My Writing Habits

Dear Wal,

A few things have started to assemble themselves out of the random madness that is my writing. My mind has been completely scrambled to day, so forgive me if my train of thought seems a little scrambled. It's been a long, weird day. (Which is saying something, since I got up at 11. You might think that would be part of the reason for the weirdness, but I always get up at 11.)


Binge Writing
I tend to explode all over the paper and anything else within reach. These are the times when I write 10-20 pages at a time and murder at least two pens in the process. The poor things. I get an idea, and they start dropping like flies. Many of my stories have had the majority of them written this way. What happens is: I write a massive chunk of story and then I don't pick it up for the next two weeks, or I just chip away at it. These episodes of mega-writing have been some of the most wonderful experiences I've ever had, and some of the most terrible. When I get going, it doesn't matter what music I'm listening to or what's going on in the room; I don't see or hear anything else for the next X hours. Sometimes these things can last for just an hour or so, and other times they can last all day. The ones I hate are when I write a huge chunk of story and then end up scrapping it because I figured something out that makes it void or it's just crap.
I tend to get wrapped up in the moment, and I have to be really careful to pick a good place to stop. I have to make sure that I haven't left anything unsaid, but also that I'm not about to go spirally off into a massive plot snare because I refused to stop.

Endurance
I have none. Only one story that I can remember have I been able to stick out to the end without doubting myself or throwing it out in disgust or whatever else. Most of my stories go through several versions before I will accept them as complete. That in itself is a frustraitingly slow process. I just want to finish it, transplant my ideas instantly to the pages and never have to go through the agonizing hours it takes to type or write out my thoughts. My brain works so fast sometimes I can't even keep up with typing, and I type fast.
Needless to say, I have little patience with my stories. They're all fairly short: five or six pages at the minimum and twenty to forty at the max. The longer ones I have to do in segments, essentially several stories within a story or at least several distinctive sectors of the same story, in order to make it through. My Batman fanfiction, naturally, is done in 24 page issues. Elliot's story is in three parts.
I've been trying to gain a little more patience, but it isn't easy. I'm not the kind of person who can just sit around and wait for inspiration. My writing is like a switch in my head, only the wiring's not so good so it doesn't always work.

Revising
I get myself into some of the biggest tangles in revision. As I said before, it's a process that I can't stand, but it's a necessary process. I can't plan out every step of my story carefully in my mind so that when it goes down on paper that is the finished product, other than spelling and grammar. My friend Watson can do that. She always plans her stories very carefully. I don't. I start with an idea, I see the shape of the story, and I run with it. I don't stop to figure out whether or not it makes sense along the way. That's a habit from NaNo. It can be a blessing and a curse. It means I don't get stuck; I just take the characters out of whatever weird situation and get them moving again. But it also means that it's almost impossible to tell when to stop, so I don't have a huge mess to clean up later in revision.
For me, revising is never very satisfying. When I write a story and I know it's good the first time, that gives me an incredible sense of accomplishment. I did it. I got it down. And it's awesome. But when I have to fiddle with a story to make it good I never feel nearly as accomplished. It feels...forced, almost. It's strange, I know.

Sudden Inspiration
I very rarely forget an idea if it pops into my head and I have to save it for later for some reason. I guess it's like this special place in my mind I can open up and reach into and find that scene I came up with ages ago and then write it down. Sometimes it comes up exactly how it was meant to be, sometimes better, other times it just sucks. I've gotten into the habit of 'saving' these ideas in my head, and they're starting to build up and get annoying. It's a good thing that I can remember these things, but I never get around to writing them down. This happens most often with my Batman fanfic, because there is so much that I haven't written. The sheer volume of information about characters, backstories, epic story arcs and small moments is daunting. It's something I've had to chip away at, one of the many reasons why it still hasn't been finished yet.
What happens is: I get an idea. I'm busy or lazy or whatever, and I decide to write it down later. So it sits there. And sits there. And gets put off, and put off, until eventually it's just another thing eternally nagging at me. Reminding me of something I didn't do.
Mom explained it the other day as a weight that sits there and drags on you, even if you don't notice it. It's not like a fact or a date or something you know from somewhere else, because if you forget something like that you can always go back and look it up later. You can't with things you've invented. If you forget it, it's gone, and in the void left behind is the feeling that you've forgotten something incredibly important but you just can't remember what.
I've been able to replicate whole stories from memory before. One time I trashed a story because it scared me, there were all kinds of things happening I could never have seen coming. As soon as I deleted it I realized how much of an idiot I was for doing so. It was one of the best things I ever wrote, however insane it was. So I sat down and I wrote the whole thing over again and continued. I actually almost finished it. It didn't survive revision, sadly.

Multiple Stories
I'm always writing more than one thing at once. Right now, I have two fanfictions, a science fiction and a fantasy going. I have to write more than one thing or else I get bored, and then I get frustrated, and then bad things happen. It's a strange way to write, though, because there are places where the stories overlap and run together and if I'm not careful the lines between them start to blur. My fantasy character, for instance, might start acting like Jason. Or I might suddenly conjure up an alternate story line where my fantasy characters get transported into the DC universe, adrift in time and space. That actually happened. I had a whole story line going for them. It wasn't half bad, except that it dug the story line deeper into deep you-know-what. Other times I'll come up with something in the middle of one story, and then have to switch over to another because I can't let it sit in case I forget it.

Tells
There are little things in my writing I can use to tell me if my story is about to tank or keep flying on the straight and narrow. There's a certain feeling when I know what I'm writing is good, but when it starts to fade I tend to start floundering around. Things like poorly or just excessively used cliches will start popping up more and more, or I'll have trouble illustrating that a character is walking across the room in my narrative. That's the time when I usually realize it's time to stop. Sometimes, however, I just keep going. Many of my stories have had to be rewritten because of that.
If I'm switching my music too much, or listening in on a conversation instead of thinking about my story, then I know I'm just out of ideas. Concentration isn't difficult for me. I can drown myself in whatever it is I'm doing, and never see or hear anything else. It drives Watson crazy.
If elements of another story I'm currently working on start seeping into another story where they don't belong, then I know I need to go write the story that's seeping. This one I only figured out recently. Poor Jason has been so abused because of this particular tell. All kinds of things have happened to him. I still haven't sorted everything out.

And finally...

Blog Posts
I hope you all realize by now that every story I tell on here is usually written a day or more after the actual event. Mostly because I'm too lazy to sit down and write it that day, but sometimes it's because I'm legitimately too busy to write this blog. It sucks. I like blogging. It's the only kind of writing I've ever done on something of a schedule outside of schoolwork outside of NaNo. Other times, I'll go for days without any idea of what I should write. Or I';ll have so many ideas it's impossible to get them all down. One time I came up with four or five blog posts in one day. I just gave up.
Those posts that randomly spring into being in bunches like that I usually end up trashing, because posts are something I absolutely must do the moment I get the idea or else they never get written. I have seven drafted posts I never finished, most of them titles without even a sentence, and countless others I just tossed because I didn't write them in the moment. I'm getting better at it though. As I hope this post has demonstrated, I'm not used to writing creatively on a schedule at all.

/endrant

P.S. I wrote this the last hour and a half without stopping. I would consider this a binge blog post.

P.P.S. I GOT A SUBSCRIPTION TO DETECTIVE COMICS. OH YEAH.