queenoftheskies

Jan. 6th, 2006

Have you ever noticed how much harder short work weeks are, even though it's nice to only work four days...instead of five?

Said four day work weeks are also much harder if they follow time off and you have to go back to work for those four days.

But, FINALLY, it's Friday. Hooray!

What are you folks doing this weekend? Anything exciting Or are you all partied out from the 1st?

I need to sleep. I'm exhausted.

I'm going to write.

I might go to Borders to spend a gift card I got for Christmas, cause I just got a 30% off Borders coupon. :)

Want to read.

Want to relax.

Need to do some critiques.

Current Mood: thankful it's Friday

Have you ever run across a piece that you tried to critique, but it was so totally impossible to understand that you couldn't even figure it out enough to critique it???

I read (or tried to) through a three part piece to critique on one of the groups/lists I belong to. It so made no sense. It's hard to even know where to BEGIN to critique other than to tell the author I have no clue what's going on.

And, the really sad part is that the writing itself is actually pretty good...quite good in parts. But, the story is very convoluted and there are things I really need to know in order to even be able to critique.

Yes, I could tell the author this, but the critique would only be a few sentences and not very helpful to them.

So, I had to pass on critiquing this, even after reading the whole thing.

Current Mood: frustrated

Several people have asked me questions in the past month or two about how I plotted my most recent novel and how I approach what I'm writing so I have the story firmly in mind when I start to write and stay on track. (Not that all of us stay on track all the time, of course.)

Some other folks have chimed in with how they plot and stay on track.

I promised some discussion on plotting later on, but decided that a lot of my FL probably would not be interested and also decided that I wasn't comfortable with putting actual examples from novels in progress in my regular LJ.

So, for those of you who expressed an interest in plotting, I've created a community called

plottingfiction.

If you'd like to discuss plotting techniques, how plotting works/doesn't work for you, if you'd like to share how you plot, and generally exchange ideas with other writers on plotting, feel free to join.

Membership is on an approval basis because I want it to be a safe community where people can feel safe to post any samples or examples that they want to post and share with others or ask questions on. This way, the amount of people who see it will be limited.

You know what's really strange?

As much as I love my Fridays, cause they're the last day of the work week and herald the weekend, Friday is the most difficult writing day of the week for me.

Not on holidays or during time off. Only during the work week.

Because, by the time Friday comes, I'm exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally and all I can think of is getting home, doing NOTHING, and recharging over the weekend.

Usually, I manage a few words, but sometimes I can't even make myself crank out any.

It's not that the words aren't there. It's just that I'm too damn lazy to type. I resist. I want to literally do NOTHING.

Isn't that strange?

So, I'm trying to overcome this oddity and remind myself that I can spread out the resting over the weekend and give myself periods of nothingness on Saturday and Sunday.

Though I'm starting to think that I need to build in at least 15-30 minutes of nothingness during the week, too.

Might help me clear my brain and ease the stress some.

Current Mood: stressed

For me, it's all a part of the same brain.

Of course, I should explain that my definitions of inspiration and writer's block might be different from the definitions many people use.

To me, inspiration is when everything is falling into place and easy and I'm really on a roll as far as writing goes. I can feel the plot and the characters and everything is good and wonderful.

But, writer's block, for me, is NOT the inability to write or the lack of words to write. For me, it's a state of being. I still write. I still have words to write. But, the words are harder to extract and I feel detached, sometimes, from my writing.

Inspiration is when my back brain takes control and gushes words onto the paper with such enthusiasm that it's hard to keep up. Everything makes sense and fits just right and it all ties together.

Writer's block is when the front brain is doing the writing alone. Front brain can write, just like back brain, but it works better TOGETHER with back brain, because back brain has the ability to work on ideas in "background mode" like a computer. Front brain focuses on the task at hand.

So, what causes the phenomenon of writer's block? For me, it's usually (but not always) stress, exhaustion, illness, something that takes a great deal of my concentration...like disasters. :)

It doesn't always happen and, thankfully, it no longer cripples me completely. At it's worst, I lose a few days (or weeks in the case of the work disaster last June), but mostly, I keep plugging. The writing just doesn't flow and front brain is having to REASON everything out.

I'm not as happy with it at the time, but when I go back and look at it, the surprising thing is that it still seems to blend together fairly well, for the most part, with what I write when I'm inspired. I just write MORE when I'm inspired and get it down FASTER.

So, the goal now is to keep the back brain from going into hiding whenever something bad happens. I can understand it shutting down when I'm really tired, I guess.

But, if I could just tap it ALL the time, life would be much easier.

Fortunately, it's ON more of the time than it's OFF these days, so that's a good thing. I really can't complain too much.

Current Mood: thoughtful

You know, if I wasn't so dang stubborn, I don't think I could have gotten any words in today.

I told myself I'd be happy with 1,000, but once I hit 1,000, I knew I had to keep going. Just cause I'm stupid. And, stubborn. Did I mention stubborn? And, stupid.

And, so tired that I'm stuck in a loop.

But, I have a very nice wind coming through the window. And it was 82 today. Lovely weather.

Out of the Darkness

2,237 words today