Saturday, July 19, 2008

So I've been thinking...

Hehe, that's an understatement... and at the same time quite some progress.

I check my email constantly, everyday and probably every hour for updates in everything I need to know. My career options, my friends' comments (like I really have any who'll write to me), and then some news updates from fansites... and then most importantly, the update of the next chapter for my current obsession of original writing, Through Me by Maeven.

The newest chapter has been updated finally and each time she updates, I leave her story feeling extremely content.

As a follow-up, after reading her update notes, I realize just how long of a road I have to go just to catch up to her. I like to write for myself, but not once have I been able to even establish the plot of my stories before I lost motivation or come to a stop where I'm unsure of where to continue on.

I have a very bad habit of following my train of thought and pounding out page after page of work until I come upon a part of my plot that just doesn't seem to fit. And so instead of working around what I've already written, I stubbornly go back and change something, which in turn somehow always changes everything. And so I have reread the whole ordeal to decide whether I really want to keep that change, find another place to change, or go with the new change and rewrite the whole fiasco.

I'm horrible.

I tried a new tactic to my writing a while back by outlining some important factors and going from there. But that hasn't seemed to work either as I realized that I've successfully confined myself to a set plot and when I don't have anything to write for a specific part of my outline, I'm stopped once again.

But what nonsense am I spouting right now?

I love to write, but when the idea comes around to writing and then sharing, I never think my material is good enough for others to see. So I purposefully go back and find flaws with my entire storyline and somehow convince myself that I need to rewrite the whole thing. It's a vicious cycle, because no matter what route I take, I end up going back and rewriting something. Or stopping completely.

I'm a little disappointed in myself. Somehow, I'd love to rewind back to my old fanfiction writing days where I seemed to be able to spit out chapter after chapter without regard to how people will really like it. But at least then, I was motivated to continue writing.

And now a stupid revelation: maybe I should just start posting the first few chapters I've managed to write of something. Because if I do that, I'll get some encouragement (or flames) from readers and decide from there if I want to continue the story at all. I did that when I wrote fanfiction, but my goal after I gave up on fanfiction was to at least write 50% of my story before even showing it to anyone. Because when 50% is written, I somehow believe I won't irrationally go back and change something on impulse that could change the whole story. The plot will be set in stone and I can't go back.
(Editing is option, of course.)

But anyway, now that my post has gone this far, I need to wonder what it is exactly that I'm trying to do. I feel like I just rambled a whole load of bull and that I need to step down for a while and recollect all of my thoughts.

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