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I took a peek at my unfinished stories, and all I can say is "yuck"
none of them are any good right now, and I just don't seem to have the ability to fix them
so I think I might be done producing stories for the foreseeable future.
Sorry everybody.
Comments
Woe!
Dot, give yourself a break, in both senses of that phrase! That is, go gently on yourself — as gently as you go on all the rest of us, as we stumble around with our stories. The classic Bible quote actually runs both ways: love yourself, as you love others.
But also, feel free to just take a break. If writing is more chore than release at the moment, let it rest until it feels right. Know that we love you, even when you aren’t posting new stories!
Sending you lots of fresh huggles,
Emma
Unfinished stories
I think that starting a story and then letting it ferment for a while is part of the game. Rest easy.
Gwen
Don't give up or even suggest it
Your work is excellent. If only a sentence at a time, punctuated by a "huggle". You positive affirmation is welcomed by the community as an example of all the good feelings from this site.
I have yet to pen fiction here but your efforts constantly remind me of I have yet to do. Keep trying. (Mucho huggles)
Ron
Writing Is Having Something to Say
Have you ever been in a conversation with several people and thought of something that was quite relevant, but when an opportunity arose for you to speak you decided your point no longer fit into the conversation?
It happens all the time.
Your old stories could have been great in their time and simply lost relevance.
Try carrying a small notebook with you for a few days. Jot down what you hear, think, see, feel, or smell. You'll find a story!
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Dry periods
I can't speak for all writers, but for myself, it's not unusual for me to hit dry periods where nothing works. No amount of staring at the screen with a partial story on it will inspire me to continue it. If I persist at that point I might be able to hammer out a couple of hundred words. But the odds are that if I ever finish the story, I'll have edited that part so much it will hardly resemble the original.
As for junk in the bone pile... don't make me laugh. I've got enough unfinished junk taking up space on my hard drive that if combined into one story would rival the likes of "War and Peace" in length. If it weren't for the fact I have a terabyte and I'm only using about a third of it, I'd have to weed out the really bad stuff.
But I hang onto it. I'm a bit of a hoarder when it come to things like that. Occasionally I'm able to pick it up and do something with it. I recently finished a story that I started when my granddaughter was an infant (three computers ago) and she's now 25.
Another example is "Dumb Bet" It was ten years in the writing and I published ten stories in the interim . When it was finally finished it became my most well received work.
So let the junk lie, like a sleeping dog. Wait until your muse sparks some life into it and then write it. Meanwhile, relax, read other peoples work and enjoy the rest.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
They don’t all make the cut, you know...
When we think of a great author like Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, what we don’t see are all the false starts, the abandoned projects and the interim efforts that were produced on the way to success. An author probably should think eighty percent of everything they write is dross. Don’t worry about it: ‘writing’ isn’t simply bashing the keyboard, but that necessary process of winnowing to leave behind the good stuff. It may be that you’re holding on to every project, instead of letting the filter do its work. Have the confidence to abandon things: more ideas will occur.
Sugar and Spiiice – TG Fiction by Bryony Marsh
Don't bother to try to fix them
All of us start a story and after working on it hard for what seems ages, discover that it is going nowhere.
My WIP/old folder is full of them.
Think about something that you have not written about before and give it a go. You may be surprised at what comes out. There could even be a scene where you say to yourself... "I wrote something like that before." Then you go to the old unfixable stuff, pull that bit out and carry on.
Don't get depressed. Life is not all about writing about Prom Queens (joking).
Samantha
What all others have said, and ...
... we -all of us- are very poor judges of our own work, or performance, or whatever. Examples abound:
- half of all drivers drivers rate themselves "above average" ... Can't possibly be true.
- scholars and fans of 'the great writers' collect, cherish and study the edit-markups of those great writers ... and I've seen a few photos of pages where about half the ink is edits/markups/corrections - and improvements.
- a few famous (classical) music composers - it's thought they >destroyed< more than half (!) of what they wrote.
And the 'flip side' happens. A winner of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Fellows_Program grant asked "Why me?". They told him, that among other things, he had read 800 books and papers in his field and turned the research into a classic state-of-the-field survey book. He sorta said "So?". It had to be explained to him that hardly nobody can do that.
---
No one else can write a Dorothy story.
(Or a Ricky. Or a Bru. Or an Eolwaen, Or ...)
Reads, Kudos, and Comments are very poor measures of story 'quality'. Whatever that means.
I might open a story - that's a read -, but realize I've read it before. Or the Cautions warn me off. Halfway thru, it gets 'icky-er' than I can handle - and I abandon before getting to the Kudo it may very well deserve. And it took me perhaps >three years< to get 'brave enough' to comment here. And around >five< years before my first story - and that was an >accident< ! (Not the posting - the story itself!)
---
And sigh, yes, a lot of stuff is trash. Sturgeon's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law.
Computer programmers might have the highest rate ever for "pathetic". I'd say way more 99.99++% of everything we programmers write ever manages to first compile; and then execute; and then not crash; and then meet specs (and for programmers who are getting paid - a customer buys it).
And then the bugs-in-production show up ...
And then we 'start over' for Version N + 0.1, or major Version N + 1 ...
Uhm ... yes, I was/am a programmer ...
=== ===
So.
Hang in there.
Remember, you have many hundreds of well liked stories.
Keep the "PP" (Pathetic Pile).
Here's something that 'just happens' - countless examples in the literature, plus two -er- 4 from me:
We push and push and 'sweat' for a story, a solution, an idea ... and then we go do something else.
= Take a shower (and correct the Hubble Telescope lens focus error).
= Doze on a bus (and get the structure of benzene).
= Have a lab accident (and get vulcanized rubber),
= Change your shoes (me, computer bug . Uhm OK. I got a verbal report of bug on my way to my desk. Before I was done changing from snow boots to indoor work shoes ...)
Once time my Muse handed me "Fourspace Tapestries" (Something about how our lives unfold ...) I haven't been able to do anything with it ... for >fifty years< ... Let's go drinking and discuss 'pathetic' ...
===
"Bang" some stories together.
Can't make the Leprechaun story work?
Can't make the "outed in college" story work?
But does the story of an in-college happy-and-out-transgender leprechaun getting outed >as a leprechaun< work?
Bonus - not college. Financial advisor ...
"Trick us" - the leprechaun is cis-het ...
I Start A Dozen
And if I'm really, really lucky I end up with one I think I can post. And then there's time. It can be years between "drinks" as far as stories go.
If you ask me I think you're doing pretty well, so just keep working at it.