Everyday Canvas

On Writing and Asimov

Prompt: Have you set a writing plan for 2019? If not why not? Do you feel planning makes you more productive or less productive?

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No. I don’t like to make plans because it takes the joy out of my writing.

Then, my productivity has nothing to do with planning. I am always reading or writing anyhow, whether I post what I write on WdC or not. Truth is, I have never known or understood what that infamous writer's block is. If my flow stops on one subject, then I go on to tackle other subjects, and when I return to the first subject, I find I can still write. I never knew of stopping because of a major block.

For the same token, I doubt that planning will make me more productive; although, through NaNo Prep, I found out that making an outline will make the writing go more smoothly but with less tension and less enjoyment, too.

What makes my writing stop are the concerns and duties in real life, but not the writing itself or any writer's block.

As I am in the process of reading Asimov’s memoir at the moment, not that I write or can write like him, I was delighted that he felt the same way as I do about planning.

He says:

“Writing was exciting because I never planned ahead. I made up my stories as I went along and it was a great deal like reading a book….The excitement was all I wrote for in those early years. In my wildest dreams, it never occurred to me that anything I wrote would ever be published. I didn’t write out of ambition.

As a matter of fact, I still write my fiction in that manner---making it up as I go along—with one all important improvement…What I think of now is a problem and a resolution to that problem…..

When asked for advice by beginners, I always stress that. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.”