Saturday, November 1, 2014

It's Been Awhile...

I feel like I've abandoned this blog. I should be charged with gross blog neglect. So, where was I?

Right. I've been in a huge writing slump since the beginning of the year (since last year actually). And I've tried to motivate myself. Tried is the keyword here.

To start with, I created a "Working" notebook for my current novel (yes, it's the same one since I started this blog back in the mid-2012, so...gulp?) to generally organize my ideas about the novel and jot down new ideas as they occur to me, including bits and pieces of conversations between characters. It's helpful, it is. It helps me figure out the story little by little. But I still don't have a complete novel. So, my guess is it only works partially?

Then, I created a "Writing Journal" on my laptop to track my progress on said current novel . And I gave myself pep talks in each entry before each writing session. The pep talks didn't last very long and weren't very effective.

Next, I created a "Story Ideas" notebook, which works great for generating ideas, but not for THIS novel because it hates me (more on the aforementioned notebook in a future post - Sidenote: Dear Future Me, if you don't write that post, I will kick your ass.)

Finally, I created an "On Writing" notebook, which contains the greatest writing quotes EVER by authors I love, to motivate me to write. I know, I do love my notebooks (I know what you're thinking right now because I can read your mind). But again, maybe this isn't enough.

So, I have to ask myself: what in this world is enough?!

The answer may be simpler than all the stuff I've tried. It's simply sitting down and writing the damn book. I know this works. I know this works dammit.

And now, I'm actually doing NaNoWriMo in an effort to FINISH this godforsaken novel (I chickened out at the last minute and instead of starting something fresh and new, I decided to give said current novel a go because dammit).

I actually kind of know what happens next now that almost all the major characters (almost all) have made their spectacular (or not-so-spectacular) entry and I'm getting a handle on their motivation and stuff. So, onward (I actually typed "onword" before editing, so maybe that's a sign?).

It's just occurred to me that maybe what I've been trying to do with my notebooks is simply searching for inspiration and I know for a fact that inspiration lies in actually just doing the work (because it likes to find us working when it comes).

That's all for now, folks! I'll go and try to slightly raise my pathetic word count so far.