Work in Progress Wednesday


Alrighty, I'll admit it. I've gotten very little writing done this past week. And you know, as soon as I decided to set the deadline for the end of September, everything went ppffft out of my head. Writing the past couple days has been like pulling teeth. I was ready to move on to a new day and write an exciting action scene and my characters kept pulling back, saying "hey, we are not through talking here, yet. This scene, right here, the way you thought it out before, write it." Strawberries!

I was going to try and keep writing the story down until the end, but at this point, I need to type up what I've written so far and get a better handle on it. What seems right at the time, flies out the window on other days. I need to see the story in print and go from there. I also started thinking about next November's Nano and that I need to get back in the habit of writing on the keyboard which is how I did the first two. Otherwise it will be slow, slow going. I may be writing 1600 words a day, but then stopping to type up the day's work will slog me down. I do all my blog posts that way - thinking them out as I type. So I going to catch up and get it all typed out. Somewhere in the process, it will loosen the thoughts processes up and we can go forth with the story.

In one of the articles in July's The Writer "The Big Bang Approach" by Jill Dearman, she says something that really got me going. The acronym Bang stands for B - begin, A - Arrange, N - nurture and - Go. She mentions in the exercise for Bang for n -nurture

"Imagine the spirit of your character hovering over your desk as you write. She tells you, 'yes, you know me very well, better than my best friend, my spouse, my shrink! But there's something you're still missing about me... 'let your character speak in the 'I' voice and tell you what you still don't see. Do five minutes of freewriting or 500 words which ever comes first."
Just the mental image of my character hovering around, looking over my shoulder while I write really popped my imagination. There's also a quote by E.L Doctorow that I really like.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

3 comments:

  1. Oh, I'm sorry you didn't have a very productive week. Isn't it funny how sometimes deadlines can help motivate us, and at other times have the exact opposite effect? Hope your progress starts moving along again.

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  2. Ha! I am so that way with deadlines. As soon as I make them, and often sometimes when I write a list of Things To Do, that is when I really begin doing nothing.

    In writing, I'm telling myself to just write every day.

    In life, sometimes I make a list Things You Should Do But Probably Won't, and then I say, "Oh yeah?" and get a lot done!

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  3. I love the idea of the spirit of a character hanging over the shoulder of a writer. I was still thinking of Nora Roberts when I read that and imagine she must have a whole cast hanging around her office. So here's my wish for you today: may you be completely haunted by your characters.

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