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There are times when I fall into the trap of judging my writing progress according to how many words I’ve produced and sometimes that leads to disappointment. Last night was one of those times.
I sat down to write but nothing much would come. I might have mentioned before that this tends to make me panic. I'm convinced I’ll never write again before I pull myself together and sternly tell myself to follow my own advice.
Get up
Walk around
Read or watch something fresh
Generally change my energy
If none of those works, the problem is either tiredness – in which case a break is essential - or something I don’t know.
There’s some vital information without which I’m stuck.
1. factual information: historical, sociological, biographical etc.
2. creative thinking: a missing link; how something happened; what comes next
3. imaginative research: the need to create a background, a religious sect, a cult, a family history
4. practical work: the need to look at structure
Number 1 - factual research, is easily remedied in the days of information technology and your local library.
Number 4 - requires careful and practical attention, checking out the building blocks of the narrative, the pace and movement of the story and the transformational arc of the characters. These, also, have come up in previous blogs.
Numbers 2 and 3: wildly exciting. They might take a little getting into but they give the imagination wings and the aftermath of the flights of fancy bring wonderful surprises. Even more exciting are the links between this new-found information and the defining themes of the novel.
I use all methods of brainstorming.
Mind-mapping/spider charts – Mind-mapping, developed by Tony Buzan, is massively popular among writers everywhere.
Draw a circle (like a spider’s body) in the centre of a clean sheet of paper.
Write a phrase/name to represent your research eg. Anna’s story.
Draw a line (like a spider’s body) from the centre and indicate what it is about.
An example might be, Anna leaves home.
Draw smaller ‘branches’ (hair on the spider’s leg) and jot down representative phrases. Eg. to get away from her father and another catches the first train out of town and ends up in Shangrila.
You might draw another line from the circle about another aspect of Anna’s life, what happens next, who she meets, why it all happened in the first place. This method can be used for both broad sweep work, such as the overall story and characters or for finer details, such as one particular part of a sub-plot or even a single scene.
Writing notes – this is just what it says.Hold a question in your head.Quickly jot down all the ideas that come into your head. (You’ll be amazed how quickly your sheet of paper fills up.)Process material and select what you want.This will provide a solid basis to build on. It may be all you want.
Free-writing – this can sometimes be the most exciting of all.
Think of a question, get yourself into a comfortable place and start writing.
Write whatever comes, without attempting to give it any direction.
I really urge you to try it. I was resistant to writing exercises but I was converted when I was rescued from a real crisis as a result of the information that came out of it – and even more with how much it revealed about the defining themes of the rest of the story.
So delve deep and give your mind free-range. Count your information-gathering activities as part of your writing process. An evening spent researching will repay itself several times over. |
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