Training My Brain

As many of you know, I’ve had a heck of a time sticking to any sort of writing routine. Now that I no longer have carpal tunnel, I saw no major roadblock to establishing one.

Yeah.  I had to change my goal from writing everyday M-F on my WIP, to writing anything every day.

I’m at the point where I can sit down and write, but it’s rambling. Even sitting down to write this blog post is taking way longer than my rambling writing. I understand why. It’s a lot easier to write without thinking about it. I need to get my brain back to being able to do that with novel writing.

Right now, if I sit down to work on my WIP, my brain goes ‘hhhuuuuuhhhhh?’ and wants me to babble about what’s for dinner and the dog doing something cute. It takes me a while to get my brain focused.  I’ve started trying a couple tricks to get my brain in gear before I even open the blank word doc, or the day’s 750words page.

1. Review what you wrote last writing session. (Only for WIP sessions, not my babbling about how cute Zeus is being.)
2. Actually sit and think for a moment about where I want it to go next. What needs to happen, how it could happen and how to make it interesting.
3. Open whatever I’m planning to write in, jot down the notes I’ve come up with in my head.
4. Look for holes.
5. Fill holes. 
6. Begin writing.

Prepping this way is an odd concept for me. I don’t have an outline for my current WIP. I'm kinda creating the outline as I go. If I don’t think about what needs to happen before I start writing, I end up sitting there staring blankly at the screen or I’m off folding laundry.

 

It’s odd. The novel doesn’t want to be outlined, I have come to accept that.

I’m an outliner pretending to be a pantser. :D

In November, with the start of NaNoWriMo, my goal will change from writing just any words, to writing words on a novel. I know the pace is insane. But I'm hoping by then I'll be so used to doing the steps above, I'll be set.