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The Pottery Theory of Writing
Jun. 22nd, 2023 10:23 amHave y'all heard that story of the pottery class where they told one group of students they only had to produce one bowl at the end of the semester but their entire grade was going to be based on that one bowl, and the other group of students they would be graded solely on the total weight of pottery produced at the end of class? The students being graded on weight produced better pottery, because the first group spent a lot of time theorizing about the perfect bowl, while the second group just... made a lot of bowls and got better for the practice.
I think this is what I'm getting out of the fanfic.
Because I have as of this moment a total of 44,553 words in Escapees or Exiles, written over the span of approximately three months, most of it written very rapidly and without the kind of care and attention to the exact wording or to editing afterwards that I put into my original fiction. This is just having fun. A detailed plot, sure, and a lot of small details mentioned that come up later (seriously, offhand mentions are usually going to be relevant later), but I'm not putting that much effort into the sentence-level prose.
Yet the sentence-level prose gets noticeably better as the series goes on.
I also have a much stronger and more coherent sense of an original story I've been trying to write for several years now. I think I may actually finish it this time. Before the deadline of the thing I want to submit it to, even. (I can even point to the specific scene that led me to figuring out how to write this story-- the flashbacks in "Collateral Damage," where I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to do the flashbacks such that they didn't interrupt the scene, eventually hitting on the interleaved mix in the finished story that has them add to the chaos rather than interrupt it.)
And I'm getting better at trusting the process--trusting the story will go where it needs to go even if that means that even my very rough outlines entirely disappear.
I don't think I quite believe the "you need to get a million words out before producing good words" chestnut, because I sold the very first thing I ever submitted anywhere and started selling things somewhat consistently fairly soon after I started taking it seriously. (The several-year gap between that first sale and the subsequent ones is a time I was neither writing nor submitting.) I also don't think it's just about getting words out, because I've attempted NaNoWriMo just for the sake of it without great inspiration or ideas and it didn't have this kind of effect on my writing.
I think it has to be a story you care strongly about telling. I really want to tell the story we're reading in EoE; I saw someone else write a concept I love and was seized with the desire to try my hand at the premise, and then, as my writing often does, it developed into a much more complex story than I originally conceived-- but it's very much a story that I'm eager to tell, with relationships I'm eager to explore. (I'm delighted to be hitting the start of the series arc in the next story... and yes, this does mean I spent almost 45,000 words just setting up character relationships, setting, and backstory. Oh, fanfiction, I delight in such freedom.)
I think it being a story I want to tell is what lets it improve my writing. It's not just about words on the page. It is never just about words on the page.
I think this is what I'm getting out of the fanfic.
Because I have as of this moment a total of 44,553 words in Escapees or Exiles, written over the span of approximately three months, most of it written very rapidly and without the kind of care and attention to the exact wording or to editing afterwards that I put into my original fiction. This is just having fun. A detailed plot, sure, and a lot of small details mentioned that come up later (seriously, offhand mentions are usually going to be relevant later), but I'm not putting that much effort into the sentence-level prose.
Yet the sentence-level prose gets noticeably better as the series goes on.
I also have a much stronger and more coherent sense of an original story I've been trying to write for several years now. I think I may actually finish it this time. Before the deadline of the thing I want to submit it to, even. (I can even point to the specific scene that led me to figuring out how to write this story-- the flashbacks in "Collateral Damage," where I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to do the flashbacks such that they didn't interrupt the scene, eventually hitting on the interleaved mix in the finished story that has them add to the chaos rather than interrupt it.)
And I'm getting better at trusting the process--trusting the story will go where it needs to go even if that means that even my very rough outlines entirely disappear.
I don't think I quite believe the "you need to get a million words out before producing good words" chestnut, because I sold the very first thing I ever submitted anywhere and started selling things somewhat consistently fairly soon after I started taking it seriously. (The several-year gap between that first sale and the subsequent ones is a time I was neither writing nor submitting.) I also don't think it's just about getting words out, because I've attempted NaNoWriMo just for the sake of it without great inspiration or ideas and it didn't have this kind of effect on my writing.
I think it has to be a story you care strongly about telling. I really want to tell the story we're reading in EoE; I saw someone else write a concept I love and was seized with the desire to try my hand at the premise, and then, as my writing often does, it developed into a much more complex story than I originally conceived-- but it's very much a story that I'm eager to tell, with relationships I'm eager to explore. (I'm delighted to be hitting the start of the series arc in the next story... and yes, this does mean I spent almost 45,000 words just setting up character relationships, setting, and backstory. Oh, fanfiction, I delight in such freedom.)
I think it being a story I want to tell is what lets it improve my writing. It's not just about words on the page. It is never just about words on the page.
