dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
- Posts
- 11,528
I don't equate the time it takes to write a story to its quality. Not at all. I don't even equate the time it takes to write a story to the amount of work that goes into it. You can have some piece of cheese gathering dust for a year or two that you've put less work into than you have into a three-hour sweat-bath.
I've had things kind of bump along behind the boat for months. Every so often I'll haul it in and kind of look at it and try and decide if I still want to work on it or not. That doesn't mean I've been working on it for months, That means that I haven't been working on it for months.
Then there's work and there's work. Trying to make your prose into something decent to read is one thing. Fixing all your idiotic mistakes is another. One is work, the other is just drudgery. There's a lot of drudgery in writing, but it's something we do for the reader.
I think maybe a more interesting question is how do you know when you're done with something? Some people bang out a story while they're watching Springer and it looks swell to them and they're done. Some people slave over every word.
I myself have never finished anything. Usually I just wear out my patience and feel that it's good enough, or I stop caring and so it's good enough. But I have never ever read anything of mine that I considered truly and finally finished, and I never expect that I will. I doubt that there's a writer who's worth reading who feels a story is as good as it can be. I just can't conceive of feeling that a story is simply beyond improvement. If you think that, it only means that you've reached the end of your talent, not the end of your art.
Knowing when to stop is part of the craft. There seems to be an optimal writing period (talking about real writing: revising, editing) and for me, and if I work on the story for longer than that it starts to get over-ripe, over worked. (That doesn't mean that I ever think it's finished or couldn;t be made better. It does mean I have to walk away from it for a good long time.) I would guess optimal real-work time would come out to something like 2-3 hours/page averaged over all I have done here. That's real keyboard work time, not just drawer time or walking-around-the-clock-thinking-about-it-time.
For people who can just crank it out on a linear foot/hour basis, I can understand your admiration for yourself. I think that some of the most satisfying writing I've ever done is in a white heat, when it just flows. But I've never been able to assemble a plot in a white heat, or proofread in a white heat.
I would suggest that one of the reasons you're able to write so quickly is because you basically don't give much of a shit about the quality of what you've written. I mean, obviously if you did care, you would have taken more time. Isn't thatthe definition of "caring"?
Makes sense to me.
---dr.M.
I've had things kind of bump along behind the boat for months. Every so often I'll haul it in and kind of look at it and try and decide if I still want to work on it or not. That doesn't mean I've been working on it for months, That means that I haven't been working on it for months.
Then there's work and there's work. Trying to make your prose into something decent to read is one thing. Fixing all your idiotic mistakes is another. One is work, the other is just drudgery. There's a lot of drudgery in writing, but it's something we do for the reader.
I think maybe a more interesting question is how do you know when you're done with something? Some people bang out a story while they're watching Springer and it looks swell to them and they're done. Some people slave over every word.
I myself have never finished anything. Usually I just wear out my patience and feel that it's good enough, or I stop caring and so it's good enough. But I have never ever read anything of mine that I considered truly and finally finished, and I never expect that I will. I doubt that there's a writer who's worth reading who feels a story is as good as it can be. I just can't conceive of feeling that a story is simply beyond improvement. If you think that, it only means that you've reached the end of your talent, not the end of your art.
Knowing when to stop is part of the craft. There seems to be an optimal writing period (talking about real writing: revising, editing) and for me, and if I work on the story for longer than that it starts to get over-ripe, over worked. (That doesn't mean that I ever think it's finished or couldn;t be made better. It does mean I have to walk away from it for a good long time.) I would guess optimal real-work time would come out to something like 2-3 hours/page averaged over all I have done here. That's real keyboard work time, not just drawer time or walking-around-the-clock-thinking-about-it-time.
For people who can just crank it out on a linear foot/hour basis, I can understand your admiration for yourself. I think that some of the most satisfying writing I've ever done is in a white heat, when it just flows. But I've never been able to assemble a plot in a white heat, or proofread in a white heat.
I would suggest that one of the reasons you're able to write so quickly is because you basically don't give much of a shit about the quality of what you've written. I mean, obviously if you did care, you would have taken more time. Isn't thatthe definition of "caring"?
Makes sense to me.
---dr.M.
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