Various

[altariel]

Hmph. Almost a month ago, I noted how grumpy short story writing was making me. Yesterday afternoon (thanks, mraltariel), I finally worked out what the story was that I was trying to tell. I've had four separate run-ups at this damn thing now, none of which have stuck, but this morning I scribbled down an Actual Framework for the damn thing, and now all I have to do is the Actual Writing - which is, of course, the easy part.

Wah, short-story writing is hard! Nothing like writing lovely Tolkien vignettes, which I can conceive of and execute in the space of two days (or used to be able to do). This has taken roughly eight weeks, and loads of different iterations. *plaintively* Is this normal? Am I doing something wrong? Does it get easier with practice? Have my magic powers gone for good? Is this the end?

Yesterday I finished rereading Watchmen, which I hadn't read since college *cough*ty years ago (eighteen). Now I'm trying to decide whether I should go and see the film, but I'm put off by the fact that it's apparently two-and-three-quarter hours long. Two-and-three-quarter hours! No film should be that long, except The Fellowship of the Ring. Anyway, I can't make decisions, so Speak You're Branes, f'list, and do say why in comments if moved.

[Poll #1364164]

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I suppose I have been quiet on LJ recently. I was in the library for much of last week, which meant I wasn't near my PC. And it took me ages to catch up on posts about Redemption, and wanted to do those before anything else.

The short story is sort-of set in a world that I've been sort-of building intermittently for a while now, and I think I've had to do a massive amount of invention before I was even placed to write the story itself. Then I couldn't seem to excavate the story itself. It's switched protagonist three times now, and isn't remotely what I thought it would be when I started it.

I've been reading Samuel R. Delany's book about writing (called, About Writing) this week, and that's been practical and helpful.

Edited to add: I like having a process in place, a sense that I've operationalized what I'm doing. Which I managed with fanfic vignettes (because I've written so many), but haven't yet with short stories (because I've only written a handful). I want to be in a place where I can generate short stories quickly, but the only way of doing that is to write a lot of them, but then they take so much damn time... It's the frustration of incompetence, and I hate feeling incompetent.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I'm not in a position to give advice, but getting the operational process in place sounds as if it may be very helpful, so I hope that works out.

Apropos of nothing much, I finished The Children of Hurin in the not-so-early hours, so that's one of my post-deadline tasks ticked off.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

A week later and I still haven't finished it, but it's mostly there *sigh*

I finished The Children of Hurin in the not-so-early hours, so that's one of my post-deadline tasks ticked off.

"Enjoy" isn't the right word to apply to the book, I think, but I thought it was wonderful. It was one of my favourite Tolkien stories when I was a teenager. I wish the estate would do similar volumes based on Tuor's story, and the Beren and Luthien story.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd like to read Tuor/Idril and the fall of Gondolin, as that's the one I'm haziest about; I feel I've a reasonable grasp of Beren and Luthien. Turin & co fell somewhere in between; I recognised a lot of it, but he did explain how he'd woven various different versions together (and omitted a whole lot of extra detail from the verse versions).

I always liked it too, for its grim angst, though reading the story in full it did strike me that the plot depends on Morwen and Turin both being extremely pig-headed for about eighteen years.

I do actually have a Glaurung icon!

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

Me too, but it's a tough proposition. The fall of Gondolin has three versions: the one in Lost Tales II, possibly the first story in the mythology to be written down, composed c. 1917. There's a long version in Unfinished Tales, written c. 1951, but it only gets as far as Tuor's arrival in Gondolin, about a fifth of the way through the story. And there's a highly condensed version in the Silmarillion. Expanding the story to novel length would involve rewriting the last 40 pages of the 1917 version in the style of the 1951 version, while updating the names and other details of the mythology.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say no to having a go if the Tolkien estate came knocking at my door.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I suspect the slowness of the writing might be purely because you had to make the world come together in your head, and (assuming this is your first story in this universe), essentially the imaginative stage is no shorter than it would be to write a novel.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I've been intermittently writing a novel set in this universe for about eighteen months now, doing world-building along the way. This story is set some time after the events of that, and actually I think it's going to be helpful in working out what the endpoint will be like.