It is days like this that I'm so glad I'm 11 chapters ahead of what I've published.
I've been pretty good, with a chapter a week but I'm sat here in tears. I'm writing something emotional and everytime I try to write it, I sit here sobbing. I'm not crying due to frustration, I'm crying in empathy with the situation.
No, I'm not killing off a character.
Can anyone give advice on how to get around this. Or do I just have to grit my teeth and get it down?
Karen Page
Comments
It is times like this when writing is authentic
is when you are emotionally attached to the story. I would probably, in this instance, try playing some music that might try to cheer you up as you write and let that deflect some of the pain away. Maybe something along the lines of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd7e4SNjGBM or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0idpgXPZCw or anything that can make you try to smile.
Sephrena
Driven by I do not know what ????
Something makes, NO forces me to pretend to be a writer. I have inexplicably felt that way for most of my pathetic existence on this muddy Earth !!!
Few others tell me that they like what I write and I usually break the rules. Even now I have a new Document open in MS Word. I am writing again after a long break, driven my Microsoft. Finally they offered to make it all work again if I paid them $149.
Will my forced feminization story see BCTS?
DAM FI KNOW.
Gwen Brown, or who knows who.
Switch to OpenOffice.
Switch to OpenOffice.
-- Daphne Xu
I've not paid a $ent for micro-$qui$h word in at least a decade+
Please head on over to https://portableapps.com/ for =FREE= software.
All Portable Apps (PA) are designed and built to be 'Work-Safe'. So they are also safe for your machine.
First, download & install the menu system (first item on their Home Page). Put it anywhere you like: Main C:\ 'hard' drive, portable USB drive, your choice.
Then, from inside the PA menu system, download (all of) the LibreOffice suite. This is their (legal re-implementation of) micro-$qui$h'$ Office. This will auto-install in the same directory-folder where you put the Menu.
Important: store all your files/documents outside of the PA directory.
LibreOffice files should be compatible with Word, minus a few fancy-dancy things I've never bothered to learn.
Any problems, each PA application has an un-uninstall. Or you can safely delete the application's folder. If you really don't like PA at all, it's safe to delete the entire PA folder. No lingering 'junk', no Registry contamination, just cleanly gone.
MS Word will read and print LibreOffice files just fine.
Yes, some of the controls and menu items will be different from current Word Version-$$$.
---
"Friends don't let friends pay money to micro-squish."
Or, what Daphne Xu said ...
I simply don't know anything about Open Office. Google tells me it's from Apache software.
Open Office <> Libre Office
There are many differences and personally, I would :-
favour LibreOffice over any of the alternatives.
Just like I use WaterFox or Firefox over any Chrome based browser. I only use tools like MS Edge (chrome based and with its own slurping of what you do) to download Waterfox etc.
I refuse to use any MS tools for my personal work. Sadly, I've been forced to use a Windows laptop for the first time since Sept 2016 for some things related to a UK Charity that I've recently become a director of. I'm in the process of making it look like a Windows 7 device and all windows updates will be disabled.
Samantha
OpenOffice
Is what LibreOffice was forked from when Oracle borged it. Originally a free version of Sun's StarOffice, then Sun was bought (I think) by Oracle.
OpenOffice will go the same way that MySQL is doing. LibreOffice will do everything OpenOffice does but is more up-to-date and costs nothing. Most Linux distros carry it in their repositories so no need to hunt for it.
I'm not crying due to frustration
I'm crying in empathy with the situation. Hold fast to this!
Love, Andrea Lena
It's tough to write when your emotions want to make everything..
all right. When I hit the emotion wall, I used to put it to the side to come back later. However, I discover the wall was there when I tried to resume. I've learned to force myself to write the difficult segment even though it's not satisfying, then put it to the side. After a few days I return to edit and rewrite. Simply getting the scene written lessens the sting and I'm able to finish it, often quite differently than the original.
Boys will be girls... if they're lucky!
Jennifer Sue
It’s talking to you.
We write to communicate. It sounds like your story is speaking to you, powerfully. Let it. Sit with it for a while.
After all, you’ve got eleven chapters “in the bank.” :)
— Emma
Been there; done that; got the twisted t-shurt
Intense: a different kind of writers block. I wrote a blog titled "Intense" about that very thing. Getting inside the head of your character can and should result in such feeling. When you find yourself that connected to the character the character and story takes on a life of their own.
That results in a story that draws your readers into it a well. When I find myself facing that kind off dilemma I take a short break, go get a cup of coffee or a cookie. Then sit back down at the computer close my eyes and drink the coffee or eat the cookie. After that, I give it another shot and try my best to slog my way through it.
The advice given by Jennifer Sue is good. Remember that you are writing the rough draft. Every well written story will have major portions rewritten and edited... it a fact of a writer's life.
As writers, we tend to make typographical errors and leave out key parts of a story arc; hence the need to edit. Often times when I find myself with the more common kind of writer's block, it take advantage of that to reread and edit what I've already written. That often get me to become more involve with the story and pick up the story line.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Often
Often I don't notice the emotional intensity until I read it back and especially if I read it aloud.
In the moment that I'm writing intense emotion, I may be typing fiercely with lots of painful expressions on my face, enough so I have sometimes alarmed someone who was watching me. :)
The knowledge that I'm getting to such a spot may keep me from beginning a writing stretch but not once I'm actually doing it. I've generally plotted such points in my head for hours or days ahead of time. Like Pete's recent outburst when she found out that her teammates were not treating her the way she wanted them to.
Or the fight Butterscotch witnessed under the bleachers and the insults Armand and Rory hurled at each other. I typed those like the keyboard was on fire and I was beating back the flames. But knowing I had that scene ahead of me caused me to put off the actual writing for several days.
There's an emotional scene coming in another story I'm working on and it does loom large in my mind as I plot toward it. Makes it hard to start typing cause my brain wants to keep considering it before committing to pixels.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Emotional responses - thank you
Thank you all for your thoughts.
I will try again tonight and hopefully I'll get a first pass at what I want to say. Yet what is emotional to me, might just pass everybody else by. We will see.
It Doesn't Hit Me
Until I've written it. It's when I read it back that I get teary and I find it very hard to edit.
So I can only say plough through it, but that won't help you much. Sorry!
To strike someone else's heart
There's an old saying (among preachers anyway) that if you want to strike someone else's heart, you need to take aim at your own.
I don't know whether anything I've written had made anyone cry or laugh, but I've sobbed (or laughed) so hard that I had to stop writing and come back in a minute in two. I've read that Charles Dickens was that way as well.
It may be time-consuming, but it seems perfectly normal to me.
hugs,
- iolanthe
If it does things to you then it probably will to your reader.
It's important to remember that and balance it with some lighter stuff as well, which may be funny or happy for your characters and hopefully your readers. Intensity in a story, if it's intended can be good, but not all the time, reading is supposed to be for pleasure not an ordeal. Good luck, Karen.
Angharad
Killing off people
[Repeats comments made so many times]
I try to write real people. Sometimes, far too often, the plot arc kills some off. Feeling bereaved is absolutely rational, as otherwise the characters wouldn't be as real as they need to be.
Writing through tears
There are many scenes I've written through sobs and the abuse of many a kleenex to stem the deluge. And it's not that there was any surprise in the moment, the story had demanded the heartbreaking moment far in advance...but that doesn't lessen the impact when finally getting to it.
My advice (worth less than a penny, I'm sure!) is to plow through it, don't wait. The raw emotion of the author carries best to the page and to the reader...waiting for that to tamp down would dull the impact of the resulting prose. And if the scene really hits hard? Editing it later will turn the waterworks on again. And again.
If you aren't feeling it like a tempest to the soul, the reader won't either. The difference between a distant obituary and living prose is the blood, sweat, and waterfall of tears shed from the author.
(Much love to my stalwart proofreader who had to suffer through such editing repeats as well. -Blows kiss to Kimmie-!)
Thank you
Thank you all for your comments. I got through it and my imagination of what it could be in the first few pages didn't work out as bad as I imagined.