Fiction writing ramble, 1 of ??:

I've been trying to introspect lately on my fiction writing process. My brain is opaque about what it's doing, which I guess makes sense – I've been telling stories since literally before I knew how to write, and I've never had any formal instruction in it.

Current question: why is it so intensely a superstimulus for me? Writing fiction is pretty much the only thing I will eagerly and endorsedly do for 16 hours straight. My best and most enjoyable writing periods feel very much like "chasing the shiny" – what "the shiny" is, is hard to describe, but it feels more "substantial" than other second-to-second dopamine-hit-seeking behaviours like chasing links on Wikipedia or TV Tropes. Somewhere between pushing towards an exercise high, and drinking water when I'm thirsty, whereas Internet dopamine-seeking is more like eating sugar.

Thinking about a story I'm writing, and especially talking meta about it with friends, is also extremely rewarding, to the point that sometimes I'll find myself off in daydreams or having a chat conversation instead of, you know, actually writing. Reaching the shiny thing on the page is effortful, much of the time – the feeling is often that it's "far away", and I'm sort of hill-climbing towards it, but often spotting smaller shiny things along the way. The big shiny thing can be a particularly clever or cool plot event that I'm setting the groundwork for, a felt sense theme-shaped-thing I'm groping towards, a lesson I want to convey, or the resolution of foreshadowing I've been setting up for dozens of chapters. (Or, let's be honest, my biggest self-indulgence in writing: gratuitous medical emergencies). The opportunities snatched up along the way can be an amusing interaction between characters, a bit of neat worldbuilding my brain generated on the spot, a snippet of dialogue that feels deliciously in-character, or just a sentence or word use that feels poetic and satisfying.

(Things I'm not chasing that I suspect other authors are: funny or badass one-liners, comedy that much in general, or clever deconstructions/reconstructions of "tropes". My fiction seems to have the quality of being consistently funny to anyone who has exactly my sense of humour, which involves e.g. laughing hysterically at particularly surreal accounting errors or, more generally, Murphy's Law in action, and basically not funny to most people. Interestingly, there are scenes in my current fic that I was cackling the entire time I wrote them, that like 3 people have commented on finding funny and most other people think I'm going for dramatic-and-stressful.)

Opening up Scrivener to write feels a lot like going somewhere – vaguely like opening up a new book in a series I love, or playing the next level of an awesome video game, which I suspect is a kind of juicy-anticipation shared by more people. Or returning to a familiar CFAR venue, let's say, with a mix of walking by familiar landmarks and people carrying out instinctive routines, and setting up for something new. The early stages of fleshing out a new world and story feel a bit like times I've flown to a new country, complete with making my way on foreign public transit to the AirBnB I'm staying in and going around opening all the drawers and cupboards to see what's in them (I, uh, will instinctively do a full inventory of every new place I'm staying in). There are big things that I see vaguely at a distance, and smaller local details that I can dig into, almost fractal complexity – except that, of course, I'm making up the details as I go, adding them to a world-model that I'm investing in and know I can return to play in anytime.