Lately I've spent far too much time revising both old stories and my YA novel and far too little time with new stuff. I'm determined to keep both going. Revising is not easy (at least for me it isn't), but it's fairly safe. Writing new stuff often takes you places that have the potential for shaking you up.
I often awake after a really weird dream thinking, "This would make a great story," only to realize after writing a few sentences that it's either a hopeless jumble of incoherent scenes or just plain silly. But the dream I had a couple of nights ago seems different. I think there's something there. The reason? It's making me very uncomfortable. Every time I've read writers speak of what makes them uncomfortable, they usually also say that there's a great story waiting behind all the discomfort. I don't know that there's a great story here (maybe just a good one, which would be fine with me), but it's definitely one worth examining, discomfort and all.
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I've noticed I haven't written any entries in my "Playing Favorites" section in several months, so I hope to have something new up soon. Although I have music degrees, I feel very inadequate in writing about music, so hopefully I'll both get past that and improve as I write about my favorite tunes from any and all eras. These aren't necessarily the greatest songs I'm writing about, but my favorites, some of which are probably downright awful. You can find my previous entries here.
2 comments:
I have the opposite affliction. I give myself all sorts of license while writing new stuff because it doesn't need to be good at that stage, but I find rewrites to be far more stressful because at that point I'm trying to come up with something that I hope is publishable.
Comfort=boring. Go with the uncomfortable and see where it takes you.
The best is when you keep a pad next to your bed to write down good ideas for stories from your dreams only to read it in the morning and realize what you wrote down doesn't making any sense whatsoever.
Or the few times that it does, you read it and realize it wasn't half as good an idea as you thought when you were a state of groggy stupor.
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