Writer's Fallout Shelter

The situation changes depending on the importance of the story. If it's a short story that you don't want to spend much time on, then forcing would be acceptable. If it's a longer story that has great importance, taking your time would be better. There have been many times where I've forced myself to write something for a class and had it come back with a high B or an A.

If I'm writing a poem, I tend to find a few lines, sit down to write them, and suddenly the rest of the poem forms itself. If I'm working on a short story for a prompt from here, for example, I tend to take my time to make it worth submitting. A lot of times when you read something, even from a book from a popular author, you can pick out the points in the story where the author had difficulty and forced themselves to write. Other times you find authors who didn't take the time to think things through. Neither are good cases. Another thing that tends to happen with forcing yourself to write is that you miss out on saying something better. More than once I've thought of something one night, neglected to write it down, and then the next day typed something much better than I would have the night before. You could take advantage of the revision process for this but waiting it out sometimes saves you the trouble.

What I tend to do, if the story is important, is let it sit. Not on the back burner, though, more like it's on simmer. I keep the story in mind as I go about my day. I pay attention to what's around me to see if anything can be used. Then I'll get a line, write it down, and repeat the process until another line shows up. Then suddenly, I have a paragraph or a page from seemingly nowhere. This method combines both theories of waiting for the muse to smack us with her gigantic wand and forcing us to write by constantly keeping the story in mind.

If... that made any sense...