Many writing maladies can be prevented. Editing may present the cure, but Writing deserves prevention. I have the tendency to over describe. Adjectives on top of adjectives and six-clause sentences. Lovely? Maybe. Important? Maybe not.
When I pack up my Mead journal and head to a picnic bench on campus (pretending to be a student hehe) or to a coffee shop or a touristy beach, I write A LOT better.
Isn't that odd?
I thought writing was about cabins in woods. I had my cabin in the woods. It worked pretty darn good for productivity but not so good for the understandability factor.
When people are laughing, eating, drinking, mixing, texting around me, I find that I write only the most important things. Only what the character is thinking in that moment. My character can't pick out every little detail in the scene, because that family over there is fighting about when to go back to their hotel and that girl is waiting for her boyfriend and that floatee is flying away and that cappuccino is ready...and...what was I saying?
Oh scratch that detail! Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Focus. Only the most important things.
I liked that which you wrote up there, don't scratch, scratch. AND you wrote wonderfully at that cabin in the woods and I understood it. Don't over analyize what you do, enjoy what flows out of you. I sure do.
ReplyDeleteIts all part of the process. I love the time I had in the woods, and you are one of my greatest sources of encouragement, so I'm glad to hear that. But, I keep getting better. So in hindsight, what I wrote was crap.
ReplyDeleteAnd I like that. It will always be that way.