Dumb Paragraph that was Supposed to be Five Paragraphs.

Very true, moose, but I suspect he's not quite that bad when he gets going. As you say, 700+ words in his reply to me, and although he complains he edited it as he wrote, it looks like he got there without too much procrastinating.

 

I suspect that your definition of edit as you write, and @waitingforzion 's, are different by a couple of orders of magnitude.

I also edit as I write--a lot. But I do get some writing done, and my writing isn't usually incoherent from over-editing.

 

Possibly ... probably

Well in that case I'm honestly out of ideas. I'd like to help, I really would, because I feel for him, but I don't know what else can be said now.

 

Write flash fiction, there's nothing like a 500 word limit to give you hours of fun trying to decide whether saying "I believe that I'll have another drink" really makes a better impression than "I believe I'll have another drink."

500 words is too easy? Now take the story and tell it in 250. I spent three days getting Xzodis down from 688 to 500 words, and another five days making sure that those 500 were the very best words to use. Got zero votes, but I'm still happy with the result.

 

It was the nanobots, and nope, sorry, you didn't. Glad to see that it made someone's shortlist at least though.

 

We've said that 100 times already, but it's clearly not helping him. That's what I mean when I say I don't know what else can be said.

We can say 'Write' 100 more times if we choose, but what good will it do?

 

I wasn't talking about that kind of editing.

 

I just need to push myself to write, not forcing myself to avoid all editing, but not doing too much editing, the kind characteristic of perfectionism.

I need to learn not to be so rigid.

 

I wasn't planning to write those 700+ words. I just wrote it because the thoughts were occurring to me.

 

But you did plan, in a sense.

You planned in as much as you read my post, thought what you wanted to say in reply, and began writing.

Now just apply that to a different subject. There's no reason whatsoever that you couldn't have applied this to the 'walking' paragraph you were asked to write.

 

And that's precisely the kind of "write" that we're urging.

 

Well, the concept of walking for pleasure does not lead me to think of much. But I supposed if I were to reflect on my own walks, I could talk about my thoughts and feelings during a walk. But then the essay would be a more personal one, which is not what I had in mind.

 

So, rejecting personal writing is the latest roadblock that you'll use to ensure that you will not write.

 

You're going to write without including anything personal?

You're going to fail, but that's what you seem to want to do anyway.

Look at Stephen King. The Shining is about being a drunk, which he was. Dream Catcher was about recovering from a hip injury, which he was. Dr. Sleep is about being a recovering alcoholic, which he is.

Look at Herman Melville. "A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard," so he wrote about the sea.

Hunter Thompson wrote about drugs. Iain Banks wrote about liberal communist utopias. I know that Kim Stanley Robinson likes to climb, and I'd bet money that he's done a 75k hike at some point in his life, but I know for certain he's never colonized Mars. Doesn't matter, because climbing and 75k hikes are recurring themes in his books. I had trouble finding a girlfriend in Japan, so I wrote about a serial killer with a similar issue. A friend's daughter killed herself, so I wrote about that. Twice, but I turned them into supernatural experiences. You won't find a person on this board, or a published author in the world, who hasn't incorporated something from their lives into their writing, so pull out your LAN cable, turn off your wifi, and WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING.

 

The cool thing is that you can write about whatever you want to write about. It doesn't have to fit anyone else's wants, and it doesn't even have to fit your own past wants.

So, fuck writing as essay on the concept of walking for pleasure. It doesn't inspire you. Who needs it? Find something that you do want to write about and do that instead.

I do this writing challenge - usually once a year - where every day I have a one-word prompt and I write a short story inspired by it. Believe me when I say that a good %75 of these shorts are trash, because the prompt doesn't inspire me, or I feel bad that day, or I had other things to do. But I'm writing - I'm getting words out - and it has really, really helped me to break the mindset of "I can't write right now because [excuse]". It's just about writing something. Any goddamn thing.

I don't know if that method would help you. I only know that it helped me. It absolutely sucked for a while, but now that I've done it a few times, I genuinely enjoy and look forward to it. I'd urge you to at least give it a shot.

 

Sometimes when I want to kick my brain with a random piece of input, I go to Wikimedia Commons

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

and click the "random file" link until I see something that triggers a thought.

 

This thread reminds me of a certain someone...

Spoiler: Not for the faint of heart

Nayr Redle

 

I mentioned that name in another thread from this user.

 

1/ I'm not asking to see it. I'm suggesting that you write this for practice. Don't show it to anybody, just get your experience on paper. From your reluctance, I'd suggest that you probably have some strong emotions involved here. WRITE THEM DOWN!!! Emotional writing will shine through. I'd also suggest that, if you're that reluctant to confront those emotions, you very probably need to. Writing about a negative experience is generally considered to be carthartic.

2/ If you don't know the meaning, look it up in the dictionary. Keep one by you, and don't be ashamed to admit (at least to yourself) that you had to look it up. Everything you look up is something you've learned (See my point about lifelong learning in point 5/ below).

3/ See answer 1/ above, and all the other suggestions about using the "Writing prompts" section of this forum.

4/ So? Edit as you go. Edward Gibbon (he of whom, in the poem "The Foundation of Science Fiction Success", Isaac Asimov acknowledged that his Foundation series—an epic tale of the fall and rebuilding of a galactic empire—was written "with a tiny bit of cribbin' / from the works of Edward Gibbon".), it is said, would sit at his desk and think up his next sentence; only once it was perfectly formed in his mind would he write it down (This, of course, was long before word-processing and easy correction. He hand-wrote his stuff, so mistakes would both look messy and be sufficiently unclear as to mislead the printer.). He wrote down enough sentences for over 4,000 pages, and of such glorious sonority that Winston Churchill credited his style to studying them. e.g. If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [of gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

I edit as I go too, as do many people here.

I recently finished a short story, editing as I go; I thought it was good enough to publish. I showed it to a beta reader. Then I rewrote it to incorporate her suggestions (not because she said so, but because they were things I hadn't really considered/was too close to the story to see). Now it's sitting on my hard drive for another week, another re-read (possibly another rewrite), before I submit.

ETA2: Pertinent to answer 1/ above, a lot of this story is based around my experience; the MC is based upon me, the location is based upon where I went on holiday this year, and the weather we experienced, and what we did. Write what you know.


5/ A few years ago, my wife had a cardiac arrest. Blood stopped flowing through her brain. She was revived, and has since attributed lapses in memory to brain damage she suffered from that occasion. My daughter, who's a healthcare professional, conducted a test on her; she concluded that my wife ISN'T suffering from dementia, or brain damage.

Once you're past your teens, your brain cells will start to deteriorate; it's the human condition. (The rest of your body will deteriorate, too. From the age of 35-65, your physical ability will deteriorate at 3% for men, 5% for women. From 65 onwards, it's 5% men/ 8% women.) This deterioration can be helped or hindered by other factors; if you become overweight, your physical performance will deteriorate more rapidly; if you continue with mental activity, your remaining brain cells will compensate for those you're losing.

Give up, don't exercise, don't try to read, or play chess, or do the crossword, and your deterioration is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Dylan Thomas said:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

That's what I'm trying to do; grow old disgracefully!

ETA: I wrote this post, editing as I went. Then I read through it and edited it some more. Then, as you can see, I came back and edited it again. Need I say more?

 

One of the problems with looking up is copying and pasting them to www.Dictionary.com or some other site. I use WordWeb, which installs a dictionary in your computer and then allows you to look up a word by placing the cursor on the word and then using Ctrl+right click to look it up. There is a free version and also an extended dictionary for a little extra cash.

www.wordweb.com

 

You say tom-ay-toe, I say tom-arrrr-toe...