For me personally the biggest thing to improve with my writing would be time management or consistency of writing. At the moment although I try to write on a regular basis a few times a week or a little every day, often my writing can get pushed to the side in favour of other things. I feel that at the moment I am far too dependent on the drive that a flash of inspiration can bring, finding that when I begin to struggle my creativity or productivity lessens from a few thousand words to none or maybe only a sentence or paragraph. I think that having the Blog space should help with this, if I am posting my creative content onto a forum every few days, then it should improve my work ethic and encourage me to actually sit down and produce whereas were I writing in isolation I would be more inclined to put it to one side.
Other things in this initial reflection that I would like to consider is that I think that I need to improve the balance of planning against creating. With my own creative work I tend to plan to a reasonably meticulous level and have scenes and characters planned out ahead of time, often with a reasonably complex and detailed back story for the world. However this does not often help when I am trying to write the main story because I can get lost in the planning out and world creation leaving my productivity on the story concept nearly non existent. Sometimes particularly with shorter pieces I do quite the opposite and rush in writing on the spot with little consideration for plot or character consistency just going with the flow, putting what is in my mind onto paper. The upside to the latter is that for a very brief spell of time I am very productive and often reasonably happy with what I have written, the downside is that it can often be error riddled.
That brings me to the final thing I wish to focus on in this initial reflection, the editing side of things. With a good edit I could improve my work, of that there is no doubt. But finding the will to edit something instead of create something new, is not something I am good at. Rather conversely it tends to be that it takes a long time for me to edit my creative work, in fact it seems only when it is an assessed piece of writing be it academic or creative do I find the will to edit at all. In fact instead of editing in the sense of going through line by line, paragraph by paragraph altering grammar and the like, I often find myself rewriting longer stories first preferring to review plot and ideas, playing with them instead of focusing on the technicalities.
That sums up this reflection fairly nicely I think and I will update this in a week or so to see if I have in fact met any of my goals. I hope you have all had a great day.
Good Evening all.
Hugh
Good honest reflection, Hugh. You have a highlighted three areas of your creative process to focus upon and I think it would be very productive to keep these in mind throughout the module. I agree that the blog should be used as a tool to ensure that you are constantly producing, either creative work or reflective writing. Both are equally as valid. As for the planning issue, this is a tricky one. Sometimes a story is best produced without too much planning and if you feel yourself in this scenario you should definitely run with it. However, it is good to plan longer pieces carefully as it provides a framework around which to operate. It also enables to you to be clear about where you are each time you settle down to write and where the plot may be heading. Don’t be afraid to change your plans though. Be flexible. It’s good to remember that planning isn’t everything – you still have to write it! Eventually you have to just let it go and start. This is normally when I know that I have done enough planning – the urge to write the scene just becomes dominant.
Thank you for your advice on planning, this is the point that I was beginning to reach myself. I think that I will try to cut back on over planning my pieces and just let myself write them and hope that this will increase my productivity.