Mightyblue’s Corner

After trying abortively to write something for the webnovel project, I stunned myself with the realization that I Was Doing It Wrong in time-honored ‘net parlance. I was (and am, really) more concerned with doing something to gain experience. Which is fine with most things, but with creative endeavors you can’t just do something to do something, and I forgot that. Creative things come from within, whether it’s from the soul, the voices in the back of your head or the Force, and you can’t just force yourself to make something truly creative. Blasters are all well and good, but sometimes hokey religions work far better to mangle a quote.
.
So I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to force myself to do something I don’t really want to do just for the sake of experience. After reading through the unfinished draft of my NaNoWriMo novel, and going through the bits of the things I was planning on doing for the webnovel, I surprised myself. For all that my writing skills had improved over the course of two writing classes, most of the stuff I’ve done since NaNoWriMo ended lacked “something.” My NaNoWriMo draft had that “something” along with a paper I did for my Brit Lit class of all things. In my drive for greater technical skill and experience, I’d forgotten about the really important thing, the stuff that has to be there for a project to be truly “creative.”
.
Put another way, a lot of those writings lacked the passion I’d put into that paper and poured into that NaNoWriMo novel. Maybe it’s just me, but you can tell the difference. It’s the difference between technical elegance and art, and neither craft or inspiration alone really does the trick. Par for my course, I’d forgotten about the inspiration and passion part in my drive to become a “good” writer, which if nothing else makes me an idiot. Nothing new perhaps, but I still feel stupid nonetheless.
.
So no, no webnovel from me. Instead I’m going to finish and edit that NaNoWriMo novel, posting chunks of it at a time, and I’m going to infuse that work of passion with all the skill I’ve got. I’ve slowly lost sight of why I wanted to write in the first place, and doing this is the way I’ll get that back, and maybe get a sweet novel out of the deal. Who knows?