Slowly proceeding on w-f-h. I have a voice/style I can work with, although I doubt it's what they're looking for.

I may be seeing a pattern; last time I tutored (several years ago) I reached a point where I sort of stopped writing, or only wrote sporadically. Tutoring is not the same as teaching (I don't know how any teachers can also be writers, although I know some are); teaching takes up some of the same parts of your brain and uses some of the same creative energy. Tutoring doesn't involve creating lesson plans, generally. But once again with (part time) tutoring I seem be reaching overload, where the back of my head is not working on writing during downtime. Like, sometimes in the early morning right before and as I'm waking up my mind flits over writing problems. But now it's flitting over numbers. Just numbers, not even anything interesting about them.

And then today I was trying to talk to some writer friends about characterization, and suddenly I looked at what I was doing:


I think part of the trouble I have sometimes is that there are too many variables:

1. the way I perceive my character
2. the way I think I'm presenting him (what I'm showing, what I'm dwelling on)
3. the way I'm really presenting him (things in #2 that I am doing but don't notice, or that are out of balance)
4. the way other people perceive him

Of course, in #4 everybody brings their own baggage along, so they may see the character differently. But when #1 and #4 are not anywhere near being in sync, I guess that means something's wrong in #2 and #3.

I am starting to think of writing in terms of middle school math problems, breaking it down into steps and numbering them and referring to them by number. I don't know if this is necessarily bad, but I'm thinking it's not good.