Monday, February 26, 2007

Deadlines of Destruction


Working to deadlines can be something of a double edged sword for me. On the one hand it gives me a push so that I get off my metaphorical butt and produce some work. But on the other hand it stresses me out and when the creative juices aren't flowing or co-operating I start to panic. That is where I am at at the moment. We have been writing in genres and I am finding it difficult. I have initial ideas and have written a couple of stories that I was happyish with but I know that they need work and I am not sufficiently engaging with the genres to make me want to rewrite them. I quite liked the crime genre but feel hopelessly inadequate in my knowledge of police and prceedure - I don't think watching "Life on Mars" really qualifies me as a crime writer.


Poetry, in which I am a fairly prolific writer is also slow to get going. Quantity does not equate quality - and I came away from Friday's crit feeling deflated and inadequate, feeling like I don't know how to really critically analyse my work.



2 comments:

theprovocativecynic said...

Felt just like this in the second term so I sympathise. The fiction is difficult as so different from term 1 - although you do come to enjoy it again in term 3, I promise! Bear in mind there are many different forms of crime writing, not all of which require police procedure etc - what about taking a psychological approach?
As for the poetry, more important to be able to write the stuff than criticise it. I also think Term 2 is hard in that you can feel very confident in term 1 about your ability and then, as you start going into greater depth, everything you write starts to look like predictable sh*t. Am hoping that ends soon too - will let you know if and when it does! Good luck. As for the stress of deadlines, you're right. Homeworks are very useful for getting you writing but the pressure of the submissions does tend to paralyse the creative flow. Haven't worked out a solution to this yet beyond working as hard as I can on the homeworks and the Visual tutorials so that the work is good enough to submit without having to write new stuff for it. Keep your chin up - nearly the end of term (ish)!

Julia said...

it's very reassuring to hear that other people have felt like this too. I look forward to liking my poetry again. i suppose when we write so much some of it will sound samey and predictable. I have changed my style a bit this term and was happy with that until friday's crit. aargh....

I know you are right though - give it a month or two and I will wonder what I was making such a fuss about.