81 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
81 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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date: 2019-08-29
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weight: 5
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---
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> If you went from a mockery of creativity to a mockery of play, when did you settle down and just write a damn story?
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I think it wasn't too long after, actually. I wrote [*All of Time at Once*](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/all-of-time-at-once/) in April of 2004, and that was the first time I started to think, *ah-hah, okay, there's a rhythm to this, a pace, a set of mechanics as well as an art.*
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And from then on, I basically dropped writing in favor of music for months. Sure, there were a few others scattered around there. [*Tu pater et mater*](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/tu-pater-et-mater/) in May of 2003, and [*Light*](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/light/) in June of 2004, but other than that, I kind of just dropped it.
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> Why?
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I graduated. I left language arts classes behind. I went to school for an engineering major.
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> One you were supremely unhappy in.
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Right. And then when I started writing again, it was music.
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I wrote a few essays I was reasonably proud of, but it took another four years before I decided to actually sit down and give writing a go in a more structured setting, and then only because of NaNoWriMo.
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> Ah yes, your "boy meets girl with a twist" story.
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Yeah, [*The Consequences of Dissonance*](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/consequences-of-dissonance/).
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> You originally named it **Coming to Terms with Being a Terrible Person**.
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I did, yeah. I was fresh off my relationship with Kayla and well into a relationship with Kanja, and had a head full of hatred for who I used to be.
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> And who you were becoming.
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Well, it wasn't *Coming to Terms with Having Been a Terrible Person*, was it?
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> Fair enough.
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It wasn't a bad story, really, nor even that poorly written. I've even thought of revisiting it sometime. It was sort of a coming out story, but a coming-out-for-the-second-time sort of thing. Gay boy starts dating a girl and has to go through the social process of coming out as bi.
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> As Madison?
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I suppose. I went through my own series of comings-out, so maybe I have more insight into that now.
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> And you're less of a terrible person.
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Doubt.
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> There are perfectly cromulent reasons for you to think of yourself as a terrible person in the past, and even as a terrible person in 2008. Or even one now, really. You're just less of one.
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Always improving, I guess.
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> How did it feel to come up with a schedule, a goal, and a plan, and then to stick to it?
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I never finished the story.
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> But you won NaNoWriMo that year. You went over by eight thousand lines.
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I guess.
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> And you're dodging the question.
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That's why, though. It felt good while it lasted. It felt good during that hypomanic rush to actually complete something, to come up with an outline and actually work through it.
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Then I finished NaNo with several hours to spare and tried to keep going, but there was something missing. I felt rudderless. I kept trying to poke at it, but I think I was working as well as I was because of the deadlines. I was still trying to balance the work with the fun that go into a creative endeavor.
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> Did you stop having fun, or did you stop doing the work?
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I think it's more complex than that. There was fun to be had in the race to the finish line. I think that's why NaNo is so popular. And doubtless it was work, of course.
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But with the fun of having already won gone, I was faced with the fact that I had less outline than I had originally thought. Pantsing, as the community so eloquently puts it, may work well for some folks, but I was mostly left feeling uninspired and unmotivated once December hit. The same thing happened with *Getting Lost* and *Inner Demons*. I started strong enough with the basic idea as I tried to write by the seat of my pants, but without a direction or even any goal, I lost steam and wound up disheartened.
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> Do you not do well without goals, then? You don't seem to have one for this project.
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It's not necessarily that. More that, the shorter the project, the less planning that's required. I do much better with articles and short stories than I do with novels. At least so far, given the amount of planning that goes into each.
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This project is working as well as it is because of my heavy reliance on these side-quests. I can break a story down into manageable chunks so that, by the time I might start losing direction, they're about overwith anyway.
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Besides, I have you to help.
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> Me? Little old me?
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Yeah. It's much easier to have a conversation than it is to plan out a story. You keep taking me in directions I don't mean to go.
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