My words are missing

My writing has felt like an uphill struggle for the past six months or so. I take one step forward (a shiny new idea) and three steps back (my rational head tells me the idea is too rubbish to contemplate).

I've chosen Glastonbury Tor to illustrate this post because I walked up it in July, on a beautifully warm and clear day. From the top, you can see for miles across Somerset. I wish I could see my writing so clearly. (See what I did there??)

Last week, I had the house to myself. Even the dog was out for the day, so I didn't have the distraction of taking him for a walk, or letting him out into the garden, or playing tuggy with his favourite toy.

And yet, I wrote nothing. I wrote some ideas. Made a cup of tea. Came back and scribbled out my ideas. I tried to rewrite a different story, but it was rubbish - so that got saved (I save everything) under the title To be buried forever and ever.

I know what the problem is: I finished a novel in February. Whereas most writers move on to their next shiny idea, I'm a gibbering mess. I try to stay positive - I announce new ideas on my Facebook page, as though saying it out loud will consolidate them, and I write blog posts that sound relatively upbeat - but the reality is just a little bit different.

I'm going to make a couple of changes:

1. I'm going to change the place where I write - I'm going to move to the dining table.
2. I'm going to limit my wasteful web surfing. I spend a lot of time on the internet, but still don't manage to visit blogs or do meaningful research. I end up on bodybuilding web sites, reading their forums about how to get bigger biceps. (Actually, my biceps are coming along pretty well...)
3. I'm going to manage my time (related slightly to my point above). There will be strict no internet hours, with ten minutes surfing every so often for light relief.
4. I may try dressing in smart clothes, as though I am working in an office. I once read about a writer who did this to put herself in 'work mode'.

I'll only need to do this until I get myself stuck into a new project. Once I'm there, I will be totally focused to the point of ignoring everything around me and walking around with a glazed look on my face while my characters take over.

Comments will be disabled for this post, just because it's a little but whiny - and you all commented on Melissa's post on Monday which dealt with the same subject. I would however appreciate some positive thinking - thank you.

Melissa Maygrove’s Top 5 Tips for Writer’s Block

I'd like to welcome Melissa Maygrove to my blog today, to help me with a problem I've been having for a while now. Plus, there's a chance to win a copy of Melissa's new book Precious Atonement. I'll leave it to Melissa to explain more...

I’m grateful to Annalisa for inviting me to visit. When I asked what she wanted me to write about, she posed this question:

I'm blocked, completely. What advice would you give me? [Imagine a really panicked whine here - Annalisa]

1. Take a break. Pressure to write can make you try too hard, which usually leads to nothing or nothing good.
2. Read some quality fiction. Often, a good book can get the juices flowing.
3. Read some nonfiction. It doesn’t matter what it is—a biography, the newspaper, some general research—it can be the spark that lights a fire under your muse.
4. Watch some movies or even a silly game show. You never know where inspiration might lurk.
5. Click through images on the web. You can do a Google search or meander through a stock image site. This is especially helpful when you need to add some description to a scene.

Bonus tip:

Do you have an idea for a plot, but keep hitting a wall?

Ask ‘What if ______?’, then mentally carry the plot idea to its natural conclusion.

Didn’t work?

Fill in a different idea and carry it through again.

Don’t be afraid to insert something that seems totally opposite of how you envisioned things would go. (e.g. What if her mother really isn’t her mother?) Sometimes entertaining a radical idea brings about a twist that transforms a good story into a great one.

Thanks for having me. I hope this helps.

Thanks Melissa, great advice. I'm going to curl up with a good book, a good film and plenty of chocolate... (because I know #6 would have been 'eat chocolate'!)

Ruined women don’t hope, killers don’t dream, and the dead don’t feel pain.

Rachel Emerson is resigned to live as a spinster. Her parents keep her shameful secret, and her only brother, Seth, vanished mere days after witnessing her rape, taking her dishonor with him and giving them all an alibi for their grief. But none of that matters. Appearances are useless if she can’t bear the touch of a man.

Jacob Evans welcomes pain as much as he seeks to escape it. The graves of his wife and child remind him of his sins every day. When Lawrence Emerson offers him a job and a chance to move west, Jacob permits himself a fresh start. But letting go of his past is only an illusion. Lawrence’s sweet, shy daughter captures Jacob’s heart and provides him a perfect tool for self-torment.

Despite painful lessons of the past, history soon threatens to repeat itself, and as Jacob’s love for Rachel grows, so does his agony. Giving his precious new wife the life she deserves might cost him the very thing he values most—her.

About Melissa Maygrove
Native Texan Melissa Maygrove is a wife, mother, nurse, freelance editor, and romance writer. When she's not busy caring for her tiny nursery patients or shuttling teenagers back and forth to after-school activities, she's hunched over her laptop, complicating the lives of her imaginary friends and playing matchmaker. Melissa loves books with unpretentious characters and unforgettable romance, and she strives to create those same kinds of stories for her readers.

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Yo-yo writing

You've heard of yo-yo dieting, but I've discovered the joy-pain-joy cycle of yo-yo writing.

I have WIP1, which is resting - I love the story, but I'm not sure it should be the next book, I think it would work better as the one-after-next.

So, I brought WIP2 out from under the bed and started to read it, loved it, hated it, tried to re-write it, decided it was perfect as it was, hated it...

... and searched out WIP3... Meh. Yeah, all right, I guess. Needs so much work... hmmm, but if I just take this sub-plot out, tweak this character, change this woman to a man... Oooh, I love this novel... Wait, no I hate it!

Where's WIP2? Great story... No it's not, it's too depressing and doesn't make sense

Am I making too much work for myself, should I just get WIP1 ready to submit?

BUT it's not the right story...

Oooh, that's a great line I've just woken up with in my head. Now, does it fit it WIP 2 or WIP3?

If you're in the middle of working on your most favourite story ever, I salute you - and feel a little jealous. I know I'm pretty lucky to have three great projects available for me to work on (which doesn't even consider the fact I've got another one gathering dust that Hubby thinks I should finish!) but there's something stopping me. I've got this horrible feeling that the stories are too big for me, that I won't be able to do justice to the characters and their plights.

How can I feel bad when I'm listening to The Vaccines?

I just wrote a post that was so self-pitying I deleted it.

I'm not even feeling that self-pitying, so I really don't know where those words came from.

It's wet and it's grey, and I was supposed to be having coffee with a friend. When that fell through, I eagerly pulled out my WIP, sat at the table (see, very proper, no slouching on the sofa... I was reading to work), and then... nothing. Which is why my deleted post was so whinny.

So, here's a song instead...

 

Don't forget the Imaginary Friend Bloghop this coming Friday. You can still sign up here.

Right hand/left hand

This is my attempt at a useful post. I've moaned about mentioned my tendency towards writers block since this blog was born. And today I thought I'd talk about a method that really helped me with one story in particular. The story Omelette won third place in the inaugural Words with Jam short story competition a couple of years ago, so I feel confident in sharing this method with you.

What you do is swap the hand you normally write with!

That's it. How easy!

This isn't my invention - I read about it, but I can't remember where.

The theory behind it is that writing with the wrong hand makes you concentrate much harder on the actual mechanics of forming the words on the page, which leaves your subconscious mind free to be creative.

Try this:
Start with the sentence When I was younger my favourite toy was...


Remember to write it with the wrong hand, and don't analyse the content - that's very important: don't censor yourself!

When I tried it myself, I managed to pull out a long forgotten incident involving my mum, which was nothing to do with my favourite toy. It's a great way to stop writers block in its tracks.

Part of Omelette written normally...

... and with my left/wrong hand

So, how did you get on?

Day 2 of my schedule... and I'm staying on track!

So, this is a photo of me, pretending to write!

I'm posting it because maybe by looking at it I'd remember I am a writer and actually, you know, do some writing. (A bit like people who are trying to lose weight putting a photo of themselves at their ideal weight on the fridge door!)

It's not like I don't have anything to write - I've got a pile of stuff I can do.

• I have a novel is waiting to be read through and completely re-written in a slightly different voice (don't ask!)
• I want to re-write my first ever novel (well, actually, I want to take the characters and setting, but completely change the story.)
• I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago with a great first line, which is now scribbled on the back on an envelope waiting for me to do something with it!
• I've also got a marketing idea for Cat and The Dreamer that I need to get on to, as well, for those days when writing seems far too hard

See, lots to do. And what am I actually doing...

• Watching Homes Under the Hammer
• Considering doing the ironing
• Breathing after taking part in the A-Z Challenge and the First Loves Blogfest

Yesterday, however, I submitted an entry to the Bridport Prize, so I haven't been completely useless. And I'd actually like to research a few more competitions, because I have several short stories that I'd love to get out. (I find searching for magazines - real or online - is hard work, so I tend to avoid doing that, even though that's how I got my first stories published. Note to self: submit to magazines again.)

If anyone has some motivational tips to share with me, I'll gladly receive them! I'm in need of having a butt-kicking to get myself into gear.

Murdering my darlings

Phew... the past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, without a single word of new material written. So, at the weekend, I put all thoughts of marketing for Cat and the Dreamer on hold and got out my soon-to-be-submitted trilogy of novellas and read them as a whole, and - yay! - they worked. I held my breath, I got goosebumps, I wanted a character to do the opposite to what she was planning. I got caught up in my own stories!

Except for one. The second story in the collection was the first to be written - written eight years ago, to be exact. And as I was reading, I spotted a lot of changes that needed to be made. Even the first sentence, which I thought was spectacular when I first wrote it, now seems dated and cliched. And then, I saw it. I saw the worst piece of writing - a whole section that I'd shoehorned in, because I needed to get my character from C to D.

Out came my red pen, and... my darlings are gone - all 2000 of them. Murdered, slashed... gone :-(

Deleting words is not usually something I do. Not because they're all good, you understand. But because my work is usually shorter than I'm hoping and I spend a lot of time increasing the word count.


Currently there's nothing instead - just a big gaping hole in the plot. In this section, the MC has to lose her job,  introduce another character to the guy she likes, watch them flirt and then have an argument with him. It sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But the spectre of the old version is lingering. Even though I'm sitting down with a completely blank piece of paper, with my beautiful fountain pen poised, I'm struggling for inspiration.

So today's question is: have you ever needed to delete huge swathes of your work, and how did you fill the hole it left behind?

Running out of words

Before I start this post properly, I've recently realised that Blogger doesn't show me all the blogs I follow, and if I refresh the page, it shows me a different selection. This means that, unfortunately, I sometimes miss new posts, and therefore don't read and comment on them. I try to make an effort to read and comment on as many posts as possible, because you are all so wonderful at reading my posts, so I felt really bad when I realised I was missing some. I can't see a way around it. I don't want to go through the hassle of de-camping to another blogging site - I'm used to the features on here, so for the moment I'm staying put. I just wanted to explain.

So - back on topic - I've run out of words. I used them all up on my 'novel' of 45,000 words, and now I'm reading it over and supposedly making notes for the next draft, and I'm stuck - no words. I can see where I need a lot of work - I've managed to scribble Major Rewrite! over quite a few of the pages, but I couldn't see how to start, how to change it. My failsafe tecnique is to lie in bed at night and let my mind drift as I go to sleep. On a good night, I have to turn on the light and scribble notes - sometimes, full sections of text - before lying back down and repeating the process. Even that's not working.

Okay, I thought to myself, no biggie. I'll write a short story instead... No words. I have a blank page. I have a pen. But my imagination isn't playing.

I even did the ironing. Voluntarily. That's how bad it is.

The problem is, this has happened before, after finishing a long piece of work. I didn't write anything for six months. No re-drafting, no new work. Nothing. Last time, I didn't have a blog. This time, I do! I'm hoping that if I keep writing here, evenutally I'll find some words and kick-start myself a lot quicker. Otherwise, I might be forced to take in other people's ironing.

Short story in progress

It was all going so well. I had the title (that always comes first), I had my character and his voice. It took a while to work why he had the voice he had, but it came to me in a flash of inspiration. A small amount of research later, and I was sure I could carry off this idea!

So far, so good.

I had the other characters scuttling in from the side-lines and making themselves indispensable to the plot. Fantastic, I thought, this is going well. Done by Sunday... I thought.

Then what? Nothing!

After days of rampant writing, of waking up in the night to make notes, it was all flowing so well. Then... my two main characters are sitting at their kitchen table - father and son, an awkward relationship - in an awkward silence. The mother/wife has gone missing. The police are involved. Father and son are staring at a piece of toast...

Can you sense the tension? Can you hear the emptiness of their relationship? I could. I can. But... then it all stops. I have no idea where to go next, how to get them up from the kitchen table and to the end of the story. I know what happens then - titles and endings, I'm brilliant with those; it's just the pesky bit in the middle that has me tearing my hair out.

The truth is, I paused. I stopped for a day or two because of work and other busy-ness (as opposed to business, which it technically ought to be, but looks wrong) got in the way, and then my pen didn't want to start again. It's not writer's block, it's much less severe than that, it's writer's blip. But that's annoying enough when you're in the zone and everything's flowing.

I'm hoping by writing about it here I'll kick start myself... I hope!

The trouble with writers block when writing to a deadline

The trouble with writers block when writing to a deadline is that the deadline comes ever closer, and the work stays the same length, to put it simply. The deadline I have is a self-imposed one, in a way - I'll be entering it into a competition, if I ever finish it. But if I don't finish, it's not the end of the world. There are other competitions, other stories I could enter instead.

But, I came round to the thought that if I can't meet self-imposed deadlines, how will I ever cope when I'm faced with a real live deadline from a real live publisher (as opposed to the dead publishers who are always on my case to submit stuff :-))

Part of the problem is that I've been without my study for over six weeks, so everything I used to have at hand is now scattered around the house. I started off setting myself up at the dining table, and that was quite productive; but now I sit cross-legged on the settee, with rough drafts and notebooks all over the floor, and the lure of Homes Under the Hammer. I know it seems like I've answered my problem, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.

The story I'm working on was written and complete; but then I re-read it and hated it. I'd somehow slipped into a sort of stream of consciousness, which doesn't suit me, too much waffle. Easy, I thought, a cut there, a rewrite here, and it would be sorted. It's a little less easy than that. I can't get the voice right, I can't get the plot worked out the way I want it. I know the ending, it's the getting there that's difficult.

Take two aspirin and plenty of fluids

It's official - I have writer's block.

For those of you who don't know, catching writer's block is a bit like catching a cold - you wake up in the morning with a bit of a sniffle, you develop a cough, you take Vitamin C and a couple of Lemsips and hope you've done enough to ward it off. You go to bed early with a headache, but the next day, there it is, a fully developed cold.

The timing is particularly bad, as I was preparing and planning to kick off 2011 with the most astounding prose the world as ever seen - hitting the ground running and beating my three competition wins of last year. It's like waiting for the new bike you know your parents are going to buy you for your birthday, but breaking your arm the day before and not being able to ride it for six weeks.

The words are in my head, but the connection to my pen/keyboard is broken. Unfortunately there's no quick fix and I'll just have to ride it out, read plenty and try not to panic!! (The exclamation marks do not in any way denote panic!)

Place fingers on keybaord and type until finished

I'm finding settling back down into the writing routine a bit tough. The kids are back to school, and the house is quiet except for the music I choose to play, yet....

My current short story is being written one sentence at a time - which might seem the logical way to write, but I mean, one sentence... stop, empty the bin, make a cuppa, check the news headlines... next sentence... delete sentence.... put clothes in washing machine...

Well, you get the idea. The problem is I started writing without a title, and the title always - well, normally - comes first. So now I'm wandering around the page, picking up and putting down words as I go, and staring out of the window a lot. It's very annoying because the story has all my favourite ingredients: a dead body, a shadowy unnamed main character, and a forboding sense of doom.

I hope it's not the start of writers block - I had that once and it lasted a couple of years. It was so bad I couldn't imagine ever writing again. Right now, I just can't imagine ever making sense again.

Time away from the computer

I've been searching for inspiration recently, and not found any... at all. So, I started tinkering with a six-month old story that still needs a final polish and managed to add around 1000 words - not bad, I thought, but even then, that is starting to get a little more difficult. I have one more incident that needs putting in, a paragraph, not much, but I can't find the right words at the moment.

Then, I had an enforced two day break from the computer - one day for errands, and the next to take the family out for the day. Both very enjoyable days, the kind where you feel totally zonked by the end and want to go to bed at eight o'clock.

However, half way through today I had an idea! The title came first. Titles usually come first for me; I feel lost without them, directionless. It may change, that has happened in the past, but normally the title remains the same. They are the easy part for me - they shape the route of the narrative, the voice, everything.

Next came one of the characters, a cute little blonde haired girl with a splinter in her finger, and from there came the vague plot.

All this happened in the course of about 25 minutes, after trying for days to come up with something to write. I always panic when I've finished one project but the next is yet to start - I think that maybe this is IT, the end of my writing career before it's truly begun. But, each time, there's always an idea waiting for that moment of despair... "Oh, yes, what about this...? Any good, do you think...?"

Of course, in a couple of weeks' time, I'll have that same panic all over again, I don't think that will ever change.