I've actually managed to fix the issue with the story being all narration and no dialogue. I haven't gotten any farther on the plot, or figured out how much Antarctica I need, though.
Several people ahve commented on my post about writing fiction, and from some of their comments, I think I may have been unclear. The reason I don't do it much is not just because I'm not good at it; it's that I have no real drive to do it the way I think some of you do. I don't have characters coming to me and asking to see the light of day. It's very rare for a plot to come to me and want to be written; if I spend time trying to think of some I can grind out a few. Maybe one will taken wing to the extent that writing it is fun, or maybe not. It doesn't feel like my metier.
It doesn't feel awful or painful, either, and sometimes it's kind of fun, and sometimes it's satisfying, and sometimes I want to do it, because the alternative is to do something less fun. Rather like housecleaning. Braincleaning, maybe. When I've talked about what parts are hard for me to do, it's not meant as a complaint, but as a data point. I'm actually finding it fascinating as a matter of cognitive science to see what aspects come easily and what things are hard, especially as I've read the journals or books on writing from enough writers to suspect that at least some of the issues are different for them. I haven't yet figured whether it's just that each person has native strengths and weaknesses, or if fiction writers as a class have a different knack. Maybe there's a thesis in there for someone; it's an interesting question. I love learning about learning - metalearning, I guess.
Meanwhile, while things are slow, it's occurred to me that this is a good time to do some other housekeeping I've been putting off: downloading all the images on my old Diaryland site so I can stop paying for GOld membership, moving them here, and changing all the links to point to where they should go. (Fortunately, I think I can do a search-and-replace operation for that last part.) After that, I may migrate from MovableType to WordPress; the Outlaw site uses WordPress and it's been generally well-behaved, though I haven't entirely figured out all the template stuff. Setting up a new blog on WP was incredibly easy; I suspect migrating is a little trickier and riskier, though my host does have some tools to help.
Anyway, just a warning: if this site goes down in the next few days, that will be why.
Posted by dichroic at June 23, 2005 12:01 PM