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.
- Review what you wrote last writing session. (Only for WIP sessions, not my babbling about how cute Zeus is being.)
- 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.
- Open whatever I’m planning to write in, jot down the notes I’ve come up with in my head.
- Look for holes.
- Fill holes.
- 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.
