The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: easy and hard

  • Overcoming the “A” Word

    Every writer, I’m sure, has their ups and downs when it comes to the writing process. What parts of it do you enjoy? What makes you excited to sit at the keyboard and type up a story – and what parts make you want to chuck your laptop as far as you can throw it, preferably into heavy traffic?

    For me, writing is a very emotional experience. I grow extremely attached to my characters – sometimes unhealthily so. I remember writing the end of my NaNo novel back in 2009 and bawling as I wrote the last words – I felt too sad for the characters’ relationship to end the way it did! What a terrible ending! What a way to torture two people I’d grown to love! Yet for me, that’s what I look forward to the most when it comes to writing.

    Building characters and worlds is a dream come true for me. It’s something I’ve been doing since I was a child – making elaborate worlds and equally elaborate characters. The current world I write for, a country called Pridd that has a good mix of Steampunk and magic, has become unbelievably real to me. The country has a map, a government, a religion. The rivers all have names. I have this gigantic timeline pointing out all major events so I can make sure I’m always consistent.  I’m sure if I wrote in some natural disaster – an earthquake, perhaps, that swallows part of a city whole – I would cry over ruining this amazing world I’ve created – and have an absolute blast writing about it. Writing creates a reality for me that I feel like I can visit whenever I’d like, free of charge – what a way to spend a vacation! (more…)

  • Finding a Voice

    Character dialogueJust ask Christina Aguilera or Cee Lo Green. Finding the right voice isn’t as easy as it seems.

    One of the hardest things for me to do with my writing was to find a voice. It wasn’t until I started writing a blog on a regular basis that I discovered I have my own style of writing.

    In case you haven’t read a lot of my posts, my voice is pretty straightforward. I use a lot of short sentences. I make a lot of asides. And I use conjunctions at the start of sentences — a grammatical no-no, but it’s the way people talk.

    When I write stories, my voice isn’t the important one. I hear a lot of voices. I hear the voices of my characters as they talk to one another. I hear them when they argue. I hear them when they tell me to kill the cast of Jersey Shore… oops. No, those are different voices… (Kidding, folks!)

    (more…)

  • Easy and Hard — Compared to What?

    Writing is the easiest hard thing I’ve ever done. Or maybe the hardest easy thing. Either way, it has its ups and downs on the difficulty spectrum.

    Ideas are easy. We’ve talked before about ideas and how they tumble over each other to get attention. They’re a dime a dozen and show up at all hours with little work.

    Hard? Turning ideas into a cohesive story.

    Easy: Cranking out 500 words during a 15-minute word sprint when everyone around you is doing the same thing.

    Hard: Cranking out 500 words in an hour when it’s just you in the whole house, you have no idea where the story is going, there are dishes in the sink, and someone on Twitter is being particularly witty. (more…)

  • Writing is Simple but Not Easy

    The number of times I’ve sat down to write this blog and failed made me realize that basically everything about writing is difficult.

    The hardest thing about writing for me is just sitting down to do it.

    It’s like exercise. You know you need to do it. You know once you do it you’ll feel better and that it’ll be fun once you get into it. You know the results are worth it.

    But that doesn’t always mean that you’ll do it.

    It’s hard to get started but it’s also hard to make the time, stay focused on a project and see it through to the end.

    Of course I love to write, but you’d never know it sometimes. Given the choice, I will come up with a million other things to do instead. If I know I need to write, suddenly there are chores that need doing and errands that need running. Books to read or TV shows to catch up on.

    Because putting it off is easy. All the rest is hard.

    (more…)

  • Strengths and Weaknesses (Week Ending October 20)

    They say that once you start doing something you love, you’ll never go to work again. So why are so many writers frustrated by a craft that they love? Maybe because — as one grows as a writer — writing gets more difficult.

    We all have strengths and weaknesses, but every writer is different. This week, we decided to see how our writers in the Cafe see themselves. We asked them to describe what is easiest about writing and what is the most difficult.

    As we move out of October and into November for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), we want all writers — ours included — to focus on their strengths. But also to be aware of their weaknesses.

    How are you getting ready for NaNoWriMo?

    Until Next Week,

    The Cafe Management