In which I try to form better habits

Well, I haven't been so good about keeping up with my writing resolutions. I do a lot of writing at work, and I guess that's just enough to keep the inner muse at bay. I am wondering if I don't want to move into non-fiction, because I know I'm good at it and it kind of circumvents the pesky little plot issue. I've had some interesting ideas in that arena. We'll see if anything comes of it. I have more ideas than I do hours to write, and, of course, pinning the ideas down and getting something useful out of them is difficult. I'm still wanting to the PG Wodehouse fairy tale thing. I still want to do the "choose your own" growing story thing. I just really want to get out of the mental place where I think everything I write is just stupid. I've been there a lot this month for various reasons, and it's probably why I'm falling down with the resolutions. I don't have the momentum and, well, public shame of NaNo to keep me going if I hate it anymore. So I avoid, and do other stuff. Been spending a lot of time reading, or thinking about reading, or doing just about anything other than writing.

So, how do I get out of this? Dunno. Just write, I guess. This is step one, anyway. I won't be doing the full fifteen minutes, but hopefully this will break me out of the inertia trap and get me into the momentum zone....

In which I plod onward

Well, I'm not doing too well with the writer's resolution. I don't seem to be able to find the few minutes to press forward with it all. Or is it I'm just slipping back into procrastination mode? I expect I could find the time if I want to. I was going to go to bed--was up very very early this morning to play taxi driver--but I thought, it's been too many days since I've checked in and gotten the words flowing. If I don't do it today, I won't do it tomorrow, either. And then it'll be a bad habit instead of a good one. So I'm trying again. I'll polish this off, and then I'll polish off 15 minutes on some writing project or other. Probably the magic one.

I think the key is just to make it a habit. I think this evening dumping is a pretty good thing. The problem is that there are about 200 things I want to make a habit. I think, though, I'm going to let the writing be the one I focus on more this month. And next month too, if I need to. They all say it takes 21 days to form a habit, so let me take each habit one month at a time. I suspect I need much longer than 21 days. More like a year or so. But I can't do one habit at at time if that's my real rate. So I guess my real rate had better be one habit per month, hadn't it now? ;)

I'm distracted by a lot of things. One thing I've been doing recently is listening to PG Wodehouse. Mostly Jeeves. It gave me a brilliant idea, don'tcha know. I think I want to do some pastiches. Right-o. I think I will work on that for a bit, because it will make me laugh. I am thinking of a set of pastiches of different sources. Start with Wodehouse, and move onto Doyle... Maybe I'll even post them here. Or over on my real blog. Or somewhere. At least it'll be writing, and it'll be fun.

I'm also reading Peter and the Starcatchers. I'm only just getting into it. The start was rather slow for me. I think I'll enjoy it by the end, though.

Well, given I'm having an impossible time staying awake, I think I'll do my morning writing in the morning after all... I'm good on my 15 minutes here, I think, or at least, not too shabby, but I don't have anything more in me today. It's not about torture. It's about persistence and keeping on keeping on.

Night, y'all!

In which I contemplate snow and slush

Weather is frightful outside, lots of wet heavy snow. Just perfect for building a snowman. So, it's perfect snowman snow. Sculpting snow. Sometimes when I'm writing, words and phrases are like that--easy to shape, stick together in pleasant ways, build a good structure. Other attempts at writing are like the other kinds of snowflakes--they are all ok separately, but they don't do much other than lie there. You can't get them to interact. The words look pretty,and they sound pretty, but you can't really get them to cooperate to form anything useful. They just slide through your fingers and float off in their own direction.

So, how can I get words to be like the sticky snow most writing sessions? I keep thinking how hard it is to come up with a plot. My characters just don't want to do anything interesting. They just sit there and say stupid stuff. Is it that I haven't defined the characters well enough? Is it that I don't have a good plot? What is a good plot anyway? I mean, I have beginning, middles, and ends, but nothing ever seems to happen or tie them together. They are often kind of like the powdery snow...

I don't know. Maybe it doesn't really matter. Maybe I should just write what comes, and if it's power, and doesn't stick together, one can always warm things up just slightly, and make it wet and slushy and sticky. It's not as much fun, it's not elegant, but it can work. Or so I keep trying to convince myself.

And how do you get those brilliant flashes of imagination? I don't know. I guess I just keep trying. Write a bunch of words and sort out the chafe from the grain... Maybe I should do different creative stuff and see if that unleashes something. Kind of get at it from a different angle. Maybe that would do something.

In which I start over

Well, I hadn't intended to take ALL of December off from this blog, really I hadn't. It's not like I took all that time off from writing, either. I have an "easy reader" story I'm trying to bring down the reading level for before submitting. "Easy readers" probably shouldn't be coming in at the 4th grade reading level. Though I don't know, it seems pretty easy to me. I'm trying to figure out what words are triggering the higher level, or if I just have too complex sentences. I tend to like long sentences, and am frequently told to cut them up a bit to simplify them at work. I also need to check I've made simple word choices. I did find I'd used words like "declared," which probably isn't necessary.

I like the story though, and will see what I can do with it. I'm thinking I may go with easy readers or beginning chapter books for a bit. Two reasons: one, I can usually stick with them long enough to finish them, and two, I'm not too impressed with the selections out there for my own beginning reader. One thing I want to play with is some of the really kooky ideas I had as a kid. I had some pretty kooky ideas. Periodically I wonder what happened to my imagination since then. I had a very nice one once. Now it only seems to work on natural disasters, bills, and other yucky stuff like that. I think it's time I tapped back into my more primitive imagination.

When I was in fourth grade, we were supposed to write about a deserted house. I wrote about an actual one I knew about that I'd imagined lots of things about. Unfortunately I'd gotten bogged in description (thank goodness I know how to work around that now!) but the ideas I'd started out with were cool. But not as cool as my friend, who wrote about a deSSerted house! And then, of course, we all had to write about desserted houses too. And each was more wild than the last, with 200 stories of marshmallows and ice cream, and rides in 300 people limosines. Upshot of it all was we were all jealous of our friend's imagination.... I guess in many ways, I'm still jealous of other people's imaginations. I keep thinking, "Why don't my stories turn out as cool as theirs??" But today, for every two or three books that make me think that, there are thirty that make me think "These people are published and I'm not????" So I guess it evens out. But sometimes I do wonder if that spark of true imaginative insight exists anymore-- or if it ever did.

Ok, well, that was more negative-sounding than I feel. As I said, I'm pretty happy with the idea behind the thing I wrote, I am very happy about the idea I am in the middle of having now, and my one writing resolution this year is to write 15 minutes a day in here, and 15 minutes a day on something I'm working on, for at least 4 days a week. I think this blog was actually pretty helpful in getting the juices flowing prior to NaNoWriMo. Maybe I should start a "total word count in 2005" meter or something, but it would probably be more effort to maintain than it is worth.

At any rate, for more writing angst, writing joy, and weird insights into my mind, stay tuned!