In which I blather about writing 221Bs

OK, I have new respect for you bradspyjamas. I have to be a bit circumspect as I talk about what I'm currently writing and taking a quick break from finishing up, because it's an exchange and it's supposed to be secret until the reveal, but if any of you guys stumble across this over on the comm you'll know it's mine, so I'm not too terribly worried.

So first off I'm pinch hitting so am not getting anything in return except a spectacular opportunity to world-build; this is perfectly fine with me. However; because I only got two weeks to write the piece and it was supposed to be no more than 3k words (a bit short for me) I decided to work in 221Bs to keep the length down. This - almost worked :-P I ended up writing more than I expected to, I'm over the 3k, but only by the difference which takes me through to the last 221 words - 14 221Bs I think - 3094 words, anyway (I anticipated doing about 6 - maybe).

This is flipping hard!

The thing that I think really gets me is that I want to save every possible incarnation because that one word I've just had to take out - five revisions later I might be able to fit it back in, but at that point I'll have forgot it was ever there!

One of the things that really bothers me is that a few of my Bs feel contrived - it feels like I just wrote that last line and stuck it in just to get the B in there. ...and, some of them...I did...and that bothers me.

At first I found myself focusing almost solely on getting the word count down so that I could have the luxury of 'extra' words in the bits where I really felt like I needed them. This led to rather unsatisfactory results. I just didn't think each piece was very good.

I found myself thinking that I would just rewrite the darn thing normally along the same lines, but that felt like giving up and, I have to admit, would probably have led me to write something too long to be submitted.

And then, as I discovered where the story was going, I really started to feel like I was getting the hang of it. I was liking the later pieces better, they felt pretty and I managed a bit of description which I usually struggle with and that made me happy.

So I went back and made more of an effort to make the earlier pieces something which I liked as well.

It's going better now, which is good as it's due tomorrow! But what I'm taking away from this is that I could possibly work on these things until the end of time, endlessly taking out one word here to make room for another there, rewriting that sentence completely and now needing three extra somewhere else. Writing these things feels like a puzzle which doesn't have an actual solution - I feel like I'm stuck in a mobius strip - as I just made that realization I am making a firm personal resolution never to write 221Bs again unless I have a deadline imposed by someone other than myself - I do not want to turn into Howard Hughes except for the neatly trimmed fingernails (for the typing, natch).

Oh! And don't even get me started on word counters! I lost a couple hours of my life trying to figure out what the bleep to do about word counters for this! And the constant copying and pasting is driving me crazy as well! So I also do not enjoy the mechanics of writing 221Bs, not at all! I'm also having anxiety about lie-in and fry-up both being hyphenated according to the Daily Mail. If they're wrong that section is way off on word count!!! ETA - the Cambridge dictionary site has confirmed this last, so I'm good there - phew!

In which I blather about writing 221Bs

OK, I have new respect for you bradspyjamas. I have to be a bit circumspect as I talk about what I'm currently writing and taking a quick break from finishing up, because it's an exchange and it's supposed to be secret until the reveal, but if any of you guys stumble across this over on the comm you'll know it's mine, so I'm not too terribly worried.

So first off I'm pinch hitting so am not getting anything in return except a spectacular opportunity to world-build; this is perfectly fine with me. However; because I only got two weeks to write the piece and it was supposed to be no more than 3k words (a bit short for me) I decided to work in 221Bs to keep the length down. This - almost worked :-P I ended up writing more than I expected to, I'm over the 3k, but only by the difference which takes me through to the last 221 words - 14 221Bs I think - 3094 words, anyway (I anticipated doing about 6 - maybe).

This is flipping hard!

The thing that I think really gets me is that I want to save every possible incarnation because that one word I've just had to take out - five revisions later I might be able to fit it back in, but at that point I'll have forgot it was ever there!

One of the things that really bothers me is that a few of my Bs feel contrived - it feels like I just wrote that last line and stuck it in just to get the B in there. ...and, some of them...I did...and that bothers me.

At first I found myself focusing almost solely on getting the word count down so that I could have the luxury of 'extra' words in the bits where I really felt like I needed them. This led to rather unsatisfactory results. I just didn't think each piece was very good.

I found myself thinking that I would just rewrite the darn thing normally along the same lines, but that felt like giving up and, I have to admit, would probably have led me to write something too long to be submitted.

And then, as I discovered where the story was going, I really started to feel like I was getting the hang of it. I was liking the later pieces better, they felt pretty and I managed a bit of description which I usually struggle with and that made me happy.

So I went back and made more of an effort to make the earlier pieces something which I liked as well.

It's going better now, which is good as it's due tomorrow! But what I'm taking away from this is that I could possibly work on these things until the end of time, endlessly taking out one word here to make room for another there, rewriting that sentence completely and now needing three extra somewhere else. Writing these things feels like a puzzle which doesn't have an actual solution - I feel like I'm stuck in a mobius strip - as I just made that realization I am making a firm personal resolution never to write 221Bs again unless I have a deadline imposed by someone other than myself - I do not want to turn into Howard Hughes except for the neatly trimmed fingernails (for the typing, natch).

Oh! And don't even get me started on word counters! I lost a couple hours of my life trying to figure out what the bleep to do about word counters for this! And the constant copying and pasting is driving me crazy as well! So I also do not enjoy the mechanics of writing 221Bs, not at all! I'm also having anxiety about lie-in and fry-up both being hyphenated according to the Daily Mail. If they're wrong that section is way off on word count!!! ETA - the Cambridge dictionary site has confirmed this last, so I'm good there - phew!