Writing Meme: "F"

[loaded_march]

lizzy61 also asked for F, which is: Share one of your weaknesses.


I will preface this by saying that every single person is most critical of themselves (unless they're narcissistic, in which case, more power for them!), and I'm no different.  I'm really critical.  I've never once looked back at something I wrote and thought that it was perfect.  I always tell myself, I could do better, and this is probably the number one reason I rarely reread anything I write.  If I do, I'll be overwhelmed by the urge to rewrite it, to fix it, anything, because it's a monstrous thing and I can't believe I flung this garbage out at people.

Share one of my weaknesses?  How can I do that when my weaknesses are all the things? Except action and fight scenes.  I'm happy with my action and fight scenes, though I admit that I could make them not as long?

I have a list of things that I don't do well, and that I'd like to improve on.  For example:

• Long, run-on sentences that, while being structurally sound, tend to go on for so long that by the end of it, I've forgotten the original point.


• Long, run-on sentences that don't even come close to the bull's-eye of being structurally sound, but that don't make sense.


• Long, run-on sentences that I don't even finish, but


• Repetition of words within sentences.  Or within paragraphs.  Or completely spraying a full page with a single word.


• ALL THE TYPOS.


• Bad slang usage.  Not doing my research properly.


• etc.

But those are structural things and can be easily fixed.  Basically, they are the end result of turning off your inner editor and just writing to get it on the page.


And there's the non-structural things that I suck at:

Crappy Visualizations:
Without fail, every beta who has gone through my fics has had to fix my sex scenes.  Happily, I can claim no mysterious "third arm" belonging to the same person, or a pretzel maneuver that would never make it into the Kama Sutra because it's frankly impossible.  But invariably, I will write something that makes absolutely no sense and that always makes me pull the What the fuck was I smoking? face when a beta points it out.

Who the What Where?
Insufficient descriptions.  Or insufficiently clear descriptions.  Sometimes a new person appears on the scene and I have no idea where they came from.

This Fight Scene Did Not Need to be 5000 Words:
However well I think I write fight scenes, I admit that in many situations, the fight scenes did not need to be as elaborate as they were.

The Corrollary to This Fight Scene Did Not Need to be 5000 Words:
Everything else doesn't need to be as freaking wordy as it is (see: the entirety of LM).  There are infodumps.  There are long explanations.  There is probably 5000 words somewhere that you could cut and never miss.  Hell, after I posted SLAPK, I realized I could easily cut 30,000 words, rewrite one chapter, and it would still be the same story, only stronger.

AND THERE'S MORE.  Just.  I'd like to leave this post with a modicum of self-esteem, thanks.

Actually, my self-esteem is fine, because I accept that I'm overly critical of my work, but I also accept that if I don't shut my inner editor in a dark dungeon somewhere, I will never finish anything and I'll never move on to the next thing.

The fics I post are the fics I write, warts and all, and you'd see them, too, if I didn't have the awesome betas that I have.