December Talking #6

[cosmic_llin]

parcequelle said: Your relationship to inspiration and ~the writing process~. :D

Ooh, good question! And one that I'm really still figuring out. At the moment I'm in the middle of writing a second novel, having finished a first one and been told by more than one agent that they like it but it's not marketable in its current form. I'm also generally juggling at least a few fics. 

When I'm writing something big, I try to do it in a linear fashion, so that when I get to the most exciting bits it's like a reward. Also it just makes more sense to me that way. I tend to write through a first draft comparatively fast, and then go back and leave notes all over everything, and then tackle them in reverse order of difficulty.

I'm always looking for ways to tweak my writing process to make it work better for me, and lately I've found something that works pretty well in terms of actually getting me to sit down and do it. For a while I'd been experimenting with reward charts for writing, with a prize for completing a month's worth, and I discovered that I find time limits easier to stick with than word counts, because for me a lot of what I struggle with writing-wise is knowing that I have a million other things to be getting on with. Attention span is an issue for me. So I reward myself for doing twenty minutes a day, which is very manageable time-wise, and often I end up doing a lot more once I get into it.

For a while though I was trying to do it every day, and just leaving the day blank if I failed, but that's a problem because as soon as you miss a day it just seems pointless to bother with the rest. So (after noticing that Cara's method was slightly different and worked better) I decided to let myself catch up the next day or later in the week if I missed one, so I have more motivation to actually still finish the whole chart. And it's working pretty well so far, I'm writing more steadily than I have in months. (BTW our reward charts have dinosaur stickers, they're pretty great.)

It's weird though, I love writing, and it's one of the most important things in my life - so why is it hard to make myself do it? I mean, I guess it's like anything that is effort but ultimately rewarding, you have to discipline yourself to some extent, but I miss being a kid and just writing day-in, day-out and not really caring what it was like as long as I was having fun. I guess that's why sometimes when I'm writing fic I really get in the zone and end up writing the whole thing in an evening and just posting it straight away - it's not that I don't care about the quality of my fic, it's just a lot more relaxing for me than writing my original stuff, it reminds me why I love writing, and the instant gratification of comments online is a boost.

As for inspiration, that's another tricky question. I tend to think of inspiration as the idea, the spark of something exciting that unfolds into a whole story. The what if. When I'm actually writing I'm not really thinking about inspiration, and I don't feel like I need to be 'inspired' to sit down and write, just motivated. Although one of my favourite parts of writing is when you get those lightbulb moments that make the pieces fall into place in a way you hadn't thought of but which makes perfect sense. I had a headdesky one of those a while back when I realised that a scene that I absolutely couldn't get to work would be immediately fixed if I just set it indoors instead of outdoors. I'd seriously spent months worrying about it and never considered such an obvious solution. Also with my current novel, a name I chose for one of the characters gave me an insight that led to a really important aspect of the characterisation of another character. I love those connections, the moments that make you feel like maybe you're a bit cleverer than you realised because here's this awesome thing that you didn't even plan, just discovered in things you'd already made up. (I find the best place to have these sorts of insights is in the shower, or while doing the washing up. Unfortunately both times that it's not easy to write things down.)

If inspiration is having the ideas for stories, though, I think it's a really important thing to cultivate, there's no point just waiting for it. For me it's really important to get my mind ready to receive inspiration by exposing myself to new things. Museum visits always end with me having around a dozen ideas, most of which I'll probably never write, but still it gets my mind churning and working in new ways. Holidays are good too, or reading outside my comfort zone, or clicking the 'Random' link on Wikipedia. 

Another problem I have with my writing, though, is too many ideas. At the moment I have a list of at least a couple of dozen fics I genuinely intend to write at some point. I'm working on two short stories, and I have ideas for maybe ten more. I have somewhat-detailed ideas for at least five or six novels that are competing for my attention in spite of the fact that I'm already working on something I love. Like I said, attention span is a problem for me, so I have to be really disciplined about keeping to one big project at a time, because otherwise I would never finish anything. It's a wrench though when there are so many things I want to do! I wish I could take a year off and just write really intensely that whole time and get some of it done. But I guess you can have too much of a good thing!