katallison | (no subject)

Things that are good:

a)

a_mews sent me a cool new photo of Patti Smith, from the Meltdown 2005, and I'm rotating it in in place of my old default icon.

b) The suffocating humidity has finally cleared out, and today is warm and sunny and dry, very lovely, so all those people who like to go outside and do stuff on beautiful June Sundays are at last getting their chance, after a monsoon-like few weeks.

c) Long-term stressor at work has finally been resolved, not in a good way, but to be honest any resolution feels like something of a relief after months of fraught suspense.

d) And possibly related to (c) above, I'm writing again, after months of drought. I've been doing some serious revisions on, and cautious additions to, something that's been stalled on my hard drive for quite a while. Had an unpleasant shock, when I first opened and read through it, of Oh my god, could I GET any more blatant with the overwritten emotional exposition?? until I remembered that I'd been trying out the technique of deliberately overwriting the emotional exposition in first draft, so that when I came back later I could remember what was supposed to be going on emotionally, and could then hack out all the signposting. (This has actually proven helpful so far; there are places where I wouldn't have otherwise been able to recall just why these characters were doing/saying this stuff. Now I just have to figure out some way to make it all clear and coherent *without* the signposts. Ahem.)

Anyway, it feels good to be writing again, and will feel even better when I'm warmed up and nice clear fresh stuff starts coming out of the taps, instead of brown rusty gunk.

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until I remembered that I'd been trying out the technique of deliberately overwriting the emotional exposition in first draft, so that when I came back later I could remember what was supposed to be going on emotionally, and could then hack out all the signposting.

I grin at you, because you're such a Method writer! What's Character X's motivaton? Sounds like you're writing from the inside out, trying to adjudge the feelings and then create a series of appropriate externals in prose form (an actor would do it with gesture/expression, etc.) It's just funny to me, because I'm British in this; inside out--he stands there, then that happens, then the avocados fall on him, and I have betas ask me, "well, what's he feeling right then?" and I haven't the slightest fucking idea!

you're such a Method writer!

Oh, totally! For the long dS thing in progress, I've got 41 pages of notes (really) that are just me talking to myself about what's going on with the characters at various points, their emotional states, motivations, etc. etc. Which, y'know, on the one hand think of how much further along I'd be if I'd spent that time actually *writing*, but on the other hand I seem to need to do it. The hardest fucking thing in the world for me is making stuff HAPPEN, coming up with stuff for the characters to DO besides standing there having emotions.

Maybe I should just have avocadoes fall on them. *g*

See, famously, in the British model, somebody like Olivier would literally move around the stage saying, "Okay I stand here, and say blah blah blah, and then I go over there and stand like THIS and fight with John," and see, the dialogue and the motivation and all that came later. First you went through the movements and gestures, and the idea was that if you did that, you'd KNOW how you felt when you got there. The Americans reversed this.

Yay for the writing again. Stressors really wreak havoc with my ability to or even any drive to write. So cheers for that.

Like you, I'm overjoyed at the lower humidity!

I'm also overjoyed that resolution has at least lead to bursts of creativity - huzzah!

I'd been trying out the technique of deliberately overwriting the emotional exposition in first draft, so that when I came back later I could remember what was supposed to be going on emotionally, and could then hack out all the signposting.

Hey, I do that sometimes! Only not so much with the purposeful technique thing. *g*

Yay for you writing again!

This is like a breath of fresh air. I love it when my friends get excited about things again, whether the things are weather or creativity or being able to let go of stress -- anything at all, really. Even better when there are *lots* of things to be excited about.

And I dig the new icon. It may take a while for me to think of it as you, though. (:

I really like this pic as an icon and I'm glad you do to.

And so so so happy you're writing, or thinking about writing, or thinking about what the characters are thinking about you writing. As you can see, I have no redeeming value to add to this conversation, but like Laura, I like seeing my friends excited about aNYTHING.