Well, in the spirit of this being a blog about writing advice… you encouraged me to go work on a couple pages of wiki writing for my game world. But those aren’t a *story*, so I’ll talk about something more relevant.
A few months ago, I used a couple plane rides and layovers to start work on a story: a piece of historical fiction set in the Spanish Canary Islands, because my D&D game happens to be set there right now.
I shelved the writing attempt a few days later and haven’t thought about it until now, but maybe I’ll go back to it yet.
I didn’t experience any of the resistance to the first sentence which you speak of here - though I’d have to go look to tell you what it was - and I scribbled away for many sentences thereafter, adding whatever came into my head, writing in first person as the son of an artisan (a sculptor, maybe? I’d have to check.)
Where I encountered trouble and mental resistance was with something I’ll call “telescoping”. I’d write a paragraph, and then I realized that actually there should be more words, more detail, more sentences, maybe whole additional paragraphs expended on some particular point, whether action or exposition. Then I’ll go back and try and add that new thing in, as often as not realizing that this new addition was at such a different level of detail that maybe it really didn’t belong in the place I had chosen for it - maybe it ought to go somewhere else - and all of a sudden I’m editing, not writing, even though I definitely set out to make an addition to the story rather than revise anything. And this whole process would often mean that I lost track of any thought I might have been following while originally moving along on the paragraph that led me to think I should double back.
I don’t think I have any particular question to ask you about this, but such was my experience. It can happen when I’m writing more directly instructional/pedagogical material on my wiki as well.
(I don’t know if you’d rather have us reply here or on Patreon or what - I figured posting in the new place was best in case anybody from outside your normal readership wanders by.)
Well, in the spirit of this being a blog about writing advice… you encouraged me to go work on a couple pages of wiki writing for my game world. But those aren’t a *story*, so I’ll talk about something more relevant.
A few months ago, I used a couple plane rides and layovers to start work on a story: a piece of historical fiction set in the Spanish Canary Islands, because my D&D game happens to be set there right now.
I shelved the writing attempt a few days later and haven’t thought about it until now, but maybe I’ll go back to it yet.
I didn’t experience any of the resistance to the first sentence which you speak of here - though I’d have to go look to tell you what it was - and I scribbled away for many sentences thereafter, adding whatever came into my head, writing in first person as the son of an artisan (a sculptor, maybe? I’d have to check.)
Where I encountered trouble and mental resistance was with something I’ll call “telescoping”. I’d write a paragraph, and then I realized that actually there should be more words, more detail, more sentences, maybe whole additional paragraphs expended on some particular point, whether action or exposition. Then I’ll go back and try and add that new thing in, as often as not realizing that this new addition was at such a different level of detail that maybe it really didn’t belong in the place I had chosen for it - maybe it ought to go somewhere else - and all of a sudden I’m editing, not writing, even though I definitely set out to make an addition to the story rather than revise anything. And this whole process would often mean that I lost track of any thought I might have been following while originally moving along on the paragraph that led me to think I should double back.
I don’t think I have any particular question to ask you about this, but such was my experience. It can happen when I’m writing more directly instructional/pedagogical material on my wiki as well.
(I don’t know if you’d rather have us reply here or on Patreon or what - I figured posting in the new place was best in case anybody from outside your normal readership wanders by.)