In thinking over where I am as a writer and where I want to go, I feel like the trees are fine, but the forest needs tending.
You see, I’m fairly satisfied with my ability to spin out words and link them into sentences. I can hold my own on the small scale. When we zoom out, though, that’s where things start to fall apart.
I should mention that I’m primarily thinking of my fiction and plays; the structure of my nonfiction works doesn’t bother me. With stories, though, the narrative arc continues to elude me more than I’d like. Or at least I don’t feel as confident there.
To fix that, I guess I’ll just keep studying writing, focusing more on the skeleton underneath the story. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to write a story and then rewrite it dozens of times, trying different structural techniques. We’ll see. :)
Comments
As I’ve read more and more of your fiction, I’ve been impressed with the variety of topics and genres you explore. Each play I’ve read has been vastly different in both substance and tone. With each one you’ve discovered different strengths and weaknesses in your writing–things you can either develop or work on fixing. Discovering and working on those strengths and weaknesses is going to help you become a better writer as much as anything, I think. But, of course, rewriting also helps. :)
Thanks. :) The funny thing is, it doesn’t really feel like I’m writing vastly different pieces. I mean, I agree — someone else said the same thing to me not too long ago, and when I pull back to look at my work objectively, I see that that’s the case — but most of the time I forget. Interesting…
Throw in your two cents