What Drives you Nuts, Writing-Wise?

ohh, i love plotting vengence...

what drives me nuts is that friend who knows all the "rules" and insists you follow them. Like:

"A main character has to be the first one you introduce"

"Your town can't sound like a persons name"

"Queries are never more than 250 words long"

And so on,
Who said? really honestly for every rule there is an exception and a friend should help you become the exception not hound you about the rules.
Don't get me wrong constructive info is great, put-downs are annoying.

As for punishments... write down what they say and make them eat it. he he he.

Good post Fruitbat.

What drives me nuts is, well, me. I can be writing away, in the zone, then bamb, I get swallowed by a black hole. The next brilliant (?) word that I was about to type, ah, hang on, I mean, it, erh... oh yes of course, it disappears as my mind scrams. At times like that I really need a sound proof room to work in.

My own mind. Especially on days like today, when it refuses to focus but also refuses to shut up, when I'm interested in just about everything except what I'm supposed to be working on. It's like I've been possessed by the mind of a kitten.

Being interrupted. Just leave me alone! Is that so hard!?

Augh!

I have to agree! Whether it's barking dogs, loud neighbors, a pesky family, can't you see that I'm trying to create a masterpiece?????
*&@#

Misspelling words by accident even when I know the correct spelling because of how I type. Or worse, when I see words misspelled as something they sound like, like when that one author spelled 'entry' as 'entree,' with the diacritic...

When I get to the point where I think that my story is just stupid and silly and then I move on to the next, hopefully better project without finishing.

Accidental plot holes. Big ones.

When I shelve something because of time constraints or dead-ends, or whatever other reason...then go back to it and think it sucks, and either fixing it or starting over both feel like I'm missing whatever point felt so important the first time around, leaving me worse off then when I first shelved the project in the first place.

That, and run-on sentences.

Verbs.

Chapters that are a paragraph long that do not have any structure to them. That irritates me. I also get annoyed when people feel compelled to critique my work as I'm working. Sometimes I'll sit on the couch next to my partner Jay and type and he will watch what I'm doing and shout 'You spelt that word wrong!' or he'll read a sentence of mine out loud in a confused voice and tell me it doesn't make sense to him. I usually glare at him and he'll giggle and ask me if he's been annoying.

Delving to deeply into a character to quickly,
so you either love them and want to know more,
or close the book and move on to another.

er . . . that may be reading wise.

I love my writing/storytelling, and when it
comes time to edit I'm adding more ideas,
plot twists, evil shenanigans & dialog.
I rarely edit down.

Snowstorm said:

Being interrupted. Just leave me alone! Is that so hard!?

Augh!

Click to expand...

This.

But it's the cost of falling in love, getting married, having kids, their having kids, and still being a child at the same time you're a parent-spouse-friend-sister-neighbor-colleague etc. etc. etc.

I am a would-be writing hermit who got caught up in a social world, but please, some days...

JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

That I'm telling and not showing, when I wanna show em a thing or two. LOL

I'm gonna have to go with not knowing what's going to happen. I've always managed to sort it out before I get there, but I like to know where things are going so I can make sure I'm plotting correctly. There's always at least one aspect of the story that holds out until the very last second and has me wondering if I'm ever going to figure it out. Luckily, when I do get the answer, it usually is a case of five different things all falling into place at once, so that's pretty badass and easily the best part of writing for me.

Typos that still spell an actual word. So, "heads" instead of "head", "hole" instead of "whole". I write Sci-fi/fantasy, so when I put in "heads" instead of "head", people assume it's not a typo at all, and suddenly I'm writing about people with two heads.

People who spout rules like "show not tell" or "never use passive voice" without any idea what they're actually talking about, or worse still getting it plain wrong.

FFS learn the craft properly before trying to teach others!!!

Amberly said:

[...snip] what drives me nuts is that friend who knows all the "rules" and insists you follow them. Like:
...
And so on,
Who said? really honestly for every rule there is an exception and a friend should help you become the exception not hound you about the rules.
Don't get me wrong constructive info is great, put-downs are annoying.

Click to expand...

This. People who blabber on about rules and quote "how-to" books. I prefer to think of most as guidelines.

*cough*

People who rail against rules and whose rebellion is aimless.

Learn the rules before you break them. They're there for a reason.

/soapbox.

Oh, and...ARMITAGE!

Only two of mine are specific to writing. The other is something I notice more with writers, but it pops up everywhere.

People who set themselves up as experts in all things writing, without every having completed a single writing project, then go about giving others shitty advice.

People who state their opinion as fact, and pretend theirs is the only opinion that counts.

Working really hard on a scene, finishing it, then coming back later to find it riddled with amateurish mistakes. At least now I know enough to spot and correct those mistakes

Dragon Lady said:

People who set themselves up as experts in all things writing, without every having completed a single writing project, then go about giving others shitty advice.

Click to expand...

At the risk of sounding like a white chick saying "Word," I'm saying..."Word."

It's especially 'funny' (i.e. astounding) to witness such folk tell published authors how they should have handled their own stories. Mmmkay...if you're a writer, dear, go write. Then criticise the work of someone who, unlike you, bothered finishing anything so it could be published.

Dragon Lady said:

Working really hard on a scene, finishing it, then coming back later to find it riddled with amateurish mistakes. At least now I know enough to spot and correct those mistakes

Click to expand...

It's definitely a good thing when you spot those mistakes. It shows you've improved since you wrote it. Now you can put it all right.

adverbs

People who keep saying what I should write about or telling me read things (this is most common).

I've got so many books from people everything from Hemmingway to Meyer from people who say to me "If you're going to write a novel, you should read this first". Yea.....I know you think you're being helpful but stop giving me books to read, my book list is already numbered to 100. I feel bad if I don't take the book though.