Wow, what is this, my fourth thread in two days in the same forum? Whatever.

When I write it's like navigating a maze. We had this 98 laptop once, and the screen saver was this brick maze that you went through at a dizzying speed, barely missing smashing into walls, and often times hitting deadends. That's me.

This might be a result of my panster tendencies. When I write I write fast, and with assurance. and when I stop it's complete. I come to a fork in the road, I whiz off in the logical direction, I take a shortcut through the woods, I race along a dizzying clifftop, I abruptly turn around in a complete U to go back through the woods and then... bang. Brick wall. It makes my head hurt, literally. I usually yell really loud, my smoking pencil coming to a sudden halt. I think about it to see if it's just a little bump, and if it's not I complain to whoever is in the room. That doesn't usually solve the problem. I'll spend days not writing at all, trying to find a hidden door, a rope ladder, an underground passage way or a tunnel. Sometimes it's a dead end. Sometimes I just don't know which direction to turn. Sometimes I just give up and go find something else to write and six months later I come back and it's plain as day. The door was there the whole time, and I couldn't see it. Then I pick up my pen and go whizzing off again, just as reckless as before. It's great fun.

On occasion, after careful consideration, I realize I took a wrong turn. Then I back up, page by painful page until I reach the point of error. Taking a different route I go spinning off down the tree of possibilities again.

I was talking about this subject with Jonathan in chat tonight. His style is a bit different. He doesn't speed, pays attention to road signs and therefore avoids falling off of cliffs and smacking into brick walls hard enough to break ones head. He describes himself as being plagued with flat tires, one after another. His journey is slow and steady, and more sure of arrival... eventually.

So there are two examples? (and I had to ask him to use his, since just one wouldn't have been enough to explain myself.) How about you? What does your road map look like?

I'm glad I could be an example.


I like that you said "more sure", since sometimes I still go in the wrong direction, but usually I realize this early on and just have to start over.

I'm a car wreck waiting to happen. But usually the thing that pulls me up at the brick wall is a lack of either names, countries, or minor plot holes. My brick wall really is a speedhump that I am just too lazy to push the car over.

I go over speedbumps and just keep going. I hit my brakes, go to an abrupt stop, turn the car around in a 1-way u-turn and keep going against the traffic until I find my turn. Then I whiz past the other cars, and go through crazy turns and loops until I reach the end of the race.

I'm more of a motorcycle speeding at reckless speeds along the most dangerous roads, trusting the speed to keep me from falling. Later on, I'll come back with a bulldozer and plow down the bumps.

Those are all good ways of describing your writing styles.

I'm continually seeing a new car, abandoning my old one, and giving the new one a try.

When I'm doing something like NaNo, though, where I have to keep going and I have to keep getting words, it's actually a fairly smooth ride. The map may look rather crazy and twisted when I'm done, but I never truly ran into any dead ends--and if I did, I punched my way through them.

I've done that many times in the past, though I'm trying to stop now.

*laughing* I love this! Who ever thought writing a novel was like a car?

Me, apparently... Although I only ever thought if it in terms of brick walls and Jonathan added the concept of tires. Brick walls are the only way I can describe coming to a halt in my writing. And there are different kinds of walls. And I go on about them at great length to my hapless family.

I'm a crazy fantasy writer...

Don't ever change, Vanya.

I'm doing my best.

Good.

The trouble for my "car" is that it takes forever for me to pull it out of the brick wall that it has piled into headlong. I've got to analyse, pick over, delete, re-write tons of stuff because the brick wall is so formidable. I'm still doing it to one of my novels, revamping my car, sticking new bits on it, and pulling off excess bricks still stuck in the windows...

Yes, there are road bumps for me. I just go faster and catch air, pull a few stunts and make it look cool.

That sounds like the way my brother would do it, if he wrote.
Wish I could do that!

My sister told me to post that she can't ever get her "car" started.

It's a very good analogy too, she loves world building but never has any plot.

That sounds like my fantasy experience. The story just doesn't seem to be there. My modern or future ones I can make everything up on the fly, but not fantasy.

I'm usually under the hood fixing the motor so that it will run. I go a few blocks, then get out and tweak something again. Then I stop at the store for a few hours and don't get anything done. =P I just tweak too much.

eruheran

This is an AWESOME thread.

I love this thread.

When I decide start figuring out which path I'm going to take to navigate the brick maze, I use crayola crayons to start tracing a path on my map. When I realize that my world building has reached a dead-end, I take a different colored crayon and start trying to complete the maze from another point... until my crayon hits into another dead-end.
(this is the stage that all of my brick mazes except Murel, Captured, and The Origin of Dark Island are in)

Sometimes, my crayon will go so far that I'll decide to actually start driving my bicycle (@Andrew because I'm not driving a car ) and see how far I can get. Much to my chagrin and pain, however, it doesn't take long for me to turn a corner and suddenly spin out when I see a brick wall I hadn't noticed on the map suddenly loom in front of me. Then I go back to the old crayon map until I think I'm ready to try driving through the maze again.
(this is how the stories in Murel have been progressing)

Every once in awhile, I'll get on a bike and decide to just start driving and see what happens. Many bruises, scrapes, and pints of lost blood later I finally decide to go and try another brick maze for now and come back to this maze later.
(that's Captured and The Origin of Dark Island)

I didn't even realize I'd posted in this thread before....

What I wrote is pretty accurate, I guess *shrugs*

Although I'd say that my writing style is generally that of pushing a car. I push it through the road hugging my map tight to me, and taking forever to go just a little while. But everything must be perfect! I rarely hit a wall only because I see them coming from far off. Then I sit down and plan about how to avoid the wall - in the meantime I stop pushing my car

eru

That's similar to what I meant in my crayon version (which is the version I like best).

I start, and travel haphazardly through the forest, turning wherever's simplest and every once and I while, I write something ludicrous to push my car over the speed bump. Then suddenly I stop, look back at my journey, and go back to the start. Then I redo this about a million times. This is why I only actually finish things when I'm doing NaNo -it won't let you start over until you're done. Which is helpful, but when I get back to those stories years from now, I'm probably going to restart completely. At least I'll have a finished road map to work from.

I'm a fairly slow writer. I have an old beater car which drives slow and steady until it breaks down every couple of miles/chapters, then I have to go and put in a new part before it can run again. Sometimes I take a wrong turn, then I have to backtrack, but usually I catch myself before the brick wall. I'm following a set of directions one a simple piece of paper, but the directions are rather brief and not in detail, so a lot of unexpected things may happen, some good, and some bad that happens to make my car old beater car need another new part.

And that's pretty much how I write. Except for occasionally when I fuel my car with NaNoplus+, then the old beater runs faster before coming to dead stop and much in need of repairs after a month.

I love this thread!

Let's see...
I have a convertible sports car, and I love zooming along the lovely country roads, until I see something especially pretty, and stop the car by the side of the road, get out, and explore. And stay there.

I love it, Aemi!

Andrew

And then I force myself back into the car, pull the top up, and keep my eyes strictly on the road, promising myself I'll stop to look at the scenery on my next trip through here.

How have I never seen this thread before?

My writing is so slow it's more like a leisurely stroll. Beforehand, I get myself ready - put on a coat, tie my shoes, put my hair in a ponytail. And this always takes me way longer that it should. When I finally get out the door, I head off in a random direction, just to see where the road will take me. After a while, I get hopelessly lost, so I wander around aimlessly for a while. I'll stop and admire some flowers or watch the sunset, before realizing that I need to figure out where I am. And, eventually, I'll find the path again.

(Actually, that's a fairly good description of how I do everything, not just writing... )