What have you discovered about yourself?

[Velvet]

This is something different from why you write. Rather it's more about the discoveries we make about ourselves in the course of writing. Whether it's a personality trait, a habit, a way of thinking etc.

I had a bit of a eureka moment while writing a story I've just finished (well, I've finished the first installment). I was at a stage where I was preparing to write a pivotal scene and I couldn't get the words right! I couldn't get the characters to move fluidly or say what I wanted - I was stuck.

What could I do? Finally, I took a deep breath, grabbed a good old fashion pen and a sheet of paper and began to write what I wanted to happen but didn't have the immediate tools needed to bring it about.

I took those notes, opened LSB and just began to transfer my notes. And here's the eureka effect. Once I'd done that, I began clumping the bits of notes onto the chapters pane and slowly the scene began to take shape. It was like a key had been turned and all those trapped, words, gestures, expressions and body movements were released! I realized that I had to see the words (even if they were in no carefully arranged order) in front of me to translate it into a scene. It's then I realized a truth I've long suspected. I am a visual writer. I have to 'see' what I write to order my thoughts and put them down the way they should be. Not necessarily pictures; an arrangement of words or research information is enough of a trigger.

I suppose that's why I adapted to sim writing so easily. Some of you may remember me bemoaning my dependence on this niche of writing when I first joined the forum. Now it's clear to me why I depended on it so much.

I'm not sure if that makes a bit of sense. I'll give you an example. All my life I've had trouble with math and science. Writing, drawing, painting etc has always come easy. I find locations by sight (remembering land marks etc), not by following directions, I found it easier to solve math problems if I drew pictures of the equation and to write better with some visual prompt to stir me on, even if it's just in my head (but if I have no mental image then I have to resort to a physical one).

It's like, it doesn't compute unless I have a visual interpretation of it. I told someone that I paint with words. I didn't realize just how true that was until that moment of writer's block.

So, this is what I've learned about myself and my writing. What about you? What have you discovered about yourself in your writing experience?

[thelunarfox]

Sounds like you're a heavily visual learner. I am too. Which is somewhat hard in school because people actually don't think about this. Like language classes. They'd talk and talk-- you know, the idea of immersing you into the language, which isn't bad. But I found I do much better when they write new words on the board and I can see what we're saying. Sometimes I had to request it or ask others.

Plus I'm a horrible speller, but especially out loud. I couldn't ever do spelling bees. Because I need to see the word. So when someone asks me how to spell something, I absolutely need to grab a piece of paper and write it out to see if it's spelled correctly. And the words I know are only because I've seen them from prior reading experiences. So even then I don't know a word is spelled right, I sort of just go, "Okay, that looks like the version of the word I've seen before."

It I write something down, I remember it longer than if I don't. And I don't mean that I have to carry the paper with me, lol. In school, I'd take notes, and having learned I was more visual, I'd revisit notes before a test with a couple of highlighters and color code the things I thought were important. I usually got straight A's, even in college. And I never had to kill myself studying. My notes were key.


So I guess I sort of have learned this through writing. When I would write a lot in high school, oh man was my spelling atrocious. This was way before the squiggly red line thing that Office and web browsers do now, so I had no idea until I started being able to do spell checks when I got my first computer. And through doing spell checks and staring at what I wrote compared to the correct word, I learned how to spell that way.

[Velvet]

Hello fellow visual person! I love words, adore them and I really love learning new ones. I never had any trouble keeping them but I do notice that I'll switch words around if they have a similar sound. Like in the post above, I originally typed 'right' but meant 'write'. I know how to spell them, I know their meaning but if I'm excited or typing fast, in the flow of things, I'll invert words like that. So you know, I have the same experience with there and their and lose and loose etc. I know the blasted words, but I use to feel like I was stupid when I'd mix them up or fear others would assume I'm stupid. I'm not. It's just the way my brain works.

Nice ta meat ya! (lol <- that one is on purpose ).

[dinuriel]

I'm the opposite. I struggle with visual arts and I was always great with math and science (although I never liked school in general because I hate structured environments, and that's becoming more and more evident with university because I no longer have the option to just not work and let good grades fall into my lap like they always did for me).

I think this comes out in the way I write. I'm obsessed with numbers. I'm very chronologically driven. I need timelines. It was my favorite, most useful feature of LSB when I had the trial and it's the one thing I miss about it (I can make timelines in Excel, but they're not as good). All of my characters have to have specific ages and specific birthdates and I have to know the date of any given event in the story--otherwise, as far as I can tell, it makes no mathematical sense.

Lunar, I struggled with purely verbal language classes too. Ended up failing first year Italian because of it. I like seeing the words, but most importantly, I like seeing the space between the words, which is difficult to hear when it's a language you're unfamiliar with.

I'm usually pretty good with spelling and grammar? Although I'm sure there are plenty of typos/misplaced words out there that tell another story

[speechless]

I am also very visual person, I got to admit I was the odd-one-out in school and mainly because I just could not do maths, physics, chemistry...it was nightmare. Give me numbers and I am so lost it is just silly. I can do the basics of course, but something more complex - it will be a disaster for sure.
In maths lessons I would write poetry or short stories, so you can imagine I just was not there. However now in university I find it pleasant, i love learning, but because I learn something very visual. Everything I do on my course really goes through visual channels. I always have to think of the final picture/movie/tv show and how it looks on screen. I find it easy to see the final product in my mind, but often find it real hard to put it into words. I suppose that's why I am learning to be a movie editor, it suits me the best.
Through my writing I have discovered that I always need some sort of visual reference. If I write about character, I got to make him/her real somehow...often I use sims for it, I need the visuals in front of me to succeed. If I write about a location i often create that location, just to get as good visual reference as possible. i have however learned that I can easily visualize scenes, moments, even text I have not yet written in my head, but the moment I get near the page I freeze, I find it often real difficult to get those visions out as words. I can go and film and make a movie to show someone what I mean, but I often struggle to show through writing.

[infinitygoddess]

I tend to be a visual learner when it comes to web coding, whether it be HTML, CSS, or ActionScript.

Not to sound like I'm boasting or anything, but I've always been very lingual and I have a very complex vocabulary where I can pronounce and spell even the most difficult words. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I have Asperger's Syndrome, which is a high-functioning form of autism where the individual may have an average to genius IQ, but is socially and emotionally stunted.

Another part happens to be the fact that I was into dinosaurs and some of those names can be hard to pronounce, especially if you don't know Latin or Greek.

[lepifera]

I have found that making mini version (2x2) of the character mosaics is very helpful for me in getting a better feel of the characters. The larger version (4x4) that requires me to answer fixed set of questions for a character would be too cumbersome and inflexible for writing super short stories (<1,000 words).

If I run out of ideas on what to write, googling or searching for different photos on Flickr also helps me narrow down on a central metaphor, theme, or imagery from which a story or plot could develop.

Visualization is very important for me. Back in elementary school, when I was wrestling with manipulating mathematical equations in order to solve for the unknown X and Y, nothing made sense until I started visualizing the different sides of a equation on a physical balance.

[jennifer]

I'm definitely a visual person. Absolutely hated maths in school but then that could have been the teacher. lol Now that I look back we had some terrible teachers. I really loved English. I remember I signed up for the new literature class and was so excited but then they canceled it because there weren't enough students. I've always chosen arty subjects because that's what I felt came naturally to me and it's what I enjoyed doing as well.

With writing if I get stuck I too will write down the scene or conversation on paper if it's not working for me when I'm typing it out. I don't generally write a lot of notes on my story though, some short-hand here and there. Another thing too is that I love taking and setting up the shots for my story. From what outfits my sims are wearing to the lighting and position they are standing in.
I've never had the eureka moment but I did realize the other day that I've been writing my story for over a year now (with a few breaks in between ).

[Velvet]

That's wonderful Jennifer! Longevity and endurance has been my problem until recently. I would start/stop a story and never finish - I think it was because I feared failure so I wouldn't keep going. I had a real defeatism attitude. Thank God I'm over that now.

It seems the running theme here is we're generally more inclined to using the visual/artistic side of our brains. Although there are moments when I find listing goals as helpful, I try to keep the list short because then my need to check off each goal consumes me!

lepifera I never thought about the character mosaics before. I'll have to give it a try. It may help me pin down some of my characters' traits etc.

[dinuriel]

Oh wow, am I the only non-visual person here?

Heh... oh well. I'm probably so non-visual that I balance out the group on my own? (We're talking "learned-how-to-multiply-before-learning-how-to-tie-shoes" sort of non-visual. "Still-has-no-idea-how-to-braid-hair" sort of non-visual. If you ever want to see something hilarious, give me a city map and watch me attempt to use it.)

[Stacy]

I had seizures when I was a toddler. That's how I got my current car, btw. The pharmacist gave me Kool-Aid and sold my barbiturates on the black market. My parents sued and won, and many years later the money went to my Thunderbird. Which is 17 years old and still going.

Anyway - my mother says that my doctor told her I'd never be good at math after the seizures.

My best grades in school were always in science, though. Slept through physical science freshman year and managed a 100 average the whole semester.

I liked English, of course. And social studies was also a favorite - I took every social studies class my high school offered.

Math, though - the doctor was right. I managed to keep a B or C in the average math classes. While writing poems about how numbers drooled and words ruled.

I don't know - I always come out in the middle on tests like that. Like I'm equally left brained and right brained, and I once took this auditory/visual test and came out exactly in the middle there too.

Dinuriel - I feel ya. I only made it through one semester at a four year college, after 13 years of slacking my ass off and getting great grades and awards just for showing up at school.

Come, join us in the unstructured wilderness. We have cookies! Also a lack of student loan debt, which meant we could buy a house before we were 30!

Going to write another post to answer Rebecca's original question.

[Stacy]

I have been thinking and thinking, and honestly it's been a while since I've done fiction writing now. Obviously I'm here and thinking about my writing and posting about it, so that shows that there's a possibility I'll return to it relatively soon.

The one thing that I've come up with that I haven't talked about elsewhere at length...

I am intense and hardcore. I pour my heart and my soul into my writing, whatever form it takes.

I didn't think about that until I started seeing all this "I don't take my Sims writing seriously" stuff. I still have trouble understanding that idea - "taking things too seriously". Oh yes - "for fun" stumps me too. What's wrong with being intense? What's wrong with caring about your work and wanting to do the best that you can? And how is that not fun?

So - I guess - I think that working hard is fun. I like challenges. I love looking for the perfect image, the perfect word, the perfect vowel sound. Pushing and challenging myself to grow and improve and to do the best I can at this moment in time is the most fun thing I can imagine.

So - I guess I've discovered that I am not entirely normal and that other people have some weird divide in their head between "serious" and "fun" and "work" and "hobby" that I just don't have.

[Velvet]

Dinuriel - I can't use a city map either. Here's the way I give directions. "Okay, you want to get to point B...well, you drive about five blocks, turn left at the church, go through, maybe, ten lights and make a right at Dunkin Donuts. Once you see Burger King..." Get the picture? hehe


Stacy - First let me say, you are a beautiful person. There's nothing wrong with you simply because you love what you do - be it sim stories or fiction. If working hard and taking things to the max, using your full gifts in what you do makes you happy, then go for it. Leave 'normal' to the joes of the world, just be Stacy (we all love you).

[drew]

What did I discover? That I would rather write than talk about it. That I am grammatically challenged, and I accept it. That I do it for fun, and I am not ashamed to say so. And I am talking about Sim Stories, or any other writing I do.
That said, I think I will go write...

[mdpthatsme]

Me too drew. This makes me want to write something down.

I guess I'm what you call an all around student. It didn't matter the subject. I was good at it all. It didn't matter the teacher's way of teaching (or lack of) with concepts, visual, audio, etc. I managed to excel. I suppose that's how I've been successful in my Internet classes. I didn't need the visual or the teacher's marker board. However, I believed that education was the most important aspect of life. As I told all my friends straight up, my education is more important than their drama. They had to except it and they did. Someone had to translate teacher code to student code and that role bestowed upon me.

As for what I have discovered in my writing is a sense of growing. I mean, I've read stories of mine from five years ago and asked myself what-the-hell was I thinking? Self answers: you didn't have the techniques that you do now. So I've grown.

ice cream cake

[pinkfiend1]

I'm a bit of mixed bag I suppose.
I dream in words, I can't think about images, or dream in them, or plan anything like that. I always have to describe them in words in my head. And uet even when I think a story in my head I can still have bother putting it onto paper, but when they are on paper I can't then go back and edit them, regardless of how many times I reread i to see errors I just can't see them, even though I know they must be there. The only time I seem to be able to makes changesto it is if I then type it all up on the computer. But then after that initaial typing I can't make changes to it. I don't know why.
In a way I do find it easier to write something based on something I've actually seen, whether it's what the Sims are doing, or if something that happenned in a tv show or movie or something, and I find it easier to try and edit that, but not much.

But then I can quite happily read something someone else has written and if it's all a bit bland and badly written in a way I will mentally rewrite it in my head to make a better story out of it. But that will always stay in head because it would be wrong to write down what is essentially an edited version of someone else's work.

[lepifera]

Mar 6, 2011 17:36:08 GMT -5 pinkfiend1 said:

I'm a bit of mixed bag I suppose.
I dream in words, I can't think about images, or dream in them, or plan anything like that. I always have to describe them in words in my head.

How does one dream in words? I don't think I had ever have that kind of experience. Do they appear visually, one by one as on a computer screen? Or do the words appear all at once in completed, concise sentences and paragraphs that would not be misinterpreted in any way? Or does one hear the words, as if narrated by an invisible story teller?

It would be SWEET if in my dreams, I could 'see' whole paragraphs of the technical reports and stories already written out, and better, if I have a photographic memory, I could just 'copy an paste' it to be handed in the next day.

Never the pain again to struggle with rearranging words, sentences, and paragraphs to no end. That would be SWEET. On top of that, my post counts on this forum wouldn't be so limited by the slow speed of my writing.

But then, writing would have lost much of its fun without the struggle.

[mdpthatsme]

Dreaming of words? I already daydream of playing Spider Solitare. But that does sound interesting Pink.

[pinkfiend1]

I suppose it's more like an echo of my own voice saying it all too me, kind of like when I write after I'vewrote/ typed the words I hear them repeated back to me in my head, but it's only after I've finished with them.
Unfortuantly most of it is never anything I could actually use, it's more the daydreamy kind of things of a fairytale which most of the time you would wish happenned in reality. Although they tend to have a lot of scary and very bad elements I would never want to happen. Like giving birth to natural identical octuplets. Or losing my children, usually atleast two, because everything has to be in even numbers. I'm also very prone to get beaten up after I've been forced to marry someone. But it always like a story I'm telling myself, stories I know won't come true like meating the man dreams, him proposing withing a day, and getting married within the week kind of thing, but despite all the bad things happenning it still seems happy so I constantly wake up disapointed that reality isn't like that.
Occasionaly though I do dream of things that I can use in a story somehow, but it's very rare.

[lepifera]

Hey, speaking of dreams, do any of you have dreams where people actually carry on dialogues? I couldn't quite remember dialogues in my dreams.