Fic Challenge Question

[chomiji]

I'm sure I'm overthinking this. It's a problem I have: why let something be simple and clearcut when it can be convoluted and weirdly awful?

louiselux has set up a wonderful new community, saiyuki_time - Daytripping to the West, for timed fic challenges. The first challenge is up, and the time is 1 hour. I am excited - but I've never done a time writing challenge before.

The time is just the time I spend actually committing words to media, right?

(I feel so stupid.)

Comments

[chomiji]

The thing that was worrying me is that I tend to spend ages turning the story ideas over in my mind, even writing bits of dialog in my head, before I ever sit down to commit anything to a file. And I was wondering whether that was, in essence, cheating.

I rather wish I hadn't looked at the prompt already - I've been trying not to think about it, but it's the old "Don't think about a blue hippo!" - and instantly, that's all you can think of.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

*thinks about blue hippos*

It's up to you, I think. Sometimes I wait until I have an idea and then I do the writing, and sometimes I just sit down and let it come out without thinking it through at all. The second type can really be a lot of fun and afterwards I always feel pleased that I did it.

[chomiji]

Looks like I should start avoiding looking at the prompts ahead of time (which usually means "while at work") ... this will be a big challenge for your humble correspondent, who tends to subscribe to the "Life's uncertain - eat dessert first" school of self-rewards, especially with LJ during the workday!

(I'll have to pretend that the prompts are non-worksafe, or something.)

Thanks muchly!