Staying on track.

Yesterday was a great example of why I need extra time to be a writer.  Time to waste.  Except, as I'll try to prove, I don't really think it's a waste.

So, because of different factors, especially the root canal surgery, there were 5 days since the last writing session on my vampire story.

I started thinking about it around noon, my usual time.  But nothing came.  I couldn't pick up the threads, I reread and tried to recapture it.  I puttered around.  I waited for inspiration.  While I was doing that, I came up with more plot and thematic elements I wanted to accomplish, but the spark to start my 8th chapter just wouldn't come.

Even though I had told myself I wouldn't ever push my writing again, I decided I had no choice.  It wasn't really pushing, I told myself, since I knew what I wanted the chapter to do.  It was just that I couldn't come up with the beginning inspiration.  (It doesn't take much, sometimes just a word or two, a scene, an idea...)

I wrote the chapter and it did what I wanted, but not much more.

Took the usual two hour break, and started the next chapter -- which flowed easily.  Very easily.


So the lesson?

I need time, sometimes hours, maybe even days to just putter around and try to wait, and then maybe nibble at some writing.

I need to not let too much time pass between writing sessions.  If I'm going to write my story quickly, and try to maintain consistent tone and theme, then I need to write.

I need to find the fine line between "forcing" my writing, and making sure I keep some momentum.  The part that can't be forced, I think, is the plot.  The writing can be forced to a certain extent as long as I know what I'm trying to accomplish.

An example:  When I was writing FREEDY,  I lost an entire chapter.  After trying to get it back all day, I finally sat down that night and rewrote the chapter.  I wasn't happy with it -- I wasn't feeling it -- but I had tried to put in all the elements I had thought of.

A week or so later, I was reading this portion of the novel -- and I almost couldn't remember which chapter it was that I'd lost.  When I figured it out, it turned out to be the best of the 5 or so chapters I read.

The point being, I had in fact worked out the elements of the chapter, and the nuts and bolts of actually writing it were easily reproduced.  The original concept wasn't, but the writing was.

In the past, having five days between writing and then being stumped for most of a day, might have been the end of the story.  By having time off, I could wait around -- not wasting time, but letting the story come back to me.

I'm back on track.

I need to do my monthly orders, but I'm going to keep the next three days for writing and then spend all day and night Wednesday to do the orders.

It's important that I stay on track.