ILB Writing Club

Definitely think that using both computer and longhand/hard copy is the best route to go - the mix that works best for me is writing out sketched ideas on paper, typing up & outlining structure & fleshing out on computer, doing some editing (e.g. individual words, adding bits, rearranging order) on computer, editing as LG describes on paper and then going back to the computer (repeat as necessary). It might sound a bit arduous but honestly I feel like it keeps things fresh.

Mind you, if you're worried about deleting stuff you should try Scrivener and you can either use 'track changes' or the 'snapshot' function. I prefer the latter, it's basically keeping a separate save file of your work but it'll be in the same project folder and easy to find. Track changes is probably preferred by most, though. Honestly, I recommend Scrivener for any writers, it's got so many useful functions.

Via the routine I detailed, I've filled maybe one and a half 200-pg. notebooks in the past year. If I at some point develop a skill for editing my mountains of unwieldy prose, I'll be unstoppable. But you'll be surprised at the volume you can accrue if you stick with it.

I want to hire someone on Craigslist or something to transcribe all of my longhand stuff so I can more easily edit. But christ knows I do not want to type out all of that shit myself.

this probably sounds eccentric but i also print stuff out in different fonts (cochin, geneva and courier are the three i use most) for rereads and mark-ups -- i want to read and reread at different speeds if possible, because you see and hear different things

Okay, wait, this is actually the first time I've done any explicit accounting of my output in a while and it's only now sinking in that I've written something like 600 pages in twelve months. BRB, gotta go call some book agents or whatever it is that people who write for a living do.

that's an interesting idea, must try that, xpost.

i bought scrivener about a month ago but still haven't used it or watched a tutorial :/

i can't really do much by hand, it makes me feel hamstrung by how slowly i write.

I did transcription work a long time ago for a guy who advertised in my local post office. His writing was THE WORST. It was hilariously bad, and as such, wound up being a pretty good job. (Not saying anything about OL's work, obviously!)

i know it's mean to criticise but i did a class at faber about two years ago and this one person who was particularly rude/unpleasant about everyone else's work was so bad that i almost thought it was like a practical or performative joke.

we had to do a piece where we scribbled down some stuff we saw on our journey home, the first night, and hers began "a gay-looking man gets on at oxford circus", at which point you think "hmm, not such a pc way of putting it" - then a few lines later it was "a woman is wearing a leopard print scarf - does she think we are in africa?" - alarm bells close to ringing now.

finally it ended with a huge islamophobic rant about someone wearing a headscarf needing to obey the laws of this country. i was surprised the teacher didn't intervene in a way, but i suppose it would have been awkward.

Man, it would be so weirdly comforting to find out that I'm actually a terrible writer. No need to waste any more energy on that pursuit!

For three of the last four years, I’d write from 4:15 to 6:15 every Monday to Friday morning, and for a longer chunk on Sundays. Since I work 65+ hours each week (teaching writing, and editing with private clients) that time of day was the only chunk of time available to me. But keeping those hours lead to a bunch of health problems, including a fairly severe concussion, and I found that my weight/exhaustion/illness needed addressing before I could return to writing. So I’m not writing very much right now, and going to the gym before work. But in a typical morning of work I’d manage 750 - 1000 words. I have always written slowly. I usually have one main novel in progress and one piece of creative non-fiction. My last novel, 95K words in its last reading, collapsed into itself in a way that doesn’t encourage me to continue with long projects.

Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda)
Posted: December 7, 2017 at 18:30:56
i know it's mean to criticise but i did a class at faber about two years ago and this one person who was particularly rude/unpleasant about everyone else's work was so bad that i almost thought it was like a practical or performative joke.

we had to do a piece where we scribbled down some stuff we saw on our journey home, the first night, and hers began "a gay-looking man gets on at oxford circus", at which point you think "hmm, not such a pc way of putting it" - then a few lines later it was "a woman is wearing a leopard print scarf - does she think we are in africa?" - alarm bells close to ringing now.

finally it ended with a huge islamophobic rant about someone wearing a headscarf needing to obey the laws of this country. i was surprised the teacher didn't intervene in a way, but i suppose it would have been awkward.

One of the workshops in which I participated last year had a super macho Serious Writer Type whose manuscript frequently talked about wanting to destroy “betta males” and “screw their women on the pavement in front of their dying eyes.” It became clear to many of us, by late in the workshop series, that this was a barely-veiled biographical stance and not a character voice. The writer running the workshop, who is famed for his vulnerability and sensitivity, clearly felt implicated as a “betta” and praised and fawned over the macho writer’s pose in this really sycophantic way, while a few of the other participants tried to gently suggest that the narrative read as ... damned creepy.

All of this came to a head when, egged on the sycophantic sensitive writer running the workshop, the Serious Writer Type submitted a graphic revenge rape that would’ve caused Bret Easton Ellis to puke. It was horribly uncomfortable watching the workshop leader desperately back-peddling. It was also kind of fun to glance around the room and share a knowing gloat with the co-participants.

No doubt not uncommon enough (anymore?), and also reminds me of a somewhat similar student who went on to do what most such only write about, before killing himself as well: see Nikki Giovanni's account of her and her class's experience with him at Virginia Tech (she and they were terrified when he read this stuff aloud; she told her supervisor, "Either he goes or I do"---the supervisor said that she herself would teach the guy,in her office).
Uh, originally meant to say I've use an outtakes file on gdocs, c&p from the manuscript. But may try Scrivener.

(In the outtakes file, I precede the paste with a brief indication of where it came from, and why I removed it.)

ronan if you're around on sun i can pop over --- or you can come to mine -- and i can talk you through the basics-that-you-need of scrivener (which i love)

the tutorials and how-to that they provide spend a *lot* of time on the many many little bells and whistles you won't need from day to day, and don't make it at all obvious which these might be

yes that'd be good! also good to catch up.

cool

having deplayed the cliche i now faintly want a version of scrivener with actual bells and whistles, to celebrate when i complete a thing and think it's actually any good 🎉

I used to write 500 words a day, just engrained into my daily routine, because there was always a 2hr window before my wife would come home from work and it was just perfect for it. That doesn't really happen any more, but one of the things that made it possible was just not caring whether I was writing complete shit or not, just getting something down and moving forward was the point. If it's shit you at least know why it's shit and can deal with it later, editing is so much easier than writing for me, rather than sitting there and spending hours trying to get the perfect sentence first off.

Like, just the little voice inside your head that reads over a sentence or a paragraph and goes 'hmmm, not sure about this' is just incredibly useful and should probably be obeyed. But if you're working on something longer you tend to hit structural problems as you go along so I'm trying to find the balance between planning something out and just letting it flow and that's incredibly hard.

If we're on a 'terrible writers you have known' kick then I once encountered someone at a writing group who had rewritten Jerusalem as a poem about Nigel Farage. It was only after we had spent several minutes critiquing it that we realised from his face that this wasn't actually a work of hilarious satire and was in fact delivered in deadly earnest. Virtually everything he read after that would trade in dubious racial caricatures of one type or another.

A few of us are starting a group for writers in our immediate local area and I'm really not sure how to go about filtering out people who want to write Islamophobic rants or violent rape fantasies or whatever. The prospect of willingly inviting weirdos into your life is not especially appealing.

does that mean i'm not invited ;)

have been part of various meetup dot com affiliated writing circles over the years. most recently one in woolwich. my gf even came along! the quality of the writing was not high (with a couple of possible exceptions) and the round-table crit was sort of nauseating and we left early. it always seems like a good idea to join a writing circle but as you say, it's very hard to legislate for the members being on your wavelength. we've tried to start our own more discerning group on meetup as well, but only like 4 people have joined and there's never been a meeting - in being selective about membership we've sacrificed there being any kind of momentum to meet

Something something committee something Sistine

^ will clean that up later

it's incredibly difficult to find a good writing group, mostly i found them frustrating, offensive or painful at worst.

it's annoying because a group of readers commenting on something is invaluable. my masters has a really good environment like this but i'm already thinking of what i'll do when it ends in about two years. i want to start a writing group at that stage but i don't know how to screen people. it's hard because i don't want to put up a wall and exclude people, i think commitment is the most important thing, but equally you want a certain standard. i'm sort of hoping maybe i'll just do this with people from my class.

xpost

Yeah I think I was quite lucky to find a really good one on the first go but the guy who was running it couldn't really keep it going and the whole thing sort of dwindled once it was forced to switch venues.

Even if people don't get what you're doing it helps if they fail to get it in interesting ways, that show up things maybe you hadn't thought about and might want to change.

i have been trying to adapt to scrivener lately and oh boy i am not grokking it at all

Even if people don't get what you're doing it helps if they fail to get it in interesting ways, that show up things maybe you hadn't thought about and might want to change.

yeah and like an entire class saying they liked or disliked a particular bit, or didn't understand a certain bit, is particularly useful.

I think that most groups succeed or fail on the strength of a strong facilitator. The facilitator can be external or a participant, but IME unless there’s somebody driving the bus, most configurations of writers turn into Rogersish encounter groups that’ll fall apart due to weird psychological undercurrents.

Thomp, I use scrivener in a really simple way! I create a separate “chapter” for each scene, and each individual writing session becomes is a sub-file under the “chapter.” Sometimes I’ll even write a scene two or thee times and stick it in the same so-called chapter.

This helps me to write in a more associative (as opposed to strictly linear) manner. When I get around to editing, I print a “chapter” at a time and massage/mix-and-match/revise based on the overall concept. During the course of a long project this allows me to write lots of varients of individual parts of the narrative, without settling on a right or authoritative version.


Initially I’ll use the notecard feature to set up the “chapters” and not revisit until I drag ‘em around until late, late in the revising. I never use the compile feature, but I love to create research files that are basically just vision boards or piles of nifty words and images.

If I were to start or join a writing group, I'd also like to try recruiting people who were mainly good readers---sometimes posting astute comments, for instance, but not trying to be a Writer.

cross out the 'astute' from that and I'd be in.

Yeah I am personally quite done with trying to Be A Writer. But I would be happy to kick it with, converse with, and non-self-interestedly critique the work of people who were trying to Be A Writer.

That's what I mean, the back and forth. What's so rong w "astute" ppl? I don't mean self-important etc., but actually sharp, while reading for pleasure more than zings (well some zings of course but no trolling).

prob not so many zings when face to face with Writer.

If I were to start or join a writing group, I'd also like to try recruiting people who were mainly good readers---sometimes posting astute comments, for instance, but not trying to be a Writer.

anyone in such a group should be trying to be a writer - and abandoning the kind of fear that leads to embarrassed capitalisation of that idea. the group should be destroying the latter.

Not embarrassed, just internet shorthand (far as I'm aware of). I just like to hear from some without a certain kind of filter, shield, angle, preoccupation, competitiveness---good to have an *audience* that isn't entirely silent. Not that audience members can't have these, but different kinds from those of colleagues, ideally anyway.

so if people aren’t using scrivener are they using something else to sync drafts between computer and phone? or are they just.... not?

Dropbox for word docs?

Wow, the euphony of that line ^^^

:)

so if people aren’t using scrivener are they using something else to sync drafts between computer and phone? or are they just.... not?

do you mean like putting something from your phone onto your comp? i email it to myself! when i had an iphone i would send it via airdrop.

tho i prob never did a full draft on my phone, more extended snippets.

I use a google doc

google doc’s a good idea

was their not someone up for the goldsmiths prize this year that wrote their book on their phone while commuting? I can’t imagine

Thomp, I use scrivener in a really simple way! I create a separate “chapter” for each scene, and each individual writing session becomes is a sub-file under the “chapter.” Sometimes I’ll even write a scene two or thee times and stick it in the same so-called chapter.

This helps me to write in a more associative (as opposed to strictly linear) manner. When I get around to editing, I print a “chapter” at a time and massage/mix-and-match/revise based on the overall concept. During the course of a long project this allows me to write lots of varients of individual parts of the narrative, without settling on a right or authoritative version.

Initially I’ll use the notecard feature to set up the “chapters” and not revisit until I drag ‘em around until late, late in the revising. I never use the compile feature, but I love to create research files that are basically just vision boards or piles of nifty words and images.

― rb (soda), Friday, December 8, 2017 2:58 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks for this! it's helpful to hear ways in which a real person uses it -- the tutorial is very 'you can do this or this or even this, if you want' -- as i guess mark points out above -- but doesn't really explain why a person would do this (i) or this (ii) or even this (iii)

kudos to anyone who has ever wrote one book. the work it must take to control theme, character, plot, pace, continuity, dialogue, scenes, novelty etc etc across book length

I settled on just writing into a text file saved on dropbox, with notes in notes.app synced across icloud. it's kinda messy (offers none of the organisation of something like scrivener) but think it will work, at least for first/vomit drafting

'control' haha

dropbox is fine. i use google docs and that's fine too. don't know scrivener so can't comment rly but can't imagine how it'd make me more productive

I was just finding google docs slow, on my old computer

I'm interested in people's process for drafting too. like, say, do you try and get it as good as possible first time round? or do you just try get the story down and work it all out in the edit? will you partially write scenes and leave markers to go back and fill in details, or do you try and write them as full as possible? do you write the story sequentially or jump about the timeline, as ideas for scenes come to you? that kind of stuff

i write it sequentially and try to get it good although of course it isn't ever quite good enough until after several subsequent passes, and even then...

last time around i had a giant wodge of plot, sentences i knew i'd include later, ideas etc at the bottom of the document, underneath what i was writing, and this both expanded and diminished as i went through. at no stage did i go past a scene leaving it blank although i can see a case for that now, especially as i had to completely retool a couple of them later. it made sense to write in order as there were so many balls being juggled and so many intersecting plotlines that a continuity screwup would have probably happened otherwise. also despite overarching structural certainties a lot of it was kind of improvised and skipping ahead would have maybe lost the thread, or felt like cheating. idk though when it comes to writing, all cheating this side of plagiarism is probably ok. psychologically it would have left a void between two written bits, which would have sat ill with me

current book i've planned what's going to happen in every chapter before writing it, which will hopefully enable me to churn it out p quickly (although nothing for 2 months over winter, been mulling). of course i'll probably butcher the damn thing afterwards, because butchering something that's already done is kind of much more fun than filling in blanks or maybe even writing the original draft itself sometimes. a block to carve is a delightful thing. although yeah as i say, i do try and get it right first time around too. it's laborious

how do people refine their idea of what their story is /about/ (theme rather than plot, accepting their symbiotic to an extent)

I'm interested particularly how people push through their first drafts (crafting scenes etc) while maintaining something which is at least semi-coherently /about/ something which can be moulded and refined in later drafts

It's probably a horribly inefficient way of working, but wrt the thing I'm currently trying to piece together, I'm initially writing a lot about it rather than, y'know, actually just writing it. Loads of expository passages, delineations of character relationships, etc. Stuff that's only intended to figure into the finished piece in an oblique way, as if I'm writing a history book about the story I'm trying to write. When I sit down to actually write parts of it, I already have a pretty deep sense of how pieces fit together and what I'm trying to comment on and many of the potential inconsistencies have already been preemptively resolved and meandering quasi-themes quashed.

Keeping in mind that this is all in the service of a final product that, knowing me, will probably never actually manifest. But hey.

scrivener is a god send for longer stuff

I decided to start NaNoWriMo today for the first time. I'm intimidated by some of the more garish displays of motivational cheerleading that surrounds it, but also don't want to not acknowledge that I am doing it. Is anyone else partaking this year? Or just, how is everyone's writing going?