Writing is Hard <- many are saying this

[fitia]

I'm very inconsistent when it comes to training the technical aspect of writing I say as if I'm consistent about writing in general, but today, I decided to take half an hour out of my evening to sit down, lock in, and actually do some goddamn practicing.

Though I'm making it sound more settled than it was. The actual process was more opening a LibreOffice document, writing down the skills I'd like to train and the sorts of exercises that would help train them, forgetting about the document for an hour while I did acrostic puzzles on Sporcle (which are super fun, btw) and scrolled on Tumblr, and THEN finally decided that I wanted to do timed flash fiction exercises in order to both train my ability to use words effectively and be concise, and my ability to... actually put words to paper! Because the "staring at an empty document" struggle is real, and it's kind of stupid how obvious it is that setting a time-limit actually forces your brain to act.

So, technically, the whole thing took around 3-ish hours. I'll train myself out of being distracted so often some other time.

The exercise I tried today was to lift some random, one sentence prompts from the internet, and to write mini "stories" based on each one, in more or less 500 words and within 10 minutes. Here's what I learned from it:

• I reallyyyyy underestimated how much 500 words actually is. While I still managed to write somewhat full and coherent "scenes" (except for the first attempt, where I ran out of time), the longest one I wrote sat at only 317 words, and I just barely managed to finish that one before the 10 minutes were up. I think I'll reduce the word limit going forward.
• Obviously you can't get all flowery and literary in such limited time and space, and this is the first writing exercise I've done in a while, but it still bugged me how uncreative I was with vocabulary. It feels like I'm still a long way from more precise language (words and expressions) coming to me instinctively.
• I did still manage to write at all, today! 800-ish disconnected practice words, maybe, but it's still writing! I'm not sure if this is something I'll be able to keep up daily, but it's undemanding enough that I can see myself being more consistent about it. I'm thinking of doing an alternating thing, where I write from prompts one day, and then the next, after my brain's cooled down, I analyze what I've written, look at the gaps and see what needs to be improved.

Another thing that makes the process of writing practice difficult is that I am honestly committed to being, like, good at it, to a certain degree. This is hard to do without the help of someone more experienced acting as a critic T_T so I'm thinking that maybe I should find someone who has the patience to walk some of this through with me, so I can get more of a sense of progress through feedback. But that'll have to be for another day.

Comments

[dividedbyblue]

It doesn't seem very easy to make a 500-word story in 10 minutes. Kudos for being able to do this! I sometimes write (mainly in Dutch, my native language; sometimes in English but that's more difficult), and most of the things I write are under 500 words. It takes me a very long time to make those stories feel somewhat 'good'. You can be proud that you were able to do this exercise!

[fitia]

Thank you! And it definitely is difficult, but it does feel really good to be able to get words on paper!

I sympathize soooo much with trying to make even the shorter stories sound good: I'm a bit of a self-defeating perfectionist in that regard, and have the instinct to rework and rework to infinity— without ever managing to finish much in the end 😔 which is why this was a really good exercise to do, because it just forced me to get something done!

[dividedbyblue]

It's hard being a perfectionist, I can relate. Thankfully, with the years, it's gotten a bit better. I used to sabotage myself a lot because of this; it's difficult.

Yes, I can imagine it being a good exercise against overthinking. It reminds me of drawing a series of quick 5-minute (or shorter) poses, one after the other (there are a few sites for that), and that also helps me to just draw the pose, and not think too much about getting it all perfect.

[fitia]

Right! I'm glad you've managed to slough off your own perfectionism over the years! I really hope that I'll slowly manage to temper mine.