“So, how’s the writing going?”

Posted in Writing by Sarah W

Jane Writing2 (Jane’s World is the brainchild of the extremely talented Paige Braddock.)

This past week, my usual routine has gone a little like this: I sit down after the kids go to bed, go over my last few paragraphs to get back in the groove, and start hitting the keyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………………….

Sorry, what was I talking about?

Sometimes, I suspect my keyboard is made of topical Ambien.*

Maybe this the aftermath of Nano, maybe it’s a response to holiday stress. Or it might be time to mix up the methods a little, go manual for a while, try the kitchen for a change of scenery.

Or I could try going to bed earlier.**

I’ve always written until I dropped. Problem is, now I’m writing after I drop, which doesn’t seem to be working so well.

So I’m placing myself on experimental curfew—pencils and/or pixels down at ten-thirty p.m. by the latest.

This means ignoring Facebook, Twitter, bloogfeeds, and even e-mail earlier, too.

I figure it’ll be a breeze, once the withdrawal pains taper off.

Wish me luck.

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*Side effects may include memory disturbances, hallucinations, and mild behavioral changes. Yeah, that works.

**That sizzling sound you just heard was my entire family shooting me meaningful looks with a side over of righteous impatience, because they’ve told me this. Often.

30Nov2010

I’ve been wondering about that myself . . .

Posted in Writing by Sarah W

(Jane’s World is the brainchild of the awesomely talented Paige Braddock)

I can daydream all day, chewing on pencils, playing endless games of Winter Whirl,* while my characters dance through my head, conceptualizing their feelings and events and shootings and smooches.

But that doesn’t get stuff written down. Eventually, if I want to have a novel written, I will have to make new marks on paper or throw new pixels up on a screen.**

That’s a pretty basic concept right there, and it’s amazing how many excuses I can counter-conceptualize for not actually doing this.

The only cure is to get something down—even a single sentence about what I want to happen next. And then another sentence, expanding on the idea a little . . . and another so it’s a full paragraph (according to Janie’s teacher, three sentences make a paragraph, and who am I to argue?) . . . and a fourth that makes the adverbs in the second moot . . . and then the clock strikes eleven and there are four pages here that didn’t exist before that one small sentence was written.

I’m not knocking daydreaming—it’s not a waste of time, until it is, and without conceptualizing, you get alphabet soup in three-sentence groups. But there comes a time when the only way to call yourself a writer . . . is to write something.

Ideas are only as valuable as their execution.

Suck it up and get it down.

Butt in seat. Hands on keyboard.

Poing!

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*You shoot colored snowflake balls at a great whirling structure of colored snowflake balls, trying to match at least three so they’ll fall off. It’s like structured transcendental meditation with poingy sounds.

** Supplying, one can safely assume, my own poingy sounds.

Jane’s World is the brainchild of the awesomely talented Paige Braddock