So, you’re shuffling along in your story, plowing through scene upon scene like Captain Jack Sparrow cutting the crowd at a party on his way to the rum punch. When I say you, I am, of course, referencing the ubiquitous you, the you that would be all of us if we were sitting at our keyboard writing this instance. Hey, it’s easier on me psychologically if it’s you and not me. Stay with me here. So, you’re plugging along in your story and suddenly, blam, you start questioning yourself. How am I doing? You worry. Will anyone want to read this? You fret. Who cares what I have to say anyway?! You panic. These conversations can occur late at night while you’re wired up on caffeine or feeling a little loopy from an extra glass of wine. But, they can definitely occur when you’re in the middle of your WIP and you’re starting to question what in the name of Peter, Paul, and Mary got you moving along this particular writing path in the first place.
Not pointing any fingers here, but that’s definitely happened to someone on this boat. Ok, I give up. It’s me. In fact, my moments of vulnerability have been aired out on my own blog and my critique group here on the boat are certainly privy to them.
Now, what keeps you, er... me, ok us, going through this? What stops us from closing up that file and burying it under our beds (or at least in the back of the Word.doc files)? What gives us the strength to keep writing through the black moments in our work?
Our point, that’s what. That bit of truth at the core of the story.
And don’t tell me that you don’t have a point because I’m sure you do.
I’ve been reading romance a long time and the books that stay with me stay because they said something. Their message or core idea didn’t have to end poverty, promote world peace, or cure cancer but it had to resonate inside of me. At the end, I would put the book down and feel uplifted, like I understood the world just little better.
This past week, I realized that I had something to say. Who knew, huh?
In my WIP, my heroine, Cory, watched her father’s unrequited love of her mother and vows to avoid love’s complications in her own marriage. My hero, Will, has been burned by love in the past and isn’t sure that it’s worth trying again. Through the course of their story, they realize that love is worth any risk.
Sounds like an ok story, right? My characters learn something, the end. But, in fact, this story means more to me than that. This story gets at what I personally have to say to the world; that really, there isn’t anything as important as love.
This message is what keeps me pushing. I know that others have tackled this theme. I have no delusions that I am the first, or last, writer to express this thought. But, like those great stories I’ve read, I’m hoping that I tell the story in such a way that my reader, after turning that last page, feels like they understand the world a little bit better too.
So, dearest wenches, what is it that you are trying to say (ie, what’s your Core Idea)? What keeps you writing your story through your black moments? How do you shore up that sagging middle? And when do you feel the weakest in your writing, morning, night, beginning of story vs the end, sex scenes vs black moments? Do tell.
Showing posts with label Rum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rum. Show all posts
Step Away From the Box.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
You know that box. Yeah, that’s right. That box that you keep all nice and neat. You stay within the lines and never overstep your boundaries. Even you’re surprised how well kept it is. Stop stroking it. I’m not in this for the show!
Don’t shake your head at me. I swear it’s not the rum. Hellion hid the rum. Something about rationing and all that jazz. Oh la. So I started thinking about boxes and telling Hellion. All that talking about boxes and Hellion broke out the rum again. But I didn’t have any of it. Okay maybe just a drop but it gets me outside of the box and gets my seasick head a movin’. I’m a piratess, you can’t expect me to have standards.
Here’s the thing. I know you have one. It’s the one that you keep all those preconceive notions and perfect straight lines. It’s the one that when you come to a scene where you’re even the slightest bit uncomfortable with writing, you make sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Wenches it’s time to walk away from that box of expected scenes. It’s time to move out of your comfort zone and write something that makes your toes curl, your hair raise, or scare you into wetting yourself. (Though if you’re a pirate, like us, you’ll just reach for the rum bottle and drink yourself into the oblivion and skip that whole nasty wetting yourself step.)
Once when I was a wee writing pirate (almost two years ago now. WOW!) I wrote a scene to this day will cause me to cringe. Not to mention how red in the cheeks I get when I think of the countless people who’ve read it and thought to themselves, “This pirate has just a little problem with reality.” The scene was towards the end of my first fiction piece and it was rather brutal. More than rather brutal. It was a torture scene between my heroine and the super baddy guy. I stepped out of the box (really I didn’t know I had a box to step out of, but bear with me) and smudged the lines so that I could never climb back into it. Writing is about freedom. And if you’re afraid to step outside of your comfort zone, the box will be your foe in your journey as a writer. To this day, it might be some of my best writing, no matter how gutsy of a move it really was. I had no idea at the time that it was, I was just telling my story how I saw fit. And sometimes, stepping out of that box is just what a scene calls for.
As you know, this month is National Novel Writing Month (and if you didn’t know, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! Not on this blog that’s for sure! Landlubbers… Yeesh.) For the month of November I’ve promised to blog about NaNo to keep us all thinking about our writing and promising to make deadlines and meet goals. Speaking of goals, if you’re participating in NaNo, try writing something you normally wouldn’t write. Just to have some fun. NaNo is a lot of pressure, and all that writing can kill your writing spirit. So to keep your spirit high, mix it up. Step outside of that box. It’s okay to walk away from it and not look back. It’s a box. It will still be there when you return. It will be in the same spot.
When you step away from that box (Hellion, put that box down!), what kind of scene can you imagine writing that would be out of the ordinary for your writing style? Do you excel at writing sweet tender scenes and just once want to take a ride on the wild side? This is your time to shine with your bad self! Tell us all about your out of box experience that you've had or wish you could have!
Don’t shake your head at me. I swear it’s not the rum. Hellion hid the rum. Something about rationing and all that jazz. Oh la. So I started thinking about boxes and telling Hellion. All that talking about boxes and Hellion broke out the rum again. But I didn’t have any of it. Okay maybe just a drop but it gets me outside of the box and gets my seasick head a movin’. I’m a piratess, you can’t expect me to have standards.
Here’s the thing. I know you have one. It’s the one that you keep all those preconceive notions and perfect straight lines. It’s the one that when you come to a scene where you’re even the slightest bit uncomfortable with writing, you make sure you dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Wenches it’s time to walk away from that box of expected scenes. It’s time to move out of your comfort zone and write something that makes your toes curl, your hair raise, or scare you into wetting yourself. (Though if you’re a pirate, like us, you’ll just reach for the rum bottle and drink yourself into the oblivion and skip that whole nasty wetting yourself step.)
Once when I was a wee writing pirate (almost two years ago now. WOW!) I wrote a scene to this day will cause me to cringe. Not to mention how red in the cheeks I get when I think of the countless people who’ve read it and thought to themselves, “This pirate has just a little problem with reality.” The scene was towards the end of my first fiction piece and it was rather brutal. More than rather brutal. It was a torture scene between my heroine and the super baddy guy. I stepped out of the box (really I didn’t know I had a box to step out of, but bear with me) and smudged the lines so that I could never climb back into it. Writing is about freedom. And if you’re afraid to step outside of your comfort zone, the box will be your foe in your journey as a writer. To this day, it might be some of my best writing, no matter how gutsy of a move it really was. I had no idea at the time that it was, I was just telling my story how I saw fit. And sometimes, stepping out of that box is just what a scene calls for.
As you know, this month is National Novel Writing Month (and if you didn’t know, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! Not on this blog that’s for sure! Landlubbers… Yeesh.) For the month of November I’ve promised to blog about NaNo to keep us all thinking about our writing and promising to make deadlines and meet goals. Speaking of goals, if you’re participating in NaNo, try writing something you normally wouldn’t write. Just to have some fun. NaNo is a lot of pressure, and all that writing can kill your writing spirit. So to keep your spirit high, mix it up. Step outside of that box. It’s okay to walk away from it and not look back. It’s a box. It will still be there when you return. It will be in the same spot.
When you step away from that box (Hellion, put that box down!), what kind of scene can you imagine writing that would be out of the ordinary for your writing style? Do you excel at writing sweet tender scenes and just once want to take a ride on the wild side? This is your time to shine with your bad self! Tell us all about your out of box experience that you've had or wish you could have!
What to do When a Rival Pirate Steals Your Booty. (Or otherwise known as: “How I got my groove back when my muse decided to drink rum.”)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
I’m playing off Hellion’s blog of yesterday. So if you’ve procrastinated yourself into a coma, get your bonny ass to yesterday’s blog and read her fabulous blog and catch up!
Writing isn’t always fun and games.
We would all like to think that we sit down to the computer (or pen and paper if you’re real old school) and pump out 80,000 words in a month and submit it to a publisher and voila! you’re a published writer.
But I’ve realized it doesn’t work that way. And you shouldn’t expect it to be either.
Procrastination is a pirate killer. It causes you to walk the plank, and swim in a circle for hours at a time. And by the time that you’re ready to get back in the ship, you’re surrounded by sharks that have other plans for you. They suck all your energy until you can’t climb back in the ship and resume your writing. You find yourself trying to find reasons to climb back in the ship until you can’t remember the reason why you walked the plank in the first place but there’s no one whispering in your ear anymore. Your muse has jumped ship. She’s been on a deserted island, drinking up all Capt’n Jack’s rum (sorry Hellion!) and roasting her lazy ass on the white sand.
Recently, I roped that bitch back to my side.
For months I spent trying to write. I wasn’t exactly procrastinating as much as I was forcing my writing. It’s almost just as bad. Everything I wrote was mechanical, unreadable, no emotion, no feeling. It just left a bad taste in my mouth. I tried everything I knew. I tried writing something else. I tried focusing on honing a part of my writing. I tried writing sentences to spark an idea. I tried writing on a different chapter. I tried writing some fluff (which I’m very very bad at) and I even took a break from the computer (the biggest sin of them all!). And nothing worked. Nothing at all. And it was frustrating. I’m not the type that talks about things when I’m frustrated. I just let it fester into a boil that won’t go away.
Finally I figured out the key to my muse. Lure her back with the promise of writing whatever she wants.
I dunno if this works for everyone, but I live by freedom in my writing. I’m a free spirit. I write like the wind and let the wind be my guide. When I try to rein myself in, I get all bottled up and I can’t write. At all. So no more of that. I will write on a whelm. I will have a good time doing it. I will not restrain myself. Restraint is good for keeping the info dump away but allowing freedom in your writing is good for your muse.
Sunday, my muse was back with a bad sunburn and a bad attitude. Like usual. She boosted my ass back into the ship and handed me my keyboard. She told me to get my ass in shape or she’d never stay. And with that, I wrote the best 3000 words I’ve written since February. But of course, she doesn’t want to write what I need to write. She wants to write something new. Something fresh. Something that we both know and can attest to. And it made me happy to write for the first time in a year. I can’t tell you the freedom I felt when my fingers hit that keyboard. I can’t remember the last time I pumped out 3k in less than six hours. I used to do it all the time. It’s something I find joy in. And I’ve finally got it back.
So this was my little tale of how I got my pirate groove back. And it didn’t take a jug of rum and a session of pillaging (though I thought about it seriously for a while). What exercises do you use when the procrastination bug strikes? And if it’s never hit you, do you have a back-up plan ready?
Writing isn’t always fun and games.
We would all like to think that we sit down to the computer (or pen and paper if you’re real old school) and pump out 80,000 words in a month and submit it to a publisher and voila! you’re a published writer.
But I’ve realized it doesn’t work that way. And you shouldn’t expect it to be either.
Procrastination is a pirate killer. It causes you to walk the plank, and swim in a circle for hours at a time. And by the time that you’re ready to get back in the ship, you’re surrounded by sharks that have other plans for you. They suck all your energy until you can’t climb back in the ship and resume your writing. You find yourself trying to find reasons to climb back in the ship until you can’t remember the reason why you walked the plank in the first place but there’s no one whispering in your ear anymore. Your muse has jumped ship. She’s been on a deserted island, drinking up all Capt’n Jack’s rum (sorry Hellion!) and roasting her lazy ass on the white sand.
Recently, I roped that bitch back to my side.
For months I spent trying to write. I wasn’t exactly procrastinating as much as I was forcing my writing. It’s almost just as bad. Everything I wrote was mechanical, unreadable, no emotion, no feeling. It just left a bad taste in my mouth. I tried everything I knew. I tried writing something else. I tried focusing on honing a part of my writing. I tried writing sentences to spark an idea. I tried writing on a different chapter. I tried writing some fluff (which I’m very very bad at) and I even took a break from the computer (the biggest sin of them all!). And nothing worked. Nothing at all. And it was frustrating. I’m not the type that talks about things when I’m frustrated. I just let it fester into a boil that won’t go away.
Finally I figured out the key to my muse. Lure her back with the promise of writing whatever she wants.
I dunno if this works for everyone, but I live by freedom in my writing. I’m a free spirit. I write like the wind and let the wind be my guide. When I try to rein myself in, I get all bottled up and I can’t write. At all. So no more of that. I will write on a whelm. I will have a good time doing it. I will not restrain myself. Restraint is good for keeping the info dump away but allowing freedom in your writing is good for your muse.
Sunday, my muse was back with a bad sunburn and a bad attitude. Like usual. She boosted my ass back into the ship and handed me my keyboard. She told me to get my ass in shape or she’d never stay. And with that, I wrote the best 3000 words I’ve written since February. But of course, she doesn’t want to write what I need to write. She wants to write something new. Something fresh. Something that we both know and can attest to. And it made me happy to write for the first time in a year. I can’t tell you the freedom I felt when my fingers hit that keyboard. I can’t remember the last time I pumped out 3k in less than six hours. I used to do it all the time. It’s something I find joy in. And I’ve finally got it back.
So this was my little tale of how I got my pirate groove back. And it didn’t take a jug of rum and a session of pillaging (though I thought about it seriously for a while). What exercises do you use when the procrastination bug strikes? And if it’s never hit you, do you have a back-up plan ready?
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