Writing about
writing?
Well, my blog's all
about “dancing” with words, so that seems natural.
Or is it?
The biggest
challenge is writer's block, when the words simply won't come or feel
like you're dragging them out and it's more like pulling teeth. It's
when your characters seem to just stand around and do nothing no
matter what you tell them. It's when the topic feels so vast despite
your research efforts that you can't figure out which things to talk
about and how much.
When I want to write
sometimes I cannot keep up the concentration or focus, but that's a
little different. Sometimes that's due to lack of sleep, and when the
Muse isn't the cause that's no fun. Sometimes it's because there's
something else hanging over my head and feels like it'll create major
trouble if I don't make it go away soon. Sometimes there are all
those little chores you put off because of life and work, or
sometimes laziness, and it feels like they're staring at you until
you break and do them.
I love being in
flow, where the words feel like they won't stop coming and perhaps
are taking my work in a different direction than originally planned.
Even when plans don't go accordingly there's some wild or interesting
discovery about the story or your writing to make. What I seek is
being able to flow into that flow state more readily.
I've been willing to
try a lot of things. I have books on creativity, the flow process,
and focus in general. I'm a reader and a thinker. It's been part of
my psyche since I was little. Although I was also more of a doer at
that age than I am now.
Perhaps that's part
of the problem. More doing, but with some planning to create the
foundation.
I've downloaded a
meditation app onto my phone, and have found it useful in relaxing.
It has a number of sessions, guided for different reasons. I've tried
the sleep ones, and when I do them I feel better falling asleep and
like my sleep is more restful. (And why that doesn't get me doing it
more often I haven't figured out yet.) I intend to try the ones for
focus and creativity to see what happens.
I've completed five
National Novel Writing Month challenges, along with four Camp NaNos.
(Or is it six? I think it's six.) Those get me writing a lot,
sometimes to see how many words can I write in one day.
Story-writing, I've done over 10,000 in a day. I can only imagine
what would be if I could take all of November off to write. Those
have us doing battle with not just writer's block, but the dreaded
inner editor. This last NaNoWriMo I got better about powering through
the first draft without stopping to edit (which I've done slightly
for this, but I'm always editing as I go with emails). It meant some
pretty crazy errors made it to my betas, but they got good laughs out
of it.
Maybe the favorite
part are those laughter moments. When you surprise yourself with what
you wrote, and maybe it said something you had no intention of
saying. And that didn't belong. But the more intentional ones are
more priceless to me, that proof I can be intentionally funny.
Those can make the
difference between a good day, a bad day, and an amazing day.
No comments:
Post a Comment