Saturday 9 November 2013

Book Talk Topic: Writing Tendencies




Writing Tendencies

I like many other readers and bloggers, enjoy writing. I am not like some working on a book or anything, since my writing's usually like this:

*idea*
"Ooh, good one! Let's get started!"

*writes 4-5 pages*

*new idea*
"This one's even BETTER! Must start this now!"

*writes 2 pages*

*new idea*

You get the picture :P I suck at sticking with one story! I love writing though. I have these moods where I'm like 'must write now' and I just get started. I love doing that! And with all my ideas, I've got plenty of Word documents with snippets of stories. I have noticed a couple of things taht always seem to be part of my writing:

  • The inability to stick with one idea. Sometimes I write snippets for each and every idea, sometimes I combine them, but I have never written past 27 pages because some new shiny idea would distract me!
  • I write in first person, present tense. I used to write in past tense, actually, because most books are written in that and it felt more natural to me. Sometimes it depended on the sentence! I have a Word document somewhere that is a jumbled mess of present and past tense because some sentences sounded better in present to me and others in past. But lately, first person and present tense seems to be my thing. Fun fact: recently I started writing a story in third person, past tense. It was going well, I was getting into the groove... And all of a sudden I realized I'd switched to first person and present tense mid-sentence :P I took that as a sign!
  • No music! I know several writers love to have music on while writing and even have book playlists, but it doesn't work for me. If the music is happy and up-beat, I find myself getting distracted by the music and unable to write the way I want to. I also feel disconnected to the story. I can write with sad music on the background, but it usually gets me in a sad mood as well... And as a result, the MC will probably spend the whole story crying! No, no music for me. If the world around me is silent, I find it much easier to evoke the feeling that I need for the story at that moment.
  • I am actually able to write with all kinds of tabs open (the blog, Twitter, Goodreads, etc.). Yes, they distract me at times, but I find that I usually forget all about them if the writing's going well. And if I don't forget them, I can just check everything, respond to everyone, and then get back to the story with no problem at all. I can do this kind of thing in the middle of a sentence if I want, and even if I spend half an hour on the Internet, when I get back, that sentence gets finished in the exact way I intended it to. In fact, this whole post is written in between of writing a story!
  • Being forced to write doesn't work for me. I don't set any goals. This may be the reason my stories never get finished, but feeling that I 'have' to write doesn't work for me at all. I need to be in that writing mood, otherwise the story will get dull and lifeless. Reaching a certain amount of words also doesn't work for me - if I feel like this is the right point to stop writing then I will, whether I wrote 2, 200 or 20,000 words.
Do you have any writing quirks? Are any of them similar to mine?

4 comments:

  1. Great post Celine, I actually haven't written anything besides blogs and reviews but I plan to some day! I don't think I could concentrate with music on either. I once got feedback on an assignment that said I kept on changing tense too, it's kind of difficult to stick to one.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! Yeah, it took me while to figure out what my preferred tense was but apparently it's present :P

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  2. I don't have many writing quirks but when my class was asked to write a gothic short story, I changed my idea 3 times which was kinda annoying but good coz in the end, I got a good mark! :)

    Great post, hun! <33

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    Replies
    1. Haha, I know how you feel! I did that too when I had to write a short retelling of a myth for Latin class :P Glad you got a good mark!

      Thanks, honey <3

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