Your writing "eras"

[HyunnaPark]

Having just finished a draft I'm excited about, I looked back over the stories I wrote here on Lit and also thought about the ones I wrote before I got here (I didn't look at them because I they're bad ).

I started categorizing them into eras when I realized I had started a new one while I was here. In my head, I name them after the author whose influence is pulling me the hardest in the direction I want to go, but there's usually something about that author's style that I'm chasing. During my "Douglas Adams" era, my writing got satirical. When I got to Lit, I was wrapping up my "Chuck Palaniuk" era, where my writing got minimalist.

I'm interested to hear how other people think about the phases or stages of their writing. How do you label them? What defines them? What are some of your eras?

 

[Writer61]

Not a question that I had considered before. My first thoughts are:

1) the before times, when I wrote out some of my fantasies for my own pleasure. They were a mixture of one-offs and a few episodes with the same MC (sort of me). They were originally written for PalmOS and encrypted, and I have not been able to open the files, but some of the ideas live on.

2) the early period, when I wrote my first series during lockdown and eventually published it here. That was followed by my second series, the first written from a female POV.

3) the planning period, when I really started to think about my characters. What led them to where they were and where they might go. This led to planning how they might crossover between series and the timelines necessary for consistency. I still do this.

4) the now times, when I am trying to do a better job with plotting, research, and editing. The best example is an entry for the 'Jasmine Tea' event, which is set in the 20's and required several days' research. It is written, but won't be published until the submission window opens.

 

[AllenWoody]

Like @Writer61, it never occurred to me to categorize my stories in eras. if I did it would probably look something like:

My Ooooooh, and Hnnnnnnnh, and I'm Cumming!!! era.

My wooden prose era.

My more fluid prose era, which unfortunately led directly into my...

Never finishing anything era.

Also like Writer61 I'm doing a bit of research for a Jasmine Tea story which of course I'll never finish.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

like the illustrious speakers before me, I also never considered this perplexing question.

 

[Writer61]

Also like Writer61 I'm doing a bit of research for a Jasmine Tea story which of course I'll never finish.

Stuff the research if you have to, write the story!

 

[AllenWoody]

Stuff the research if you have to, write the story!

I love this, but I'd like for it to come across as at least minimally authentic. Also, the research so far consists of reading Somerset Maugham, so it isn't a terrible burden. A dense read, though.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I have, twice while working on stories, known in the middle of the process that things are different now. It felt like growth.

In hindsight, I can see the dividing lines in 2019 and 2022. Everything was different then.

 

[Statius]

There's a before 2025, and there will be an after 2025. Before? Cared about publishing only, knocking a story out and getting it out there; barely cared as long as the character (MC) was well written. The technical didn't matter too much. I also wasn't writing with a whole lot of purpose, other than to hopefully entertain.

Now? It's different, or will be, the next time I publish. More emphasis on the technical, and more purpose.

 

[crookedletter]

This is really interesting.

My first writing era was when I was a kid, and you could pretty much identify which writer had most recently captured my imagination by what my derivative story attempts were aping. I think I went through a Laura Ingalls Wilder phase, a Brian Jacques phase, and of course a years-long Tolkien phase.

Fast forward a ways, to my dreams of being some kind of literary hero, trying to be Hemingway both in terms of writing and drinking. (I'm not proud of much from this era, least of all the crap I wrote.)

I'm sure I have sub-eras in my most recent iteration, but at some point in the interim I learned the joy of play, and I'd say in various forms that's been the era I've been in ever since. Other writers -- Vonnegut, Le Guin, Saunders -- showed me how flexible fiction can be, how you can really do whatever the hell you want. And I started having a lot more fun writing by taking what I learned from all of the above writers, and rather than trying to be one or the other of them, I just start scribbling and see what happens.

I guess one sub-era, if that's a thing -- I won't call it its own era because it runs alongside other impulses -- was when I took that joy of play and thought Oh shit, I can make porn! But I don't approach it all that much differently from the other stuff I write: I just start writing and see where my imagination wants to go.

 

[CalBishForNow]

It's too early to point to different eras in my writing for/on Literotica. I've been here less than 18 months and most of my work is pretty same-y. Multiple categories, but not wildly different themes or styles. (In fact, I think some of my earlier work is better than some of my recent stuff, but maybe that's just putting too much weight on the scores I get writing in LW vs. in other categories.)

Pre- and post-Literotica writing is definitely different, though. Pre-Literotica, the erotica I wrote was pure self-insert fantasy. There's an extent to which almost every writer is putting a piece of themselves in their characters, and there's an extent to which there's nothing wrong with that, but this was way past it to a creepy level. And the non-erotica I wrote was just meandering interminably. I might have had a good premise, but I'd write 20,000+ words with no idea how to get to the end I had in mind, or no ending in mind at all, and eventually it would just peter out.

I could simply trace it to thinking about having an audience or not.

 

[Writer61]

One thing I have always struggled to write is the passing of time.

As a kid, there were lots of 'ands' and 'thens'. These are much fewer now, but probably still too many.

When I first got to Lit, I went through a phase of separating scenes and time changes using subtitles or tildes. IIRC, somebody challenged me on this at some point in the 'planning period'.

Now, the ~s have gone, and the subtitles are reserved for major location/time changes.

 

[Writer61]

During my "Douglas Adams" era, my writing got satirical.

I don't think I will ever leave my 'Douglas Adams' period.

Most of my stories feature some wordplay, puns, or funny names influenced by him. My current WIP includes the thought 'Oh no, not again', although no petunias are involved.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't so much define my various blocks of writing by my own chronological time as a writer, but more so the "worlds" I've written about.

There's my Floating World series, which is a mostly sequential block of stories featuring Adam Cain as the lead male character with a variety of women and one man as his partner. Then there's my Arthurian novel, the Ruby stories, the Emma and Bobbie stories, Amelia and Alex, other Alex stories, and various stand-alones in between.

So my "eras" are more blocks of stories than anything else, only loosely related to my development as a writer. Particularly since I have an increasing tendency to link my worlds - the Floating World is now directly connected to the Emma and Bobbie stories, with Adam meeting Bobbie; then a transgender version of Bobbie..

 

[EmilyMiller]

Having just finished a draft I'm excited about, I looked back over the stories I wrote here on Lit and also thought about the ones I wrote before I got here (I didn't look at them because I they're bad ).

I started categorizing them into eras when I realized I had started a new one while I was here. In my head, I name them after the author whose influence is pulling me the hardest in the direction I want to go, but there's usually something about that author's style that I'm chasing. During my "Douglas Adams" era, my writing got satirical. When I got to Lit, I was wrapping up my "Chuck Palaniuk" era, where my writing got minimalist.

I'm interested to hear how other people think about the phases or stages of their writing. How do you label them? What defines them? What are some of your eras?

I think I had a kinda Douglas Adams era, starting with Coleoidphilia, but stretching into many of my Angels & Demons stories (which people have mentioned Good Omens about, but I’ve neither read nor watched that).

I’m firmly in my Dostoevsky / Conrad / Steinbeck era now, only obviously with improvements on the originals .

 

[old_prof]

I'm interested to hear how other people think about the phases or stages of their writing. How do you label them? What defines them? What are some of your eras?

I have a bunch of distinct phases

Starting out:
One story (The Final Bet) and it wasn't very good. But ingot me writing fiction after a half century away. And it created my characters that stuck with me.

Writing Friends:
This was my next twenty stories and it was a fevered writing sprint. The stories emerged 16K and I cranked them out two a week. I finally forced myself to end the series.

Struggling to write:
Coming out of that series was overall my worst writing I've done, certainly ratings wise. 4 of the 5 stories I wrote were also four of my 5 lowest rated stories (along with my first story and my one venture into comedy). I also started exploring writing different kinds of things and in different categories.

Romance:
The one story that worked in the previous period was my first romance. I realized that's what I wanted to write (along with adjacent emotional content categories like LS and First Time).
I'm still in this phase, but it has morphed.

Trying to really write:
At my 100 day mark, I wrote a post reflecting on what I had done and deciding I wanted to focus more on learning to write. My first attempt at really trying to improve my writing worked too well in some sense. It was the best thing I'd written, until the novel I submitted today. And it won a W. I thought it would all go smoothly now. Ha! This dominates my thinking on writing now. Everything I do is to improve myself as a writer. With help from this community.

Novels:
I decided to try my hand at novels, writing Blunt Force Drama, which left much to be desired but was a good experience and not a bad read. I just submitted my second novel and my third wl hopefully get submitted next week. This is another continuing phase. I think most of my words will be in novels from now,

Learning to Revise:
This is my current phase. I decided after my first novel that one of my issues was my inability to revise my own writing. I tried to write the two novels concurrently to see if getting some space from one would help with the other (they are VERY different in many way). It helped some. But I was really happy with Oh Sweetie because that's really the first time revising one of my stories has worked. The story still has weaknesses, but it is SO much better than it was originally. I really have to thank @HyunnaPark and @THBGato for their help in getting me here. And for @StillStunned help with making a major revision to A recent story (Snow Fall in Love). I submitted that as an edit a few days ago,

 

[THBGato]

'90s - introspective, solipsistic poetry and love letters
'00s - music journalism, travel blogging & a few screenplays that never saw the light of day
'10s - one YA novel that nobody read
'20s - Lesbian (and Lesbian adjacent) Romance

 

[TheLobster]

'90s - introspective, solipsistic poetry and love letters
'00s - music journalism, travel blogging & a few screenplays that never saw the light of day
'10s - one YA novel that nobody read
'20s - Lesbian (and Lesbian adjacent) Romance

Given such diverse career, I predict in the ‘30s you’ll be dabbling in cookbooks and WWII alternative history novels.

 

[Bamagan]

I'm still in my Viking Era (sailing around, seeing something I like, slaughtering the inhabitants, and carrying it back to my longhouse where it clashes with everything else collected there).

 

[yowser]

Thanks for an interesting question - you made us think!

Periodicity always is a dicey game for historians (and everybody else): when did this start? end? How are the intervals distinguished?

My early efforts were dabblings, mostly vignettes and fantasies. Relatively competent written but unremarkable affairs.

It wasn't until my first deliberate LW story (an earlier one had received category reassignment from the site, an abrupt entrance into the frontier lands of that unusual ecosystem) that I thought I had a 'real good story.' Readers did a mighty job of trying to convince me otherwise, but it still is my most viewed (and commented, favorited, etc.) thing. And I liked what I had done, more character dev, complex plot, moving forward etc.

So the goal of a 'good tale' became more of a focus.

Then there was the nudge that came from the first Geek Pride challenge in 2018. I had not really considered writing a cerebral tale before (and it was in a new category for me, then the challenge was exclusively SciFi) and had a great time with that (also introducing the notion of writing across broad categories.)

After that, it was all experimental. What could i do differently? How far can I push my boundaries? Success (my own metric, not the site's) varied enormously, a good one followed by a pratfall, but I felt like growth came regardless.

So Paleocene, Lovingwifocene, and Geekocene.

 

[StillStunned]

My "I know everything!" phase.
My "I'm going to try everything!" phase.
My "I'm happy just to be writing" phase.

 

[BellaBestia]

I’ve never taken the time to reflectively collate my writing into eras but I also have notebooks and journals filled with early experiments that may never see the light of a computer screen. I know that there is a lot of the shadows of Anais Nin and Jean Rhys in some of my early pieces. Now I’m in a sort of FAFO period, literally. I want to experience and experiment before I write about it.

 

[Britva415]

I'm interested to hear how other people think about the phases or stages of their writing. How do you label them? What defines them? What are some of your eras?

I have two:

I wrote a dozen stories in late 2022/2023

Then I got too busy with school and stopped

I'll have another era one of these seasons

What I expect is that those stories will be similar to the previous ones, probably a little better, not a lot.

 

[Writer61]

I want to experience and experiment before I write about it.

Fun, but potentially limiting.

I have some experience with a lot of what I include in my stories, but not everything. This evening, I wrote a scene in which the MMC is pegged, which I have never tried. I am open to trying it, but lack opportunity.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I've been writing contemporary romantic erotica for a year now, give or take. Probably the next thing, which will start as soon as I wrap my current projects, is nonerotic fiction.

 

[anthrodisiac]

It's pretty distinct for me:

1. Dark, moody pieces in high school and the years after. Primarily sticking with horror and post-apocalyptic themes. Some humor, but primarily bleak and dark humor. More focus on the events and plot than on the people. More straightforward commentary, if any commentary at all.
2. Zany nonsense. Still dark, but a lot more esoteric, abstract concepts, and a lot more humor. A lot more focus on the people, their experiences, and their reactions to the plot. More exploration of philosophical themes and heavier use of metaphor to explore different topics around morality, the human condition, how people interact, the nature of reality, etc.
3. No writing.
4. Anthro erotica with a lot of characteristics from era 2, but a lot less of the zany esoteric stuff.