After typing in the last letters to your manuscript you jump up and down in excitement. You should! You put a lot of effort into that slosh pile of words! But…is that the end to it? Or is it just the beginning?
I don’t mean to scare you but…failure may be out there.
Failure is always around us, like the wind, but that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of it.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk discusses writing through your failures. It was inspiring to me and I hope it will be to you too!
You and I have something in common. Want to know what it is?
We made it to the finish line.
Whether you participated in one of the national events (NaPoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo, or A to Z Challenge) or accomplished something else–you did it! Sure the road was rough. Sure you made a mistake or two…or three? Who cares! You did it!
It’s hard to commit words to a page when inspiration is so far way. Without it, I’m like a runner at the start line or a horse snorting impatiently behind a derby gate.
Like chocolate to a dieter, inspiration’s aim is to taunt you. It avoids and gives empty promise that it’ll show up tomorrow.
It wont and you don’t have time to wait for it either. You need to write something. So what do you do?
If inspiration wont come to you…then you go to it.
Don’t walk up to it and politely tap it on the shoulder–get in its blindside and TACKLE it! Growl in its face and make it fear you!
A lesson that I’ve learned about writing is that you have to forge a lot of things out of nothing. Inspiration is one of those things.
I saw this quote on Raevenly Writes and it sums up the writer’s relationship with inspiration:
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
There’s a snobby space-elf at table three, dwarves are brawling in the bathrooms, someone set a bonfire in the middle of the Tavern…and an old guy is swinging a shirt over his head screaming “ANARCHY!”
This is the type of stuff gray hairs are made of!
Ok… I am not really dealing with a tavern in the state of anarchy but I do have a lot going on. I’m dealing with a book report, term paper, presentation, research paper, critical analysis, finals, not to mention the four quizzes coming up and a nasty fever. So yeah, I’m a pretty busy gal.
Don’t feel sorry for me, that’s all apart of being in college.
Aside from my studying aka legal torture, I wanted to share a few things about my WIP(s).
First, my Camp NaNoWriMo project is going…okay. I planned on writing 50k this month but it was an utter mistake didn’t work out. However, I am glad with what I did write!
On a brighter note, I’ve been using April to critically read another WIP that I finished in March. I don’t see it being sent off to editors or beta readers any time soon but I am happy with how far I’ve gotten it.
My big goal this week is to see some progression in both projects. Whether that’s writing 20 words a day or critically reading ONE paragraph (or even a sentence).
Last week I said to always find the time to write. But how much are you suppose to write? Should you write your entire quota of words? What if you can’t? Is that being lazy?
I mean…everything we do is drizzled with perfection! Every human on Earth had or has straight A’s. We are all star athletes. Heck, I’m next in line to be the President of the United States! Surely we are all flawless people who can always write our entire quota of words.
Pssh!
We aren’t perfect.
There will be those does where you can’t (or just don’t feel like) fulfilling your daily word quota. It just happens. However:
No words means that your story is going nowhere. Some words means that your story is going…somewhere.
Write! Even if it’s just 100 or 50 words. Make your story go somewhere.
There’s sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, and twenty-four hours in a day but is that enough time to write? Pssh, if only.
For me, studying has made time is as expensive as buying a brand new Lamborghini. What about you? Do you work? Do you go to school? Kids? How much time does your responsibilities take away from your writing?
Go ahead, tell me…
…mhmmm….mhmmm…you’re kidding!…mhmmm…
Wow, that sounds bad but guess what: you aren’t ever going to have time to write. Harsh? Well life usually is.
But (like etching a statue with no stone, breathing with no air, or moving with no leg room) you have to make time when there is none.
I don’t mean to get philosophical with you but if you’re serious about writing–or anything–you’ll do what you have to do to make sure that it’s done.
When you pick up two sticks, are they the same? Course not! Just likes those sticks no two writers are the same. We all have our own quirks, likes, dislikes, and, most of all, our own methods to writing.
Consider the type of writer that just sits down and writes. They don’t chart their course they just hoist their sails and go where the wind takes them.
On the other hand, there’s the type of writer who will not write unless they’ve mapped out the route to their treasure troves.
Then there are writers who are a hybrid of the two. They outline, write and then turn around to edit everything that they’ve written.
Lastly there’s the fourth writer who outlines, writes and then changes their initial outline along the way.
There may be many more writing methods out there, but for simplicity sake, we’ll stick with these four. I’m the fourth type of writer. I don’t outline an entire story, instead, I may only outline the first act and then write. Normally the story changes so I plan out the next act based on those changes. Rinse and repeat.
Can you relate to any of the four method’s mentioned?
Camp NaNoWriMo is next month!? I swear time moves faster than a heavily caffeinated radioactive squirrel (in case you didn’t know those move pretty darn fast).
Not familiar with NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo?
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it usually happens every November where you challenge yourself to write 50,000 words in a month. Camp NaNoWriMo happens in April and its a virtual creative retreat where you work on whatever project you want. For example, I’ve noticed that other bloggers are talking about writing poetry everyday, others are going to pen new first draft(s) for the month, and others are going to spend the month editing old NaNo projects. But it’s not limited to writing, you could do whatever you want this month. I know someone who’s going to scrapbook April away.
As for me, I’m going to try my hand at penning a new novel as well as finishing the first draft to Restitution (if I don’t finish it in the next week).
Chairs are being turned around to face the front stage where a band is setting up. An awful smell wafts up to your nose, causing you to pinch it close and glance to your side. There’s a cyclops pulling up a chair next to you. You smirk at the chair, since the pathetic little thing looked as if it would be better suited at some little girl’s tea party then underneath the rump of this oversized oaf. Still, you wanted to know what was going on. But before you had a chance to say anything to him I appear out of no where and pull at your ear.
Lemme talk to ya fer a sec.
You try to pull away from me…but it’s too late. I’m already leading you away.
You demand perfection of yourself, right?
There’s a crash on your side. The sound of splintering wood. You knew that chair was too small.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting every word in your manuscript to string together a sentence so poetic that it dazzles your reader. Or wanting them to feel every nuance of the world and characters that you made up. In fact, that’s the whole purpose of writing, isn’t it? Being able to transport your reader somewhere else.
While that’s great and all…it doesn’t work for the first draft. Not at all
You see, the words create and critique are about the same as the Hatfields and McCoys. They don’t get along! Actually you’re provoking one heck of a bar fight if you try to put them together. You’ll have one big narrative mess that only agitates you further and critique more, more, more, more and more. Until finally, a beast comes out of the woodworks.
Writer’s block.
No one likes dealing with that beast. No one.
Which brings me to the subject of this post: a freewriting assignment for you to do, if you dare. Typically I will introduce to you a simple theme and you write about whatever comes to mind without editing. Freewrites are meant for you to let loose and just write. Don’t worry about spelling, sentence structure, theme, or anything. The overall point is to ignore your inner critic. Which is essential for that tedious first draft.
So what’s the theme?
Today’s theme is based on a folk song called “Rattlesnake” by David Grisman. Simply listen to it, and then go write whatever image (scene, event, or ect) the song conjured in your mind. You can post it on your blog and leave a link in the comments if you like.
Simple, right?
Well lets get this show on the road!
Whistles for BoBo (my earth elemental bouncer) to dim the lights. An assortment of human, dragon, and alien eyes look towards the front stage.
