Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Just a writer...

I took a peek at a blog’s link that was on WdC’s FB page. What I read was proof to what I have been convinced of all along. The writer says, “narrative structure and conflict lock and character plotting and so forth are just frameworks in which your story needs to work. They’re NOT your story.” True, the technical and the mechanical parts we are so keen on do not make the story. Surely, that knowledge should be soaked inside our minds as reference, but a writer’s stories can come only from that writer. No one else can really write them because no one has experienced her or his life.

The blog entry reiterates the positives of “plotting (planning), writing, rewriting and more plotting (planning), then rewriting some more.” Too much work, right?

Well, at least too much for me. Most of the time, I write something and I’m done. I may go back on it from time to time, fixing one thing or another, especially if I have had some helpful reviews on it, but I have never changed any story or (forget it!) a novel in a big way as to its structure, voice etc. This makes me a writer who may be called a writer only because she writes. Not a writer successful in writing anything full fledged.

That must be why I enjoyed the two Nanoes I participated in because I just wrote. Funny thing is, I didn’t do any real prep work for either of them. Although I started with an idea or a character, some of the research came while the novel progressed. And planning a plot? Forget it! Not for me.

I know from experience too much planning and research will kill my motivation even before I start. Once upon a time, I planned a novel and only wrote six chapters on it. I just couldn’t finish it. That novel is still idling in my port. So much for planning…

I figure if I do that much work before writing, I am not going to write that novel in one month. But then, if I let go of NaNo and ate and drank writing a novel for as long as it takes, I would never do it. For sure, life, family, or I myself would hinder it. Catch 22, all over again.

The writer of the blog says, “Writing successfully takes an amount of work that few are willing to embrace.”

So true! And I know I am not among those few.

http://annawrites.com/blog/2011/03/23/how-we-write-our-secret-plot-revise-plot-r...