writing as commitment

[dbskyler]

It's really funny how much of a process writing is, at least for me -- and how much of that process comes out of actually committing to put the writing out there somewhere. I had tried to do a "five scenes" story poking fun at things that irritated me about "Turn Left," and then I decided to just post the second scene, which was about Sarah showing up at the hospital in "Smith and Jones." After I posted it as a story on its own, I decided to go ahead and make a second chapter from the third scene of what I had originally written, except l ended up changing it slightly and I do think it came out funnier than what I had had before. And now I've decided to proceed with what had been the fourth scene, but will now be chapter three, and I have taken it in a completely different direction and like it tons better than what I had had before. And the funny thing is, none of the rewriting would have happened if I hadn't decided to commit to posting scene two, even though I had been trying to rewrite for awhile before then. Maybe the creative spark came from giving up on the "five scenes" idea? Because I think the requirement to have five had in particular been weighing me down, although I didn't realize it at the time, and now it looks strongly like the finished story will have three. But strangely enough, I also think a large part of the process was the commitment, and the holding my breath and putting it out there. Which did take courage after the huge failure of my last story, but I'm happy to say that this one has four reviews and three favorites, so yay! Back on the horse again. And I also cross-posted for the first time to an LJ community, and wow, am I stunned by how many reads I am getting from that. The story has overtaken in reads everything else I've ever written, even stuff that's been up for half a year, in just two days. Obviously I'm going to have to go back and cross-post my other stories too, especially "Miles from Aberdeen" since that's the one I'm proudest of. Although I don't know if it's better to link to Teaspoon or post directly, and if I post directly I don't know how to make the chapters link together. Oh well, more stuff to figure out!