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What are some of your *good* habits in writing?

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Inspired by Naruzeldamaster, I decided to post this question. We writers excel at finding fault--both in ourselves and in others. Speaking only for myself, I find I'm much less adept at spotting strengths, virtues, or good habits. I learned this early when I was a teaching assistant, where I was far better at criticizing a student's paper than I was at pointing out what was good about it. Learning to see strengths, and to speak of them, turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Then again, I surprise easy.

Anyway, for the edification of the young <grin>, what are your strengths as a writer? What is habitual with you that helps your writing? In the game of 'Do This, Don't Do That', what's your 'This'?

Vas Dis?
(Wishbone Ash reference, apropos of nothing at all)
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Well...I am much more prone to looking at what it wrong with my writing. I want to produce a professional level product, and not sure how to tell when I've reached it.

My strengths however.... I think I have a very strong writing voice, and a style that can take a good scene and make it better. I believe I can tell stories that have great depth and layers underneath that can give a reader stuff to think on, and live past he page. I think I am very good at making characters with depth and complexity. I think the mystery of the stories is compelling. And I think I do a good job of tying it all together. From my own assessment, the stories I write are those that can be read more than once, and readers will find stuff in them that have different meaning the more they encounter them. I am very proud of it. Now if only I could get past the stuff that endlessly needs to be fixed :)
 
Not sure what my strengths are. I'll leave that to the reader... ;)

Habits: I think by far my most important habit is tracking my word count. I've got an Excel document where I track how much I've written each day. I aim for 600 words a day usually. Seeing this progress helps me to continue writing. And it shows me how far I've come. In my experience, you don't sit down to write a whole novel. You sit down to write a scene, or a page. Tracking how many of those you've written then shows how much progress you're making. I believe this is the main reason I've written 5 novels in the past 3 years.
 

Gurkhal

Auror
My skills at self-deception and habit of reflection.

To write something you have to put in a serious ammount of effort and time and think its a good investment of said energy and time.

There are really in my opinion two ways to achive this. Either you're a narcissist or you have managed to decive yourself that little, insignificent you have something worth telling others and that others will want to read it.

Thus I use self-deception to reach this state of existance called writing.

And I, or at least that's what I like to think about myself, am prone to reflecting on things. Which can be both good and bad but I really hope it allows me to write stuff that is a quarter-of-an-inch deeper than 5-minutes-of-feeling-good stories or pointless action scenes.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Habits and strengths. The former can be learned while the latter is probably intrinsic.

Writing on certain days has become a habit. I write five days a week, unless fun things like heart surgery intervene. I know it's a habit because when my wife and I travel, and days go by without writing, I get antsy. I don't set a word count, mainly because writing entails things like revision, copyedit, proofing, that don't roll up the count. But I do have a place and set days. Customary times, but those are perforce flexible. This habit has kept me producing stories over a span of ten years. Prior to the habit, I produced stacks of notebooks, reams of fragments, and not a story to be had, save for a single short story in the 1970s. Forty years of no product, then ten years and five novels. So I count that as a good habit.

A strength that is likely partly intrinsic but is definitely learned is editing. I'm good at it. I'm naturally good with language, but whatever natural talent I had was sharpened into an actual skill by becoming a medieval historian. Partly this is because I learned Latin, German, and French. Knowing multiple languages sharpens the linguistic senses in much the same way as dining on various cuisines sharpens one's palate. Especially Latin. But it was in graduate school that I truly learned how to edit. I also learned how to be edited; that is, I learned how to have my worked critiqued without taking it personally, to see my sentences and paragraphs as tools toward the ultimate goal of communicating. I learned to value clarity, because without that all else is undermined.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
Good habits? I always write when I settle down to write. Strengths? I'm told my stories are very vivid with strong characterisation and complex plots.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>I always write when I settle down to write.
Did you always do that, or was it a habit you had to cultivate?
Also, is there a method to settling down? That is, is there some sort of prep? Or do you mean that whenever you sit down to write, you write?
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
To write something you have to put in a serious ammount of effort and time and think its a good investment of said energy and time.
Ill have to go with deceiving myself. I think if I did the cost benefit analysis, the benefit would not be there for the cost.
 

Strider53

Acolyte
Habits? I'm not quite sure I have many good ones yet. I think one of my habits that can be useful (but can also get me into trouble sometimes) is the act of editing as I write. I tend to go back over paragraphs or even a whole work again when I sit down to write, polishing them and making things smoother. This reminds me of where I am in the text and where I need to go in this next sections.

Strengths? I think I do a good job of creating character voices that seem realistic and conversational. Again, this can sometimes come back to bite me, as the gravitas and professionalism of the story can falter if my character gets a little too comfortable. But in the end, I think the ability to have my characters sound like everyday people, and people that readers can identify with, is a positive thing!
 

Mad Swede

Auror
>I always write when I settle down to write.
Did you always do that, or was it a habit you had to cultivate?
Also, is there a method to settling down? That is, is there some sort of prep? Or do you mean that whenever you sit down to write, you write?
It was a discipline I was taught as an officer, especially when I was posted to a military staff. As an officer you don't have time to mess around when you're writing orders and reports. There's a deadline (in some cases literally), because a late order is worse than useless. You have to write when you're ordered to, no matter how you're feeling. And when you're on operations for real it has to be right first time - there is no time for a revision. So you learn to think it through and then write it down. At first you do all this to order, then later you just do it because you know you're going to get an order to do it.

So sitting down at my desk and starting to write is now something I just do, and I don't really think about the process of settling down and preparing. It just happens.

Writing fiction is usually a bit easier than writing orders used to be, at least for me and despite my dyslexia, in the sense that I can write what I feel like writing rather than writing something specific. The exception is when I have a looming deadline for a completed manuscript, then I have to apply my old military training and write the final text bits for the story.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I tend to use very few -ly adverbs and passives by nature. Only use a smattering of "distancers". I've also learned to limit opening sentences with adverbial phrases. Hmmm, and I like killing characters, I think that's the best habit, heh heh.
 
I think my best habit would be sticking to what's irking me in the story at the time I sit down to add to it. If a character issue needs to be addressed, I'll tackle that. If I'm unhappy with a certain scene, I'll rework it instead of bulling ahead. Sometimes it can slow me down but I find if I ignore bits and pieces I'm not satisfied with they end up causing much more hassle further down the line.
 
I am good at writing flavorful characters, providing an interesting narrative and flow, and creative worlds and action scenes. My work is currently very readable with the way I write and I've gotten a lot better at describing things with more prose and metaphors than simply saying "X did that." My greatest strength is taking an idea of what I have and describing it on the page.

My current flaws are some logic and plot holes and communicating the kind of story and characterization I intend. I've also been struggling with writing main characters who are likable and interesting.
 

authorannie

Dreamer
I'd have to say problem solving. It's like a puzzle to come up with different ways to fix issues and find unique solutions. I think this passion grew from my love for fanfiction and playing around with (AUs) alternate universes. It's so exciting to imagine characters in totally different settings and even as different people altogether the possibilities are endless, either that or character backstories.
 
This makes me think of a story about Walt Disney. Walt would leave the studio in the early evening and all the cell artists would stay and sketch all night. By 5 am they would go home, and by 7am Walt would return to the studio. He would dig through the garbage cans next to each artist's desk, un-crumple the best sketches, and place them on the desk with a letter saying: "Stop throwing away all the good ones!" I suppose the point is obvious, a little trust in one's abilities goes a long way. It's ok to be critical, butI need to be careful in how critical I am of my writing . Lest I discard it, or overwork the life out of it.
 
I have a new habit of putting out bad drafts. I used to try and build a good story on the first but now I expect things to be awful the first time around and need another draft too few to make it work.
I also overshoot my page goal. Just wrote something I meant to be 15 pages, and the first draft ended up being 20.
 
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