The Nicotine Tower - Writing isn't that easy

One of the main reasons I decided that I’d never become a journalist - on my freshman year at High School - was that I always found it a bit boring writing about things that happened without place for imagination. I’d always say that creativity is my biggest quality, and I treasure it a lot. 

Here I am, some ten years later, writing about facts. And I still find it a bit boring. Whenever I can I transform my texts into a crossover of fact and philosophy, a bit academic, if you will. I believe it increases the text quality and, more important than that, avoid me form dying from tedious and disgust.

Now, I’m not saying I don’t like my job. I like it. It’s just that, sometimes, I really hate it. It’s like a never-ending trap. It steals my stamina, and my will to write fiction. I need the work, for I need the money. I need the fiction, because it is my life. A life without fiction is, for me, a live half-lived. A waste. So, there are days in which I read my texts talking about what the children did I and wonder if I’m wasting my talent into something that is worthless. No one needs talent to talk about facts, just hard work and good grammar. 

Also, being an obligation, means you never get the “I understand it’s not a writing day” thing. It seems amazing, but that’s the easiest way to get a writers block. All the information is blocked. It doesn’t reach you or get shaped into something that resembles a text. It feels forced, awful, painful, for you have to deliver it even if every cell in your body says “do not write”. And, yet, you have to and you do. It’s exhausting, and not in the adrenaline ridden, emotional storm of the fiction. It just leaves you empty. Shapeless. Wordless. Strangled. 

 This is not the dream.

mafiaiiaddict:

Damn it, tumblr.

I need a really long break from you.

It happens to me all the time…

(via cannibalisticcutie-deactivated2)

lindseykush:

I’m so happy someone created this

(Source: lilmisslindsey)

Whenever we think about text, we always think about revision. If you say you’ll send it to the beta, or to be revised, or to be polished, most people will think they’re all at the same thing - but they aren’t. They’re radically different things.

The easier to explain, understand and perform is revising. You get the text, check for mistakes in spelling, grammar and coherence, and then send it back to the author with notes and corrections. Five minutes, it’s done.

Only that, if you’re used to write as well, you’ll find revising without polishing almost impossible. You’ll rephrase sentences to make they sound better, chance the entire text in order to create a easier reading, or a better understandably of the material, or to adjust it to the voice of rest of the publication.

Beta-ing, on the other hand, means you’ll obliged to argue ways to make things better. Their job is helping the author both finding their own voices within the text and respecting the established canon, characterization, and explaining any changes that are made. It also deals with revising, yes, but it’s more than that, it’s being a personal guard angel. Good betas? Are worth tons of gold and compliments. 

So, parts of my job involve revising. Well, it should, but then again, it’s not enough. I end up polishing every text that comes about. They’re pretty much notes - most doesn’t even reach 100 words - but it’s amazing how much work it takes. To make this example clear,  it’s a newspaper about a kindergarten, and each class gets a comment/note/whatever you wanna call it about their week. That means, basically, that each week I find myself polishing 10 or 11 paragraphs, each from a teacher. And, even better: its not even the same teacher every week.

And, don’t fool yourselves, they make many  mistakes. I spend the better part of a 6-hour work day just dealing with their texts, polishing them, which, sometimes, means deciphering what they meant and what they did. And it is exhausting. It’s, possibly, the most tiresome bit of my work, because I don’t only have to revise 11 completely different voices, but also, I have to make my head fit their mind-frame, so I can understand what they want people to make of their note, while not knowing exactly how it went. Sometimes, it proves to be beyond me and I have to ask them about those and that also wastes an amazing amount of time.

So, you could say I’m beta-ing them, except, I can’t. They’re not shown the mid-results, they see their text and my final version. Everything - the process between one and the other - doesn’t reach them. I often find myself writing “notes” using the revision tool that won’t be seen, but I feel like I  must write. If I’m not helping those teachers to improve their ability, then I’m not being nearly as useful as I could be. Still, company politic’s: I’m not an educator, I’m a writer. I still try to protect their personal voices while making it readable, but that’s not my goal within work, it’s a personal goal - because this was how I learned to deal with it, how I’ve done it for the last 10 years in fandoms, and the way I feel good about myself instead of miserable and a fraud.

But, God, I miss beta-ing.

devabbi:

I actually don’t know you people, but that’s exciting! :D  I don’t make gifs but I write, so I’m going to assume that’s why you’re here.  Dramione on the way… muhaha.

Other than that. um.  Hi?

Not Dramione, not even close to it - Indeed, I’m a hardcore Draco & Ginny shipper. But the way you wrote about things you hate/want in Dramione fics? It earned my respect. It made me interested both in the character development and in the why-the-fandom-doesn’t-do-this-thing.

Gah.

Some simple things are important to be said out loud. “This is not a guide” is one of them. It’s just a bit of a space to share and talk to people about this crazy, insane, habit of ours. Writing, huh?

I spend an amazing amount of time worrying over writing - wondering, thinking, judging the whole process - from the beginning to the end (and what does those things mean to each author is one of my greatest thinking points). So, I might as well share that with, you know, everyone. Is a bit like beta reading, except for the “reading”. 

Also, I won’t talk just about this or that. I’ll planning on sharing bits about the work, and about creating, and about life in general when it connects to writing. Is this too boring? I don’t know. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But, still, it won’t hurt.

(me. You, of course, will be traumatized.)

The best - and probably, most obvious and stupid way to start something - way to begin is explain why I created a second tumblr, and why I choose that name.

Well, choosing was easy. I’ve been (re) reading “The Writer’s Tale”, and on the Introduction, Russel T. Davies (who isn’t my favorite writer, but it’s my favorite writer on writing) says:

“Writer’s don’t sit in an Ivory Tower. Mine is kind of beige. If not nicotine.”

Well, I don’t have a tower, but surely it’s more than a bit “nicotine”. 

And I write. All the time. With my head, and fingers, thoughts and phrases. It’s a funny thing, really, when I stop to think about it. My job is writing. My hobby is writing. Which means, I spend best part of my time writing. And, sometimes, it’s really annoying and tiresome. Then I think how many people would love to have this chance, and try to chill. 

Of course, the fact that I work as a “”“journalist”“” (hate saying that, I’m not a journalist and I will never be one) and write fanfic makes it easier. I’m dealing with facts, on one side, and on the other, it’s all about imagination.

It looks so easy, doesn’t it? Two completely different things that, by chance, involve typing words into the screen. Two boxes that separate those bits of my life.

It isn’t.