(no subject)

[alyse]

I was reading Words back this morning and it was driven home to me how much of it is garbage. I don't mean that the story itself is garbage or that I had a sudden attack of Really!Bad!Fic last night, just how much of it is... garbage.

I was talking to Munchie about this last night. I've said it before in here, every so often I hit my stride, the muses start buzzing, the words start flowing and I'm suddenly in the zone, writing my little fingers off. And what I'm writing is good, which is why I wish it would happen more often ::g:: It's usually late at night when I'm very tired or, occasionally, with mates on these irregular get togethers and slightly pished. (Sidenote: for those who haven't met me in RL it's a constant source of amusement to my friends that I don't drink very often so when I do I'm usually in that happy, slightly tipsy state after a single glass of red wine and stay that way all night. Then it's a case of 'let's mention slings/waterbeds/rain/pink fluffy handcuffs/courgettes and watch Al gesture empthatically then fire up the laptop.')

It's almost as though my tiredness, or slightly tiddliness, has the effect of shortcircuiting my conscious brain, and what wells up is what's in my unconscious mind, but at the same time more formed and structured than that. You know how sometimes you have a very clear, visual image in your head and trying to capture that on paper is a complete pain? How, no matter how much you struggle and snatch at it, it just won't come? It just sits there, on the paper, flat and uninteresting and bearing nothing but a faint resemblance to the brightly coloured, vibrant dancing whirls in your mind? I hate that. I fight against that. And yet, when I'm in this zone, shattered and almost zombie like, I can capture it. The words flow and they match the image, or at least manage to capture more of its essence than any amount of struggling will.

The problem is that my fingers can't keep up. I'm a fast typer - I know I've scared Jan and Jennie on many an occasion - but tiredness makes me clumsy. I catch the obvious typos - taht instead of that - because I have my spellchecker on in Word and, as it underlines obvious typos and grammar errors, I can correct them as I go. However, it doesn't catch the times when I pick the wrong word due to my exhaustion - teem instead of team - or miss out half the sentence because my brain has been tripping along so fast that my fingers have skipped a chunk and I've not realised until I come to read it back. And it doesn't catch the typos that are still real words.

And that, literally, becomes tat.

Comments

[jenniek45.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I know exactly what you mean, sweetheart. It's wonderful when you suddenly find yourself in the 'zone', for want of a better word, but it doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it should. I'd love to be able to bottle whatever it is that causes it, I know that! But when the words are coming out so quickly you're falling over your own fingers to get it typed out, and you read back the last few paragraphs to realise that a) you don't remember typing/thinking half of it and b) that it's good, it's a great feeling.

And I agree, it seems to happen more when it's late and I'm tired, like it does to you. Strange that, not that I'm complaining, mind. I'd rather it cost me a few hours sleep than didn't happen at all. :)

[alyse]

Interesting though, isn't it? I'm pretty much convinced it's somehow due to the way your thought processes change when you're tired.