Writing is a weird process for me. When I'm deep in the zone pouring words onto page/screen it's a fantastic feeling - an endorphine rush without leaping off a building. If I stop for any length of time then that feeling fades away. It could be a symptom of a dangerously short attention span or it could be entirely imagined, but it does impact my writing a fair bit.

The solution to this is to never stop writing.

Of course that's not sustainable. I've got to eat and sleep eventually. Instead I've gone with the babysteps option and registered myself for two events: Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo.

I had considered NaBloWriMo, but as it leads right into November and NaNoWriMo, so it might be pushing it (It's focused more towards the non-fiction writer anyway, and we know how well I'm keeping up with that!)

Meanwhile, my novel writing proceeds at the pace of molten caramel. My first attempt just ended up as a messy, unplanned, rambling mess. At least it taught me I'm capable of hitting a five figure word count.

I've picked up a few hints and tips in the intervening months. One thing thats had an incredible effect is using three different text files to track different aspects of the story:

• chapter breakdown
• list of characters and their relationships to each other
• to do list that explains when and how everything needs to happen in the story (idea courtesy of Neil Gaiman.)

Keeping these text files separate and stopping them from bleeding into each other does present quite the challenge, but through them I've got a stronger understanding of the story beats and can track the characters a lot better. It also stops me from going off on wild tangents and most importantly frees up the old noggin for the most important part: writing the story itself.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.