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Started getting some more writing in. Still bouncing between scenes. There's this strange revulsion I feel towards starting that always seems to be the biggest obstacle. Even though I'm passionate about stories, my brain registers the act of writing as 'work'. Right now it's just a matter of building up work ethic and turning off the filter for the rough draft. It's complicated, but with some better scheduling I feel it will be possible. 20 days remain. Rough draft or bust.
Side note: my 23rd birthday's coming up on the 17th of March. That's right, I was born on St Patrick's Day. It seems especially bizarre since I do not drink any form of alcohol - apparently Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King had a bad time with that kind of thing, and I figure I should learn from such mistakes. Still, I guess the whole world drinks to my birthday every year, so I got that going for me, which is nice.
I totally relate to the weird revulsion to start a story/ figure out a workable beginning. I used to just start short stories with a catch-your-attention moment and write chronologically, but I find myself unable to do that anymore..
ReplyDeleteHere's to hoping that we can both overcome this roadblock!
I've found it helps to jump around to whatever scene is most interesting at the time of writing, and once you have those down it's easier to connect them. But I've hit a point where I get bored of my story before I've written the whole thing down; I avoided this issue with The Phantom Woodsman because it was much shorter, but A Reckoning of Dragons has hit that stage.
DeleteI remember Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, talked about how he always tried to surprise himself when writing storylines, because if he couldn't surprise himself he knew the reader wouldn't be surprised. I think I could use some of that spirit to inject some spontaneity into my work.
What kind of stories do you write?
I write largely fantasy stories with a mixture of cultural influence and classic tropes. I'm currently working on seven different stories that all exist within the same universe and sort-of intertwine, to an extent. I feel like I'm able to sate my "boredom" by jumping back and forth between each story, while world building in any of them inherently adds to all of the others. I'm not sure if that really helps you at all, though.
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