Whats Your Comfort Zone?

[NOIRTRASH]

The first draft of my latest runs 26,000 words. Call it 6-7 LIT pages.

It starts with a beating and ends with a blowjob. I removed the long scene of the young wife giving a nasty homeless wino a blowjob as her homo husband filmed it.

It took me forever to find a way to go from 1000 words to 25,000. For almost 30 years the Department of Health and Rehab limited me to 85 lines for my reports. Now you get 40 pages of space. 85 lines is around 1000 words.

Whats your comfort zone?

 

[TxRad]

Whatever the story takes.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I don't think I have one.
I feel like I write too much, I ramble, and nothing is actually being said.
I have a friend that writes and her writing style is so different. Like this one time she wanted a challenge, so I sent her three pictures with three scenarios to work with and said pick one. One she dismissed right away saying I could do a better story with it and for me to write it.
So I get started on a story, planning on it being a short story, and the first day it's already getting pretty lengthy. She decides she wants to do the same one as me. She writes for a few hours and is finished.

I end up with a fairly decent size 3 chapter story, she has a story that is maybe 12 paragraphs.
Both stories were nice. Both even told pretty much the same story, but I ramble and ramble and she gets right to the point, always!
I always tell her, I write and wrote and never really say a damn thing! Kind of like what I just did here with my comment.

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

I don't think I have one.
I feel like I write too much, I ramble, and nothing is actually being said.
I have a friend that writes and her writing style is so different. Like this one time she wanted a challenge, so I sent her three pictures with three scenarios to work with and said pick one. One she dismissed right away saying I could do a better story with it and for me to write it.
So I get started on a story, planning on it being a short story, and the first day it's already getting pretty lengthy. She decides she wants to do the same one as me. She writes for a few hours and is finished.

I end up with a fairly decent size 3 chapter story, she has a story that is maybe 12 paragraphs.
Both stories were nice. Both even told pretty much the same story, but I ramble and ramble and she gets right to the point, always!
I always tell her, I write and wrote and never really say a damn thing! Kind of like what I just did here with my comment.

Hahaha, that sounds painfully recognizable... When the time comes to edit my first draft I always have to trim down a lot or reword it in a more compressed way.

There are two types of writers: Underwriters and Overwriters. And Underwriter tends to skip over details and descriptions writing short stories that are not really immersive for the reader. An Overwriter on the other hand tends to get too lost in details and descriptions, writing on and on without it having any added value. They can write pages about something that should just take a few paragraphs.

Those are the two extremes, but most writers are somewhere in the middle with a slight tendency to one of the other. I am definitely an overwriter, and it sounds like you are too. Once you start becoming friends with the delete button and feel comfortable deleting or drastically changing parts of your writing it isn't too bad.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

Hahaha, that sounds painfully recognizable... When the time comes to edit my first draft I always have to trim down a lot or reword it in a more compressed way.

There are two types of writers: Underwriters and Overwriters. And Underwriter tends to skip over details and descriptions writing short stories that are not really immersive for the reader. An Overwriter on the other hand tends to get too lost in details and descriptions, writing on and on without it having any added value. They can write pages about something that should just take a few paragraphs.

Those are the two extremes, but most writers are somewhere in the middle with a slight tendency to one of the other. I am definitely an overwriter, and it sounds like you are too. Once you start becoming friends with the delete button and feel comfortable deleting or drastically changing parts of your writing it isn't too bad.

Overwriter, yep that would be me! I think though that comes from my aspergers. I have a need to give every detail because I need every detail!

Oh and Ik spreek Nederlands...a little bit. I did all the lessons they have on Duolingo and am learning more online, mostly from just watching news shows and Dutch Sesame Street on youtube.

 

[sr71plt]

I push my comfort zone but the only time I pushed it to the point of not including the material was the first time I found I enjoyed writing erotica and a scene in a mainstream mystery for a mainstream publisher became graphic GM. That, I found, wasn't out of my comfort zone, but it was out of the project's comfort zone. I excised it and published it as a separate short story. It wasn't so far out of my comfort zone that I didn't use it, though. Wordage has nothing to do with my comfort zones. And I've never cut anything out of a story I was writing for Literotica as being outside of my comfort zone.

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

Overwriter, yep that would be me! I think though that comes from my aspergers. I have a need to give every detail because I need every detail!

Oh and Ik spreek Nederlands...a little bit. I did all the lessons they have on Duolingo and am learning more online, mostly from just watching news shows and Dutch Sesame Street on youtube.

Ah yeah, that would explain it. I am what's called Hyper Sensitive, which means that all my senses are always working on full power. I can't shut anything out and I'm always paying attention to everything around me. It's pretty exhausting. Anyway, since I always notice so many details I guess I tend to put them into my writing too.

Oh, dat is echt super leuk! (means "that's really cool", for the non-Dutchies out there).
Feel free to send me a message if you need help with learning Dutch. I know how hard it can be to learn certain aspects of the language since even a lot of native speakers struggle with them. Still, an interesting choice... I didn't know Dutch was a popular language to learn.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

Ah yeah, that would explain it. I am what's called Hyper Sensitive, which means that all my senses are always working on full power. I can't shut anything out and I'm always paying attention to everything around me. It's pretty exhausting. Anyway, since I always notice so many details I guess I tend to put them into my writing too.

Oh, dat is echt super leuk! (means "that's really cool", for the non-Dutchies out there).
Feel free to send me a message if you need help with learning Dutch. I know how hard it can be to learn certain aspects of the language since even a lot of native speakers struggle with them. Still, an interesting choice... I didn't know Dutch was a popular language to learn.

I had an online friend that lives in Amsterdam so I wanted to learn. She once sent me stroopwafels, and they were soo good! I want to visit one day just to eat all the local goodies, like fresh stropwafels and poffertjes. I might try drop, but I may pass on the herring(haring).

It's fun to learn a language and know someone that speaks it, she taught me words like klootzak and doffertje.
And I found Dutch a lot easier to learn than Portuguese. I tried Portuguese a couple years ago and gave up.

The one thing about the Dutch language that makes me crazy is that the spelling of colors changes! Blue is always blue here no matter what the sentence is. Changing the way a color is spelled confuses me so much!
And don't get me started on beer is bear, so bier is beer! LOL!! ittle confusing things like that drive me crazy, but Dutch is fun. So many words sound fancy, like bioscoop is way fancier than movie theater! And dierentuin is more fun to say than zoo.

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

I had an online friend that lives in Amsterdam so I wanted to learn. She once sent me stroopwafels, and they were soo good! I want to visit one day just to eat all the local goodies, like fresh stropwafels and poffertjes. I might try drop, but I may pass on the herring(haring).

It's fun to learn a language and know someone that speaks it, she taught me words like klootzak and doffertje.
And I found Dutch a lot easier to learn than Portuguese. I tried Portuguese a couple years ago and gave up.

The one thing about the Dutch language that makes me crazy is that the spelling of colors changes! Blue is always blue here no matter what the sentence is. Changing the way a color is spelled confuses me so much!
And don't get me started on beer is bear, so bier is beer! LOL!! ittle confusing things like that drive me crazy, but Dutch is fun. So many words sound fancy, like bioscoop is way fancier than movie theater! And dierentuin is more fun to say than zoo.

Haha. I actually prefer English over Dutch since a lot of things sound just weak and boring in Dutch. Like movie titles, for example. English sounds a lot more awesome in my opinion.

Don't worry, I don't like drop and herring either. If you do try drop for the first time, be sure to try honey drop. It's a sweeter and less bitter, so it could be easier to get used to. But it's always interesting to try out foods form different countries.

But yeah, I can see how that can be confusing. Dutch has a lot of weird rules like that. One of the things a lot of native speakers get wrong are using "dan" (then) and "als" (as). They say things like "ik ben groter als jij" ("I'm taller as you"), which just sounds kind of dumb if a native speaker does it. For someone learning the language it's acceptable though, in my opinion. But those things (should) come naturally over time as you develop a feel for the language. I used to think a lot about English, but now I speak it almost fluently without having to think about it.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I come from generations of language savants, and when I lived in Utaly, Germany, and Spain I picked up conversational speech quickly tho I made mistakes, like when a man chased my car yelling EIN BAHN STRASSE! (one way street!) and I waved back GUTEN ABEND (good evening. Such friendly people.

 

[rjordan]

The first draft of my latest runs 26,000 words. Call it 6-7 LIT pages.

It starts with a beating and ends with a blowjob. I removed the long scene of the young wife giving a nasty homeless wino a blowjob as her homo husband filmed it.

It took me forever to find a way to go from 1000 words to 25,000. For almost 30 years the Department of Health and Rehab limited me to 85 lines for my reports. Now you get 40 pages of space. 85 lines is around 1000 words.

Whats your comfort zone?

Some seem to be considering their comfort zone for word/page count. Some seem to be considering their comfort zone with content.

I have no problem with either. I get an idea for a story or situation. I write what I had in mind, then I see no point in continuing with more of the story or a different direction for the story. I'm done. I stop. No breaches of comfort zone.

Same with content. If I'm uncomfortable writing about something, it doesn't occur to me to write about it. What would be the point? There are other ways to explore those things than writing about them. I'm not a compulsive writer like some. I write to entertain myself mostly.

rj