(07-11-2022, 05:31 PM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: I did poorly with English classes, but some things were drilled into me. You are helpful, you caused me to, once again, read through the whole first chapter and make even more corrections. The thing is, since I wrote it, I expect and read it the way I thought I wrote it, until I find silly misspellings after the one millionth time I've re-read it. Plus keeping the story in present tense is really difficult for me. I'm used to telling a story after the fact, not in the now as it is happening as I'm trying to do here.
"After the fact" is the most natural way of telling a story, and the one most often used by story tellers since time immemorial. Breaking that habit is tough, as it seems to be more or less ingrained in the human psyche, and so requires a lot of conscious effort to overcome.
That e-book I put together about the alien signal hoax years ago was a monumental labor of love, but the way I went about it was exhausting. To this day, I have still never read the entire thing back through. I spent about 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, for two months straight doing the research and writing it, and at the end of that time I didn't even want to look at it any more. It's only recently, like the past few days, that I have even considered trying to read it through. Reviews are generally pretty positive on it, and based on recent research, it has found itself into dark corners of the internet I never suspected that it would. People actually seem to have benefited from it, and that gives me all the satisfaction I need to justify the herculean effort that went into it.
My advice from that experience is to not immerse yourself so deeply into the writing that you wear yourself out with it. It should be fun, and creative, and that comes only as it comes - forcing it would be a mistake.
As another example, I took a single "creative writing" class under Robert Gingrich when I was studying physics and astronomy at the University of North Carolina. One of the assignments for that class was to write a story with the theme of "home". so I wrote "Warpaint" and turned it in. When Gingrich graded it, I got an "A", but with the comment of "horrifying". Since I originally wrote it, that short story has gone through over 30 revisions in almost as many years.
Some stories are NEVER completely finished and polished to our satisfaction, and that is something the author has to wrestle with on his own.
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Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’