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silveradept[Welcome back to December Days. This year, thanks to a suggestion from alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]
Especially as the deadlines for exchanges loom large, or any other deadline that might be on your plate, there's a certain amount of anxiety that comes with writing to specification by a certain time. I'm pretty sure that authors who have just signed their contracts have similar issues when it comes to making sure their second work comes in with as much quality and patience and careful attention to details as the first one did. Because the first work is the one that's had an infinite amount of time to prepare for, and the second...doesn't.
Exchange writing does help with getting people to the idea of writing on a deadline, as does writing a NaNovel, or participating in one of many different opportunities that ask for someone to keep writing every day/week/month/year. Like December Days (or the Daily December), for example. There's a certain amount of "do I have enough knowledge or curiosity to post one thing each day for 31 days at the end of the year? Goodness I hope my audience can help provide some of the topics, or something similar."
In any case, and I'm encountering this in some of my works, and in December Days, too. there are times where you find yourself staring at a blank cursor blinking at you, or a blank page, or an infinite canvas just waiting for something to step in and be awesome, and...nothing's coming. Zip, zero, nada. Or you've written out all the words that were in the original idea, and you've explored all the places you wanted the thing to go, and there's still a few thousand words to go before you've made it to the requirements for your exchange, or your NaNovel. At that point, there's a certain amount of "help, what do?" and the anxiety is trying to take control and you want to give it up, but there are some things that can help you get over the line. We're assuming at this point that you've gone through things like sleeping and eating and taking breaks to refresh your mind (and possibly doing things like clicky-games and other things that help you get out of your conscious head and make sure that you have the energy levels needed to continue with the work). If there's still nothing there, even after this, then perhaps these suggestions will help.
A first suggestion might be to find a beta reader for your work, especially if you are only a little short of your word count requirement. Beta readers help you find your plot holes, spaces where you're skimping on the explanation, confusing parts of the action sequences, and other spots that might do better with a few more words applied to them. A beta that asks questions about how the plot flows, and whether the characters chosen are the ones that would make things work best, and expresses confusion where needed can add a significant amount to the wordcount and make the work even better in the process. Betas and editors can also reduce the wordcount by asking for tighter prose to make things better, but that also leaves room for more plot and answering the questions of your reader.
Not everyone ends up having a beta in their life or has their request filled when they go asking for one with enough tine to get something done. Or the project is too far in the early stages to have a beta go looking at it, and there's nobody around to bounce questions off of while trying to get into the creative mode. In those situations, there's still something useful that can be done, something that we can borrow from people trying to solve problems in technology or other spaces: Find a rubber duck.
It doesn't have to be an actual rubber duck, although these days, you can find a rubber duck (or other animal) in just about any sort of dress or professional occupation. It can be googly eyes on a microphone, a plush toy that's been with you since childhood, or any other thing that you can look at and that you won't feel all that self-conscious talking to when there's nobody else around. (Or if there are other people around, too. If they're creatives or people who use the rubber duck technique, they'll probably understand, and they might join in on the process.) Humans are really good at working through their problems when they're talking to someone...or something, as it turns out. Being able to voice problems aloud can sometimes make them their proper size, and rambling your way through possible solutions without anyone around to hear the thought process aloud is sometimes really helpful, as we sometimes realize what we're saying is a solution that will work, or is at least a plan of action on how to go about trying to find a solution. Sometimes it helps us define the problem and figure out what option we're looking at. Even if solutions aren't forthcoming, it can feel like progress.
And sometimes, all you need is a little progress and the muse revisits, or the words start to come out again. Which is one of the best feelings in the writing world, to go from a few hundred words down to more than a thousand words over the count you need, because of the timely application of a beta. Or a rubber duck.
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]Especially as the deadlines for exchanges loom large, or any other deadline that might be on your plate, there's a certain amount of anxiety that comes with writing to specification by a certain time. I'm pretty sure that authors who have just signed their contracts have similar issues when it comes to making sure their second work comes in with as much quality and patience and careful attention to details as the first one did. Because the first work is the one that's had an infinite amount of time to prepare for, and the second...doesn't.
Exchange writing does help with getting people to the idea of writing on a deadline, as does writing a NaNovel, or participating in one of many different opportunities that ask for someone to keep writing every day/week/month/year. Like December Days (or the Daily December), for example. There's a certain amount of "do I have enough knowledge or curiosity to post one thing each day for 31 days at the end of the year? Goodness I hope my audience can help provide some of the topics, or something similar."
In any case, and I'm encountering this in some of my works, and in December Days, too. there are times where you find yourself staring at a blank cursor blinking at you, or a blank page, or an infinite canvas just waiting for something to step in and be awesome, and...nothing's coming. Zip, zero, nada. Or you've written out all the words that were in the original idea, and you've explored all the places you wanted the thing to go, and there's still a few thousand words to go before you've made it to the requirements for your exchange, or your NaNovel. At that point, there's a certain amount of "help, what do?" and the anxiety is trying to take control and you want to give it up, but there are some things that can help you get over the line. We're assuming at this point that you've gone through things like sleeping and eating and taking breaks to refresh your mind (and possibly doing things like clicky-games and other things that help you get out of your conscious head and make sure that you have the energy levels needed to continue with the work). If there's still nothing there, even after this, then perhaps these suggestions will help.
A first suggestion might be to find a beta reader for your work, especially if you are only a little short of your word count requirement. Beta readers help you find your plot holes, spaces where you're skimping on the explanation, confusing parts of the action sequences, and other spots that might do better with a few more words applied to them. A beta that asks questions about how the plot flows, and whether the characters chosen are the ones that would make things work best, and expresses confusion where needed can add a significant amount to the wordcount and make the work even better in the process. Betas and editors can also reduce the wordcount by asking for tighter prose to make things better, but that also leaves room for more plot and answering the questions of your reader.
Not everyone ends up having a beta in their life or has their request filled when they go asking for one with enough tine to get something done. Or the project is too far in the early stages to have a beta go looking at it, and there's nobody around to bounce questions off of while trying to get into the creative mode. In those situations, there's still something useful that can be done, something that we can borrow from people trying to solve problems in technology or other spaces: Find a rubber duck.
It doesn't have to be an actual rubber duck, although these days, you can find a rubber duck (or other animal) in just about any sort of dress or professional occupation. It can be googly eyes on a microphone, a plush toy that's been with you since childhood, or any other thing that you can look at and that you won't feel all that self-conscious talking to when there's nobody else around. (Or if there are other people around, too. If they're creatives or people who use the rubber duck technique, they'll probably understand, and they might join in on the process.) Humans are really good at working through their problems when they're talking to someone...or something, as it turns out. Being able to voice problems aloud can sometimes make them their proper size, and rambling your way through possible solutions without anyone around to hear the thought process aloud is sometimes really helpful, as we sometimes realize what we're saying is a solution that will work, or is at least a plan of action on how to go about trying to find a solution. Sometimes it helps us define the problem and figure out what option we're looking at. Even if solutions aren't forthcoming, it can feel like progress.
And sometimes, all you need is a little progress and the muse revisits, or the words start to come out again. Which is one of the best feelings in the writing world, to go from a few hundred words down to more than a thousand words over the count you need, because of the timely application of a beta. Or a rubber duck.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 06:25 am (UTC)This shouldn't have made me laugh as much as it did. ;) :D
I'm currently stuck writing music, 2+ weeks with no output, and it's driving me up the wall. I was sent some links to some other resources that I still have yet to read...because I'm still too stressed about it. Here's hoping next week (when I'm on end-year break) that things will get more...fluid.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 03:08 pm (UTC)