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The thing about writing long stories—at least for me, at the speed I write and the length I write and with my brain’s particular propensity for being a machine that produces enchanting ideas that all want to be 200,000-word stories—the thing about writing long stories is that it requires discipline.
This is just the way the arithmetic of writing long stories works out: on a lot of the days you spend writing a long story, you are plugging away in the middle of something with the excitement of starting long behind you and no hope of ending. On a lot of those days it is not your favorite of the stories bouncing around in your head. On a lot of those days you don’t want to work on it, or you have lost all faith in it, or you darkly suspect no one wants to read it. (I’m not asking for reassurance here: I’m just saying, this is the inevitable way things go in my brain, over time.)
Some days are good, some days you have a clever idea or you are writing an exciting! big! thing! but a lot of days you’re kind of just plugging away—writing something necessary, or something that will turn out to be someone’s favorite bit six months from now, but on any given day when you’re writing a long story it’s just putting one foot in front of the other, laying down more words, sticking with the thing you’re writing in the faith that eventually you will come to the end of it and you will have produced a long story, because there is no other way for me to produce a long story.
...This slightly grim writing thought brought to you by the game of Steve/Bucky 2048 I just played, hoping it would let my brain rock-tumble its way toward some productive thoughts on any of the things I really need to work on today. Instead I had a really! important! insight! into the emotional arc of the A/B/O marriage of convenience fic I’m not writing. Thanks, brain, but I’m still going to have to work on a bunch of other things today instead of that.
This is just the way the arithmetic of writing long stories works out: on a lot of the days you spend writing a long story, you are plugging away in the middle of something with the excitement of starting long behind you and no hope of ending. On a lot of those days it is not your favorite of the stories bouncing around in your head. On a lot of those days you don’t want to work on it, or you have lost all faith in it, or you darkly suspect no one wants to read it. (I’m not asking for reassurance here: I’m just saying, this is the inevitable way things go in my brain, over time.)
Some days are good, some days you have a clever idea or you are writing an exciting! big! thing! but a lot of days you’re kind of just plugging away—writing something necessary, or something that will turn out to be someone’s favorite bit six months from now, but on any given day when you’re writing a long story it’s just putting one foot in front of the other, laying down more words, sticking with the thing you’re writing in the faith that eventually you will come to the end of it and you will have produced a long story, because there is no other way for me to produce a long story.
...This slightly grim writing thought brought to you by the game of Steve/Bucky 2048 I just played, hoping it would let my brain rock-tumble its way toward some productive thoughts on any of the things I really need to work on today. Instead I had a really! important! insight! into the emotional arc of the A/B/O marriage of convenience fic I’m not writing. Thanks, brain, but I’m still going to have to work on a bunch of other things today instead of that.
