meticulous \muh-TIK-yuh-luhs\adjective: Extremely or excessively careful about details.
Meticulous is the word of the day on dictionary.com. I am one of those nerdy types that subscribes to such lists and on first look today I never considered that muh-TIK-yuh-luhs applied to me. Ask anyone, my wife, my kids, my boss!
Thats not to say I'm sloppy with details or dont care. What I mean is that I'm NOT extremely or excessively careful about details, which I have to admit, does lead to my downfall at times.
But then I had an epiphany (another word I need to add to my list of favourites). Cleaning out the bag I take to and from work I came across a number of computer discs I had forgotten about. So I loaded them up and checked out what files were there. Most of them were work files but a large number were snippets of or actual stories I had written over the past three years. Not to blow my own trumpet (but I will) a lot of it was not actual crap!
Here is the epiphany in regards to being meticulous. I am meticulous when I write. Wow big deal you say. You should be you say. But what I realised is that I espect my writing to be perfect on the first run through. I am meticulous in my draft writing. I never thought I was. I thought I had heeded all the advice from my writing teachers, fellow scribes and the literature. The simple fact is that I spend hours agonising, sweating blood on the perfect opening line, making sure all the punctuation and grammar is meticulous on the first run through!
So I have not been suffering writers block at all. I have been suffering from being too damn meticulous! So bring on the sloppy first draft! I'm back in the writing game!
In Memory
15 years ago
3 comments:
Stephen, Congratulations on the ephiphany! I wish that I could say I had your problem (the meticulous about writing problem), but sadly, no.
Now go churn out those sentences!
Stephen, what an interesting piece of history you dug up there, will have to investigate that a little more.
Good luck with writing. Take care, Gillian
What a great epiphany! And what a treasure trove of foundation stuff to catapault your writing! I recently discovered I had written a lot more notes (and actual scenes) from my second novel now in progress. Found files and a full notebook - it was better than discovering a twenty in an old jacket pocket.
Funny about your 'block'. I'm actually working through some creative blocks myself, one of them being the notion I have to get it 'right' immediately out of the gate. I'm writing around that by simply free-associating for several pages before doing any 'serious' writing. It seems to be working...
Anyhoo, great post. It's super to actually read YOUR writing. It's quite sharp, buddy-oh. Peace, Linda
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