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nezukoI think collaborative writing has ruined me. Or maybe I'm not really a writer. I mean, I say I love to write, but I have no discipline, and I never finish my stories, and I have a really hard time making myself just sit down and write unless I'm writing with someone else.
I love writing collaboratively because you get feedback and you get unexpected plot twists, and you get to share in the creative experience, and two heads (or three or four) are so much better than one. It's just endlessly exciting. But writing by yourself... that's lonely. I can sustain it for a while, but then I lose interest, and if there's a collaborative project to work on, I drop the solo one.
Of course when there's no collaborative project to work on, that's also lonely.
And when your usual partners are busy collaborating with each other and you're not? Hella lonely.
If I wish I were writing and there's no one to write with at the moment, the logical thing to do, I tell myself, would be to go work on something solo. But somehow writing alone feels oddly painful.
Or I could go find something different, different friends, a different collaboration to work on, but I'm picky as hell about my collaborations. I have ridiculously high standards, and I know it, and screw it, I'm entitled to them. It's just not fun if I'm not also aiming for perfection.
No matter how many times I take the Myers-Briggs test, I come out ENFP. Just a little more extroverted than introverted, but it's enough to mean that I crave interaction more than solitude. I don't like that about myself — it's a weakness and I'm ashamed of it — but I can't seem to change it. I'm only a little less introverted than extroverted, though, so that means I also need a good bit of down time, alone time, recharge time, and that confuses me, since I'm so close to being a properly introverted creative genius, but I miss the mark.
I understand the rest of my attributes. That N? Intuitive. 100%. Head-in-the-clouds, dreamer, theorist, imaginer, connect-the-dots, creative leaps, big-picture kind of guy. F? Feeling. Although that's another one where I'm only slightly more Feeling than Thinking oriented. But that's a matter of being smart and having been raised to value logic over emotion. The truth is, when push comes to shove, I might analyze something to death, but in the end I'll still follow my heart. And the P? It stands for "perceiving" but it really ought to stand for Procrastinator. 100% again. I love to start projects but often don't finish them. I hate to be locked into a plan too early, and chafe at rules and standards. I have a fun ethic, not a work ethic.
There must be some trick to it. Some trick that lets real writers feel satisfied working by themselves. And that gets them to not just start projects but finish them, and do all the hard work it takes to get them published. Some trick I could use on myself.
Also some trick to getting over needing other people to cheerlead and collaborate.
If you know what it is, please tell me.
I love writing collaboratively because you get feedback and you get unexpected plot twists, and you get to share in the creative experience, and two heads (or three or four) are so much better than one. It's just endlessly exciting. But writing by yourself... that's lonely. I can sustain it for a while, but then I lose interest, and if there's a collaborative project to work on, I drop the solo one.
Of course when there's no collaborative project to work on, that's also lonely.
And when your usual partners are busy collaborating with each other and you're not? Hella lonely.
If I wish I were writing and there's no one to write with at the moment, the logical thing to do, I tell myself, would be to go work on something solo. But somehow writing alone feels oddly painful.
Or I could go find something different, different friends, a different collaboration to work on, but I'm picky as hell about my collaborations. I have ridiculously high standards, and I know it, and screw it, I'm entitled to them. It's just not fun if I'm not also aiming for perfection.
No matter how many times I take the Myers-Briggs test, I come out ENFP. Just a little more extroverted than introverted, but it's enough to mean that I crave interaction more than solitude. I don't like that about myself — it's a weakness and I'm ashamed of it — but I can't seem to change it. I'm only a little less introverted than extroverted, though, so that means I also need a good bit of down time, alone time, recharge time, and that confuses me, since I'm so close to being a properly introverted creative genius, but I miss the mark.
I understand the rest of my attributes. That N? Intuitive. 100%. Head-in-the-clouds, dreamer, theorist, imaginer, connect-the-dots, creative leaps, big-picture kind of guy. F? Feeling. Although that's another one where I'm only slightly more Feeling than Thinking oriented. But that's a matter of being smart and having been raised to value logic over emotion. The truth is, when push comes to shove, I might analyze something to death, but in the end I'll still follow my heart. And the P? It stands for "perceiving" but it really ought to stand for Procrastinator. 100% again. I love to start projects but often don't finish them. I hate to be locked into a plan too early, and chafe at rules and standards. I have a fun ethic, not a work ethic.
There must be some trick to it. Some trick that lets real writers feel satisfied working by themselves. And that gets them to not just start projects but finish them, and do all the hard work it takes to get them published. Some trick I could use on myself.
Also some trick to getting over needing other people to cheerlead and collaborate.
If you know what it is, please tell me.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 05:16 pm (UTC)But then I realised - before, I had feedback from my siblings. I discussed storylines, plottings, characterisation. Even though I wasn't collaborating with them, we'd come up with storylines, or I'd write chapters and show them to my siblings and they'd give me feedback, even if it's the "WOW I hate xyz character!" and I'd go "I KNOW!" and so on.
So not all writers work that way, I think. I mean, the whole, solitary thing. I think you might need feedback - even if it's not on a collaborative work. You probably could try and write something, and show someone? open a brainstorming page? if nothing else, it'd make the brain feel juicy?
<3
no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 05:21 pm (UTC)My favourite writer? Diana Wynne Jones. Quintessential British author, eccentric, has a tendency to put boots in ovens instead of food when she gets the writing bug...
And her sons wait EAGERLY for her pages to come off the type-writer, go 'and then and then and THEN!?" at her as she's writing.
If that's not encouraging and cheerleading, I don't know what is.
A lot of 'real' writers have this, page of people they want to thank for their support. most of these people, I'd bet with you, are cheer-leaders, who are willing to read everything and go 'what's next?' or 'hey, this feels dodgy' or 'where'd his extra arm go?'
Of course it'd help if you had that cheerleader in the same house, same meatspace as you, so they can literally come up to you and say "I've finished it, where's the next chapter?" And you don't have to make meetings online and stuff, and you get your whole, extrovert meeting/social life too. you know what I mean?
I think it's just a matter of figuring out what makes it work. What makes YOU work.