Longer than expected

You may have noticed the sudden decline in my posts, even with the vague promise of returning. The truth is I have never edited any piece of writing so much in my life. Once, twice, possibly three times. Then I get bored and give up. This time I'm bored but not giving up. It feels like the five hundreth draft and there's still more things to fix. The only thing motivating me is that I have come too far to stop. Far too far. And what might happen if I finally produce something that is well and truly polished beyond my regular spit-shine? I am afraid. It's another thing slowing me down. What if it I can't make it better? What if at the end of all my efforts it still won't be polished?

This is a bit more personal than I like to get but it is the truth of the matter. And by acknowledging it I hope to banish it and move on, send it out and forget about it while throwing myself into the joy of creativity once more.

"If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything," - said some guy on a bbc business program. He's right.

Writing Exercise 10: Novel Scenes

While struggling with own plot/premise writing issues (it's my biggest weakness) I came up with this method as one way to let the plot work itself out for me.

Firstly, I must show you this fun little plot generator. It's not necessary for this exercise but is certainly my favourite way of doing it: generator link

The point is to write a scene not from the beginning, nor the end, but from somewhere in the middle of a novel. As you put down words, your characters' frictions between each other might tell you about how they got into their muddle. Or you might suddenly realise a perfect ending to this novel you've never even written. It's just a brain-stretcher. Stuff has happened, stuff will happen, but isn't necessarily happening at the moment.

I find the little generator gives me a definite middle to start with, though the scene I end up writing may be nothing like that given to me.

(Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein from the scene where he brings his monster to life, which ended up nearly a third of the way into the final draft.)

Or you could use: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2nWxZZ/www.penguinking.com/premise.php

The road to the middle by =roadioarts on deviantART

The Three Things That Stop Me Writing

Imagined Tiredness

 The ugly part of writing is starting, the fear that your writing won't express what you want, or won't match up to the quality you produced yesterday. This is not real, because I have enough energy to play games. No. Don't pretend you're actually tired. Your brain's just looking for excuses not to think. Too tired to lie in bed with a laptop on your lap? I think not.

 Wrong Environment

I can't write when there is anyone else in the house, unless I'm in a library. Silly? Perhaps. Forcing myself produces crap however. If you have a more productive location go to it! If you haven't found it, by all means search. If you're already productive, you could find yourself more so in the right sort of place.

Guilt

I have to do the dishes first. I haven't written that email. Oh, god! I can't put that off, but I can put off my writing. This is the worst one for me. I have more time than I did when I was younger and at school. How come I don't write as much? I didn't have responsibilities to take care of or stress about. Apart from homework. Instead of setting aside writing time, why not set aside 'responsibility time', where you have an hour or two to take care of everything that's hanging over your head. Then you have the whole night to write. If it will take more than two hours, forget it. It can wait until tomorrow. Important stuff only. Everything else on the 'to do' list.