Write Every Day: 03 November 02019

[silveradept]

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 3 November 02019.

I was rubber-ducking something today, and it turns out to be a useful thing to talk about in terms of writing. At times, I feel like I'm not providing enough detail in my signups for authors for them, because I don't usually need a Dear Creator letter to describe what it is I was thinking about when I did the signup for an exchange. At the same time, some author comments have said that they like my prompts and enjoy writing them (and some say they wished they could write a lot more of those prompts, but exchanges have deadlines), so clearly I've got to be doing something right.

My duck (honk) suggested that I have spent a significant time learning the art of summarizing in brief, pointing out that a significant part of my work in readers' advisory allows me to envision an entire work, in all of its detail, and condense it into something salient. Since RA's goal is to sell a person on a book and get them to conclude either "This is a book I will enjoy greatly, I'll take it!" or "Nope! I definitely do not want that book, and I can tell you why so we can try again.", being able to elevator-pitch a book (or scan its summary and pick out which parts you want to foreground to the person who is making the decision) is an important skill to have. That skill may be applicable to writing prompts that contain the important bits that will make the work sing.

My duck also suggested that, as a person, I tend to be someone who aims for satisfaction rather than transcendent bliss, and therefore, I don't spend a whole lot of time in a prompt request on the details and parts that I really, really, want to see and would probably write myself, but for feeling like I don't have the skill (or time) to do it. I'll be happy with socks and underclothes and a toy in my stocking, rather than going for broke on wanting the Princess Luna doll with the Nightmare Moon transforming action and unicorn-horn-blasting projectiles. (Because, well, I'm often cognizant the stocking could also be empty, so that there's something there at all is a good thing.) I also find that I enjoy works that the author enjoys writing, and that enjoyment comes through in the work, so I also don't tend to put in a lot of detail that might feel like a writer tried to make me happy and that wrenched the story away from what it wanted to be. (Optional Details Are Optional, sure, but they do help provide direction and ideas as to what the finished work will look like.)

So, if you want to answer it, if you do prompts or exchange signups or other such things, are you a letters person, an optional details box kind of person, or are you just thrilled that someone's making a thing? Why? I've been fandom-adjacent and such for a while, but I still feel a lot like I'm not actually in the middle of everything, and so that makes me wonder if I'm doing it wrong somehow and nobody has had the time to explain to me how I'm doing it wrong and why.

Today, in writing, I promised myself that I would get through this Giving of Grief Book, knowing that there was one major chapter, and then two things that could be summarized in a few sentences. I succeeded at this thing. I also posted a couple of works to fulfill challenge assignments, but those won't be coming out until later on in the month. It's a good idea to get those in, because other assignments are going to be appearing soon, and it's nice to have a nearly clean assignment plate in time to accept other assignments.

Here's the tally so far:

Day One: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, azurelunatic, bladespark, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, ofmonstrouswords, sanguinity, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, umadoshi, yasaman, ysilme

Day Two: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, azurelunatic, bladespark, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, ofmonstrouswords, redsixwing, sakana17, sanguinity, silveradept, st_aurafina, sylvanwitch, teigh_corvus, umadoshi, yasaman, ysilme

Day Three: alexseanchai, auroracloud, bladespark, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, redsixwing, sakana17, sanguinity, sierranovembr, silveradept, st_aurafina,sylvanwitch, umadoshi, yasaman, ysilme

Comments

[auroracloud]

I wrote, just 161 on the novel but I did write more than my daily minimum, so that's okay. The rest of the time was spent on the Yuletide sign-up/letter.

...Which partly answers your question. I write letters and optional details and I go out of my way to assure the writer that it's all optional, DNWs aside, just stuff to help prompt them or get a feel for what I like if they're a writer who works better with that. I'm the kind of writer who mostly works better with details and prompts, because otherwise I just sit there with something like an infinite cloud of options floating around my head and don't know where to start. So, naturally, I mostly get assigned to people who give me about two sentences max. :-P And I'm always worried that my rivers of details and prompts and likes will stifle my assigned writer if they think, despite my reassurance, that they have to use something I provided.

I always need to add DNWs because there are a few things that can physically sicken me and/or set off my depression/anxiety/other mental issues. And I don't want to just leave DNWs, so I feel I need to add some details, at least. I don't usually have super-specific ideas about what I want - which is probably good because that can feel constricting! - and I'm luckily into a variety of genres, tropes and ships - but often there are at least some things that particularly tickle my curiosity or charm me, like "what are X and Y going to do about such-and-such"? So I try to drop in things like that. And I always worry my sign-ups are way too confusing and I appear terribly silly. Oh well.

[silveradept]

Hooray for words and sign-up letters.

It sounds sensible when you describe it to do a letter that way, especially when you have to have DNWs added in. I try to at least provide a suggestion of a possible vector to write in when I do a signup, but it's a "if you don't already have an idea in mind" kind of thing more than a "write this, write this!" thing.