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At some point, all fiction becomes self-conscious; not a big deal. The most important question is: does the narrative and story flow well and easily? Is it lively? Are you getting your point acro...
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#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26025 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
At some point, all fiction becomes self-conscious; not a big deal. The most important question is: does the narrative and story flow well and easily? Is it lively? Are you getting your point across? You can delete the self-indulgent stuff during edit. Or you may decide during editing that it is the most important part of the story! Don't worry about that; just be entertaining/witty/profound... I typically find that the break-the-form/reflexive fiction/self-consciousness drops out naturally during edit stage of its own heaviness. As far as wasting time, it's all a matter of degree and perspective. I tend to wonder if every time I sit to write something I am wasting my time. Nothing new about that! I sometimes do clean rough drafts, but sometimes my rough drafts contain a lot of wild stuff that I know is not going to remain. (I just don't know until I've finished the rough draft which wild stuff belongs in the final version).