One thing I love about writing fiction is that it's a non-destructive medium. You can try anything, and if it works, you can improve it. If it doesn't, you can fix it, or delete it. There isn't any 'door of no return' like there would be if you were trying to do ice sculptures with a chainsaw (for that artist, going back is impossible). The delete key is your friend.
The most inspirational quote I've ever heard is something I've been living by now for a long time:
"The only way to figure out where the edge is, is to go over it."
It's a paraphrase, actually, of a statement by Hunter S. Thompson. There is a boatload of brilliant truth in that statement. How do you get from point A to point B? You just try, even if you begin with no good path in mind. When you do, that's when you start to figure out how to get there, even if those early steps may not have been in the perfect direction.
His statement was actually about taking risks and being reckless, saying you have to do dangerous stuff to get anywhere. If you've read his novels, that would make sense to you.
But there is a wisdom there that he might not even have been aware of. If you apply Thompson's theory to writing fiction, there's absolutely no danger in crossing over the edge. Regardless what happens, it's always a positive step in a positive direction, precisely because writing fiction is a non-destructive medium. It's the circuitous path to getting to point B. But it gets you there. Nothing else really does.
And for me, that completely dispels the fear of screwing up, and of being ashamed of not being perfect in early attempts. In writing fiction, you can always quite easily go back and do it better, regardless how you did it the first time. Snapshots in time of how you did it earlier are not in any way indications of how imperfect you might be.
Thompson's theory actually gives you a license to screw up! It's your get out of jail free card.
No one but you is ever going to see anything other than that final draft, anyway.
That's a great quote (at least for writing, if not - as I suspect Thompson meant it - also for life :) As a creative theory it is brilliant and absolutely true, thank you!
A superb analysis of how we do need to go wrong now and then.
And about the dashes vs quotation mark thing: I don't know how well it works with punctuation issues but the "Project replace" button might be worth a try. 🤔
When I decided I didn’t like a character's name anymore I used the "Project replace" function and it worked perfectly. It works on the entire project or just the selected documents in the binder if you want.
On Windows the path is: Edit > Find > Project Replace.
In this case I like changing them by hand, since I'm still rewriting so much. Each time I run into one, I get to think about how the sentence should run.
Especially because when I put in all those dashes, I took out a bunch of "he said" and "she said" bits with some amount of description of how they said it or what else they were doing - and I miss that stuff.
But for name changes - I definitely use "Find and Replace"!
Yep. A good lesson is paid through time and effort. A similar thing happened to me right before I started writing on my current manuscript.
It was supposed to be a detective noir written in my national language. Haven't seen many of those so I thought it could be fun. When I started outlining, the plan was to adopt Christie and Conan Doyle by looking at the main character through the lens of another character.
So I made these "supporting" characters to 'view' the main character from different angles. I had fun imagining and planning how to thicken these unassuming overdose cases to a possible serial killer on the loose. The outline was incomplete but doable, and I was eager.
So I started writing this detective noir the best way possible-in first person perspective of the main character. 2 months in, I realized my mistake. But the story was going so good I thought might as well continue, right?
6 months later, my pen stopped. The story got shelved. My Det. John Hartigan has turned into Ins. Jacques Clouseau by this point and the plot had been unraveling(?) a few chapters ago.
Great lessons are expensive. That's what makes them great.
Absolutely. What’s worse is that I kinda repeated that same mistake again in a writing game. This week’s theme is a murder mystery and there will be three characters along with their generic descriptions. There are hints on the prompt that we might need to carefully select which character’s perspective we’re going to take.
I decided to shot myself in the foot by hardcamming 2nd person perspective on the most boring character. (the character description literally said normal, boring character) So the story becomes this nagging tirade between the narrator and this boring character with lines like “You would’ve noticed this obvious clue. But no, you’re still wallowing in self pity.”
In a way, this kinda feels like my redemption arc for the mess I made back then. Apparently, digging myself further into the hole can get me out of the corner with enough knowledge and luck.
Yeah, I am having a lot of fun with writing. Doesn’t make it any easier, just a lot more bearable. Still going steady at around 5 paragraphs a day with editing my manuscript despite pulling double duty.
I ran into the exact same thing as I outlined my novel and tried several different approaches.
To make the undoing part easier I now save my entire project in another location - to make sure the auto-backup process doesn't delete my previous build - and then I start rearranging things or even restructuring whole sections
I don't touch the text during those experiments, so when I find out (a few days later) that I don't like this new version, I can easily restore the saved previous build and rename the failed version as "experiment".
Sounds complicated, I know, but with this workflow I don’t have to remember how things were, I can simply go look at it. 😅
I get it! Every once in a while I just copy the project and gadd a date to the copy's file name - and into an "Archive" folder it goes. (That's where the screen-shots of the outline lists came from, I went back into those old versions.)
The big question for me is, years or decades after a project is done...do I save the archives? It's a problem I never worried about when I was middle-aged, but now that I'm elderly...I kind of like to, but really they are clutter. No one will ever want to look at them but me, and do I really? I have so many.
So I think I may have to make an archive-within-my-archive, of all the notes and drafts. Otherwise trying to find something becomes like wandering through the warehouse at the end of Citizen Kane or Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
As long as I have enough space on my drive I'll keep them. If I ever run into a space limit I might consider deleting the old experiments but for now I'll keep my warehouse cluttered as is! 😂
I'm like that too - but for me, at my age and after decades of compulsive creation and collection, large amounts of (digital) space means eventually the "hoarding" is dangerous.
I can't find anything. My brain stalls, unable to grasp the things it needs to do what it came there for. I get distracted, or overwhelmed.
So now (again, for me) the task is: sort out the truly useful/important/relevant things into one space, and leave the rest in a separate cavernous hoard :)
One thing I love about writing fiction is that it's a non-destructive medium. You can try anything, and if it works, you can improve it. If it doesn't, you can fix it, or delete it. There isn't any 'door of no return' like there would be if you were trying to do ice sculptures with a chainsaw (for that artist, going back is impossible). The delete key is your friend.
The most inspirational quote I've ever heard is something I've been living by now for a long time:
"The only way to figure out where the edge is, is to go over it."
It's a paraphrase, actually, of a statement by Hunter S. Thompson. There is a boatload of brilliant truth in that statement. How do you get from point A to point B? You just try, even if you begin with no good path in mind. When you do, that's when you start to figure out how to get there, even if those early steps may not have been in the perfect direction.
His statement was actually about taking risks and being reckless, saying you have to do dangerous stuff to get anywhere. If you've read his novels, that would make sense to you.
But there is a wisdom there that he might not even have been aware of. If you apply Thompson's theory to writing fiction, there's absolutely no danger in crossing over the edge. Regardless what happens, it's always a positive step in a positive direction, precisely because writing fiction is a non-destructive medium. It's the circuitous path to getting to point B. But it gets you there. Nothing else really does.
And for me, that completely dispels the fear of screwing up, and of being ashamed of not being perfect in early attempts. In writing fiction, you can always quite easily go back and do it better, regardless how you did it the first time. Snapshots in time of how you did it earlier are not in any way indications of how imperfect you might be.
Thompson's theory actually gives you a license to screw up! It's your get out of jail free card.
No one but you is ever going to see anything other than that final draft, anyway.
That's a great quote (at least for writing, if not - as I suspect Thompson meant it - also for life :) As a creative theory it is brilliant and absolutely true, thank you!
A superb analysis of how we do need to go wrong now and then.
And about the dashes vs quotation mark thing: I don't know how well it works with punctuation issues but the "Project replace" button might be worth a try. 🤔
When I decided I didn’t like a character's name anymore I used the "Project replace" function and it worked perfectly. It works on the entire project or just the selected documents in the binder if you want.
On Windows the path is: Edit > Find > Project Replace.
It should be similar on Mac.
In this case I like changing them by hand, since I'm still rewriting so much. Each time I run into one, I get to think about how the sentence should run.
Especially because when I put in all those dashes, I took out a bunch of "he said" and "she said" bits with some amount of description of how they said it or what else they were doing - and I miss that stuff.
But for name changes - I definitely use "Find and Replace"!
Yep. A good lesson is paid through time and effort. A similar thing happened to me right before I started writing on my current manuscript.
It was supposed to be a detective noir written in my national language. Haven't seen many of those so I thought it could be fun. When I started outlining, the plan was to adopt Christie and Conan Doyle by looking at the main character through the lens of another character.
So I made these "supporting" characters to 'view' the main character from different angles. I had fun imagining and planning how to thicken these unassuming overdose cases to a possible serial killer on the loose. The outline was incomplete but doable, and I was eager.
So I started writing this detective noir the best way possible-in first person perspective of the main character. 2 months in, I realized my mistake. But the story was going so good I thought might as well continue, right?
6 months later, my pen stopped. The story got shelved. My Det. John Hartigan has turned into Ins. Jacques Clouseau by this point and the plot had been unraveling(?) a few chapters ago.
Great lessons are expensive. That's what makes them great.
It is so hard to keep to creative plans, isn't it?! But it sounds like you were having fun, and learned a great lesson indeed.
Absolutely. What’s worse is that I kinda repeated that same mistake again in a writing game. This week’s theme is a murder mystery and there will be three characters along with their generic descriptions. There are hints on the prompt that we might need to carefully select which character’s perspective we’re going to take.
I decided to shot myself in the foot by hardcamming 2nd person perspective on the most boring character. (the character description literally said normal, boring character) So the story becomes this nagging tirade between the narrator and this boring character with lines like “You would’ve noticed this obvious clue. But no, you’re still wallowing in self pity.”
In a way, this kinda feels like my redemption arc for the mess I made back then. Apparently, digging myself further into the hole can get me out of the corner with enough knowledge and luck.
Yeah, I am having a lot of fun with writing. Doesn’t make it any easier, just a lot more bearable. Still going steady at around 5 paragraphs a day with editing my manuscript despite pulling double duty.
I ran into the exact same thing as I outlined my novel and tried several different approaches.
To make the undoing part easier I now save my entire project in another location - to make sure the auto-backup process doesn't delete my previous build - and then I start rearranging things or even restructuring whole sections
I don't touch the text during those experiments, so when I find out (a few days later) that I don't like this new version, I can easily restore the saved previous build and rename the failed version as "experiment".
Sounds complicated, I know, but with this workflow I don’t have to remember how things were, I can simply go look at it. 😅
I get it! Every once in a while I just copy the project and gadd a date to the copy's file name - and into an "Archive" folder it goes. (That's where the screen-shots of the outline lists came from, I went back into those old versions.)
The big question for me is, years or decades after a project is done...do I save the archives? It's a problem I never worried about when I was middle-aged, but now that I'm elderly...I kind of like to, but really they are clutter. No one will ever want to look at them but me, and do I really? I have so many.
So I think I may have to make an archive-within-my-archive, of all the notes and drafts. Otherwise trying to find something becomes like wandering through the warehouse at the end of Citizen Kane or Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
Save when elderly and in doubt. Let go, let the Universe take over. Let go AND keep a copy in case you the only author left. It happens!
That is very fine advice :) I'm glad to hear from you again!
That's true 😅
As long as I have enough space on my drive I'll keep them. If I ever run into a space limit I might consider deleting the old experiments but for now I'll keep my warehouse cluttered as is! 😂
I'm like that too - but for me, at my age and after decades of compulsive creation and collection, large amounts of (digital) space means eventually the "hoarding" is dangerous.
I can't find anything. My brain stalls, unable to grasp the things it needs to do what it came there for. I get distracted, or overwhelmed.
So now (again, for me) the task is: sort out the truly useful/important/relevant things into one space, and leave the rest in a separate cavernous hoard :)
Ah a great title for a book Cavernous Hoard.
Also a good name for a band, or maybe a bar.
I can see! Operating on two eyes. And my eyes are happy to see you are going strong. Got to rest another 2 months. Go write something guys.
Marvelous news!! I'm still at it. DO please follow the rules and rest up! Thank you so much for checking it - I'll be here when you return!