Do you listen to anything while you are writing? More specifically, do you listen to music while you write? I have found that it helps inspire certain types of scenes. For example, if you are writing a romantic scene, you might listen to some easy listening type of music. Also, if you need inspiration for danger within a scene, you could listen to music that brings across that feeling of foreboding.
Years ago I was listening to some music while writing some poetry. As a happy surprise, when reading the poem later after it was finished, I was told by others that they could “hear” a song while reading it because there was a cadence to the words as they read them.
Add music to your “playdough” mix of words. The results may surprise you.
While you write, you accumulate many many pages of writings. Some of them you use and some of them you don’t. You may even keep a journal with your ideas in it. Or, you might also have a three ring binder you keep notes and writings in. After some months or years, you publish a novel or two. What do YOU do with your notes and writings after you’ve published your book(s)? Do you keep them? Do you throw them away?
If you throw them away, that’s your choice. You are well within your rights to do that. BUT, that means later you can’t go back and look over them when you need inspiration. Yes, inspiration. Let’s say you’re in the middle of writing book 3 and you are stuck. Will you have those old writings to draw from? You never know what might get your “gears” going again.
God didn’t give us good memories so we could look back and regret that we can’t go back and relive them. He gave us good memories as a gift so we can look back repeatedly and smile and be glad we had them.
What are you afraid of? Heights? Small places? Hospitals? Success? Failure? Sometimes, what we are afraid of can hold us back. When that happens, nothing happens. Let’s pick on fear of success. I know. It doesn’t seem like a plausible fear, but it is. Although, I’m willing to bet the person who has this fear is most likely not aware of it. I’m not a psychiatrist/psychologist. I fear many things. At least growing up I did. As an adult I still do. It’s something I struggle with sometimes. I end up having to talk myself into trying new things.
Fear of failure is one of those fears. I have to remind myself that I won’t succeed if I don’t try. Or, I tell myself, ‘But what if I succeed instead of fail. Again, I won’t know unless I try’. Getting over one’s fears isn’t easy. But, it can be done. Trying is the key. At least that’s been my experience anyway.
We write and we edit. We try to get the story on paper or the computer screen, then we go back when we’re finished and edit what we’ve written. That’s how it’s supposed to be done anyway. Does that always happen in that order? No. Not always. There are times when we try to edit as we type. The left side of our brain wants to insert itself at the same time our right side of the brain is trying to be imaginative and creative. This process can cause you to slow down when you’re trying to come up with a story.
Let’s say you’re a paragraph into writing a scene. So far you like it, but then the analytical side of your brain (left) is saying ‘No, no. That won’t work’. You go back and rewrite parts of that paragraph. You like what you came up with and move on to the next paragraph. You’re a couple of sentences into the second paragraph when your analytical side starts rethinking what you rewrote in the first paragraph. So, you go back and look at it but aren’t sure how you want to fix it. You end up sitting there thinking. Your fingers start strumming on your desk and you lean back in your chair and stare at the ceiling. An hour later you haven’t fixed anything, nor have you moved on with your writing. Had you waited to fix what your analytical side of your brain wanted to fix, you would have been MUCH further on in your story. You may have even gotten a chapter done.
How many of you can relate to the scenario above. I know it’s happened to me at times. So, how do we turn off the left side of our brain and make its impatient self wait? It’s quite easy actually. You make it wait. Turn it off. If you don’t like something you’ve just written, make a note of it so you can go back at a later date and fix it when you’re not writing. Choose a specific day and time when that’s all you’re going to do is edit and fix.
Loosen the “rope” when you’re creating and “tighten” it back up when you’re editing.
One starry night I lay beneath the sky, the crickets strummed their violins so sweet, dewy drops tickled, the cool it prickled, the moon man smiled up high.
WRITE TIME AND AGAIN 