience. I'll spend however much time and effort on something, only to rush the last 20% of it, because I just want to see the end so badly. This happens whether I'm at work, or whether I'm writing fic, or whether I'm on the treadmill, trying to clock a certain distance or even a certain time (even if I do realise that ramping the speed up to 12km/h or beyond does not make the time limit come any faster).
This has gotten better since I started work, and the amount of care [1] that I put into my fics now is a far cry from the days where I'd bash out a chapter of 1000 words and post it up so that I could have the satisfaction of having completed something. And the results are entirely worth it.
[1] Even if it's still not quite enough care, because, lack of patience, and all that. But I actually proof-read, now. And I'm actually thinking of getting a beta reader for one of my next fics. Miracles never cease.
I'm pretty happy with what I've written this year, especially Attributes of Instinct, and the 50,000 unposted words of Echoes of Empire that I'm still continually tweaking. I've always been in awe of the way writers can seed a book with multiple strands throughout and somehow pull them all together in a way that makes amazing sense at the end of the story - and Attributes is the first piece where I've managed to do that (repeatedly, over and over again), and it was just one of those pieces that clicked.
I rushed the latest fic, The Boundaries of Our Dreams, and I can feel it grating down my nerves in the second half - my only excuse for that is that I decided to finish it quickly so that I can get round to re-writing it (starting a re-write before I've even finished the first version - I really have no patience at all). I'm not particularly happy with White Knights, but that's because I've left it incomplete for so long that it's grating, but I did put a lot of care into its technical construction (and truth to be told, I'm a little disappointed that no one's commented on the way the narrative tone of that piece evolves from start to finish as the narrator himself grows older - a gimmick, but a fun one).
I've learnt a lot about my work and my writing style, this year. And how it's better to finish a piece before posting it, because you will always go back and change things. And this wasn't meant to be a 2011 recap, but it seems to have turned into one, anyway.
ETA2: There's also a lot to be said for writing for the book-fandoms: they are terrifying, because the readers and writers are just so good. I haven't had to reach for an English-English dictionary in about ten years, and never while reading a fanfic. And I've never had to turn to Wikipedia to look up something someone's said to me in a comment before. The FF7 fandom will let me get away with a whole lot of stuff, and the anime fandoms even moreso, but the Vorkosigan fandom nails every doubt and every tiny plot hole. And they do it so nicely that you want to crawl under a rock and not come back out.
And the relevant tag is, of course, the most simple and logical thing possible. (And even better - they actually support lj-cut as well). I love how DW just makes sense.
I've had this list of "things to take note of when writing" in my head for the last five or six years, technical notes on how-to-write-good-fic. Every now and then I read something I like, or I write something that turns out better than expected, and I make little notes and footnotes on that list. I've probably forgotten a lot of it, seeing that I never wrote it down and my memory (or lack thereof) has literally made my teachers despair.
In the last few weeks or so, I've come to realise that at the end of the day, there's really only one item on that list. And that's: Writing well, like doing anything else well, just boils down to a lot of hard work.
Unless you're one of those exceedingly talented people (and my f-list is filled with them), in which case, just go away.
Otherwise, for the rest of us mere mortals, there's really no substitute for writing a lot, reading a whole lot across many different genres (and I freely confess that I don't do this anywhere near enough, because reading fanfiction just isn't enough, which is why my writing will always be less polished than I would like), research, and living and breathing the characters until you know them like the back of your hand (whether it's research, for fanfic, or character/world building, for orig fic). I've been writing in the Vorkosigan fandom for ... what is it, slightly over a year, now? Started reading the series when I was still a teenager? And I still don't feel like I have anywhere near the grasp I need to attempt a fic about the main characters.
ETA: And to forestall possible arguments - I'm not one of those exceedingly talented people. I just had hundreds of thousands of words of orig fic under my belt before I even burst onto the fanfic scene (come on, I wrote my first "fic" when I was 5. It was about rabbits) which gave me an unfair advantage - and went to my head - and ten years later I'm cringing at the garbage I used to put up, back in the day. (omg I've really been writing fanfic for 10 years. Ancient of days indeed).
The problem with me, my Achilles' heel, even at work, is that I simply have no patience. I'll spend however much time and effort on something, only to rush the last 20% of it, because I just want to see the end so badly. This happens whether I'm at work, or whether I'm writing fic, or whether I'm on the treadmill, trying to clock a certain distance or even a certain time (even if I do realise that ramping the speed up to 12km/h or beyond does not make the time limit come any faster).
This has gotten better since I started work, and the amount of care [1] that I put into my fics now is a far cry from the days where I'd bash out a chapter of 1000 words and post it up so that I could have the satisfaction of having completed something. And the results are entirely worth it.
[1] Even if it's still not quite enough care, because, lack of patience, and all that. But I actually proof-read, now. And I'm actually thinking of getting a beta reader for one of my next fics. Miracles never cease.
I'm pretty happy with what I've written this year, especially Attributes of Instinct, and the 50,000 unposted words of Echoes of Empire that I'm still continually tweaking. I've always been in awe of the way writers can seed a book with multiple strands throughout and somehow pull them all together in a way that makes amazing sense at the end of the story - and Attributes is the first piece where I've managed to do that (repeatedly, over and over again), and it was just one of those pieces that clicked.
I rushed the latest fic, The Boundaries of Our Dreams, and I can feel it grating down my nerves in the second half - my only excuse for that is that I decided to finish it quickly so that I can get round to re-writing it (starting a re-write before I've even finished the first version - I really have no patience at all). I'm not particularly happy with White Knights, but that's because I've left it incomplete for so long that it's grating, but I did put a lot of care into its technical construction (and truth to be told, I'm a little disappointed that no one's commented on the way the narrative tone of that piece evolves from start to finish as the narrator himself grows older - a gimmick, but a fun one).
I've learnt a lot about my work and my writing style, this year. And how it's better to finish a piece before posting it, because you will always go back and change things. And this wasn't meant to be a 2011 recap, but it seems to have turned into one, anyway.
ETA2: There's also a lot to be said for writing for the book-fandoms: they are terrifying, because the readers and writers are just so good. I haven't had to reach for an English-English dictionary in about ten years, and never while reading a fanfic. And I've never had to turn to Wikipedia to look up something someone's said to me in a comment before. The FF7 fandom will let me get away with a whole lot of stuff, and the anime fandoms even moreso, but the Vorkosigan fandom nails every doubt and every tiny plot hole. And they do it so nicely that you want to crawl under a rock and not come back out.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-27 05:23 pm (UTC)From:I did actually notice Ivan's narrative style changing as White Knights goes on (and I'm off to read the new instalment of it next, btw) and I thought you particularly nailed Ivan's child-voice.
As for the rest, I keep a mental list of Things To Watch Out For when reading too. Not so much when I write, I'm not good at analysing as I go when I'm writing, but I do often read something with a technical/critical eye if it strikes me as good in some particular way. Or, occasionally, if something seems very wrong to me, I'll read it critically to try to work out why, so as to (hopefully) avoid making that particular mistake. Not that there doesn't seem to be an endless list of mistakes to make... but as you say, that's part of the hard work of writing.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-27 10:21 pm (UTC)From:I can churn out fic like crazy when I get in the groove, but I'm like an old truck in the cold. It takes a while for me to get trucking.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-28 03:01 am (UTC)From:*laugh* I'm really joking about the terrifying bit, because everyone is absolutely lovely without being critical at all (and we all know how nasty fandom can get!). But I mean every word I say about how utterly brilliant and intelligent and thoughtful the writers and readers are. It's great how people know their canon so well, and really think about the implications of things in an AU - it's really fun to get all these comments saying "I wonder how this would have turned out..." (this is also why my Aral-on-Beta fic has stalled so badly - I got caught up thinking about too many things, whoops!)
I'm not great at analysing my current work, but a lot of the time I look back and realise that a lot of what i wrote a few years ago is terrible. (and occasionally I surprise myself by finding something that's not-terrible). I guess we're all WIPs! :)
Speaking of WIPs, I raided some of your W not-I Ps that you put up on your journal and love them to bits- will have to drop by with a separate comment on that!