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I 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.
