Writing is hard work. And if you’re like most authors, you feel more like the juggling clown in the center ring than a writer. You have too many balls in the air at one time and usually the one that drops is writing. When you do find a few spare minutes to sit down, the muse turns her fickle nose up at you because you ignored her the other day in the car. Never mind you were trying to find the house with the birthday party, referee your kids fight and navigate traffic in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Oh, and did I forget to mention the pile of chores and housework waiting at home that was nagging at the back of your mind when the GEICO squirrels ran out in front of your car.
Now, you have thirty minutes to spare to write before another ball drops. What do you do? The muse isn’t talking. I find instead of looking at a blank screen going back a couple of pages and reading helps. It grounds me back into the story so I can pick up where I left off. By the time I get to the last written sentence and the blank pages take over, I’ve connected with my characters again, the muse’s feeling are assuaged and the words flow.
This is all of course if I’ve stopped writing and I still know where the story is going. But what if you don’t know what happens next? Some writers are neat and organized. They sketch out a draft, the plot with charts and use fancy methods to get from the beginning through the middle and to the end.
Me? Not so much. And the muse knows it. She’s in charge of the story and she lets me know it too. As soon as I make a hard plot, she turns up her nose at me. My characters take her side. They refuse to be who I want them to. Like when I wrote my story Missing Pieces. I like beta heroes and my hero, Addison Cougar, started out as a beta. The story starts in his POV. I’d gotten a few sentences into the story and he pulled a switch on me that made my head swim. No matter how I tried to force it, he refused to be a beta. He was an alpha all the way and would not bend. I think the muse was sitting smugly in a corner laughing at that one. When I changed to her way of thinking, the story poured out of me.
So I make what I like to call a soft plot. I come up with a few things up front. Like a GMC (goal, motivation and conflict), a few twist and an ending. I take one chapter at a time, figure out the beginning and an ending hook. For each chapter I have to have down time. I literally lie down and close my eyes. I listen to my characters tell me their story and see it play out in my head like watching it on a movie screen. Then, when I have time to write again, I start the next chapter from what my characters told me. I proceed to follow the steps as I mentioned above until the chapter is done and it’s time for down time again.
If in down time nothing comes to me, then I know the story took a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe I have my characters doing something that isn’t their personality and they clam up. Turn fickle on me again. Take the muse’s side. Once I fix the problem and my character’s actions are back in line with who they are the words flow again.
In defense of the muse, I have to say that I, too, can sulk at her. I don’t always like the way she takes the storyline, and I can walk away because I just don’t want to write the scene. I fall in love with my characters, and I hate to make them suffer. My conflicts and black moments can be soft blows. Sometime the muse allows this. But on my current WIPP I’m afraid she’s not going to. I already know what she has in store for the black moment and I’m dragging my feet to get there. I wrote 18K in a few short weeks, which is very good for me. Now that I’m getting closer to the black moment I’m prolonging it. I’m at 24K. I’ve had time to write, but I don’t want to make my hero suffer the fate I know he is about to be dealt. I know I have to. This story is calling for it and it’s time to cut deeper. And if I want to keep the ball in the air, I’m going to have to do it. But I’m going to drag my feet and fuss at the muse the same way she fusses at me. I just hope I give in soon, because I know she won’t. She has no problem letting the ball drop.
Jsmine Black
http://jasmineblackromnce.blogspot.com
Hey! I do the laying-down thing, too. Helps me get my thoughts focused.
Great post Jasmine! I am having a bit of a block with my latest story and I think it may be the similar to your beta needing to be an alpha issue. Thank you for the insight
Margie
Hi, Jasmine!
You have the problem with the muses telling you it’s their story and not yours, too, huh? I’ve been struggling for over a year with a sequel. I know how I want it to end, but the orchestration of it simply eludes me. I was working on it just now, when AWH sent this link to have a gander at your post. I was sooo able to relate. I’ll try resting my eyes and letting the characters talk to me. Sometimes I act out difficult scenarios as well. (I live alone with a cat who just ignores my craziness anyway, so I can do this.) I find that also helps. While I’m pacing, I act out the dialog off the cuff, sometimes this helps me get a handle on what the story is trying to convey. Great advice!
I meant *your* advice is great…not mine. Sigh. Talk about bad sentence structure.
Sorry.
Don’t we have too much on our plates these days? You are so right about the outside forces that interfere with our writing. Great blog!
Great post, Jasmine
I agree, it’s hard actually finding time to write, between ‘real life’, promo, etc. I have to say I did NaNo for the first time last year and it was a great incentive to write two thousand words a day, and at the end of the month I had something which will hopefully be another novel, with some extensive revision! (The part I enjoy most!)
I also agree with the muse and the characters ganging together too – in my first book I had a heated argument with my heroine who told me in no uncertain terms that the story couldn’t end the way I wanted it to. Needless to say, she was right!
Thanks for all the comments.
Piper, who would have thought that CPs would have the same tricks and never discussed them together.
Margie, sometime a simple fix like changing a trait of a character is all the story needs to flow again.
Lyn, don’t you hate it when they gang up on you? You want to say, I’m in charge here, but they just laugh.
I took down time today myself. I’ve been having trouble working out the timeline of my WIP. Instead of talking to my hero and heroine who was wrapped up in their own drama, I listened to a secondary character that the timeline problem dealt with and she set me straight. Now I feel so much clearer about the direction of this story.
Why does real life have to get in the way so often? Great blog.
Barring a few differences in our lives, I have to say, “What are you doing in my head?” I can sooooooo relate. I have had characters become alpha, had then take the stories in directions I had not even thought of going to. Yes, I do kindda, sortta like plan out my SL’s, but its losely done. MY MO, is to write with pen and paper, this slows me down, I can see and live the story as it unfolds. When done, I transcribe, edit, and make a few changes, but rarely. Once the story is on paper, thats usually how it will be. I never am comcerned with word count, can’t even understand why that would be important. You have given me somethings to think about too, good job.
Thanks Elaine.
Shirley, I never care about word count either. I don’t plan a story to be so long or so short, unless I am writing for a certain submission, like Coming Together. Which I do love those anthologies. But when I write a story because it has to be told, I write it and then look for a home for it. My characters let me know how long it takes to tell their story. My next release is May 10, 0 to 69 in 5 Minutes. That story started out in my mind to be about 10-15K. It ended at 48K. I struggled with that one. I’d put it down and write another story and then pick it back up. It took me two years to finish as I struggled with the direction of it. Those characters were all head strong. Secondary characters even more than the main ones. They had their agendas and refused to be quite. I’ve had some flack over this story because the heroine has a habit of lying to avoid her mother. But if you had a mother like her, you might do the same thing. But I’m going to write the story as they tell me. Maybe I need to grow a spine and tell them to do as I say, but really I’m not that kind of a person. So I’ll just listen and write what they tell me to.
Excellent topic that all writers can relate to, Jasmine. Thank you so much for sharing it with us at the AWH blog!
I lie down too and let the storie go like a movie in my head.
Janice~
My solution is to have half-a-dozen different WiPs “on the simmer” at any onbe time – preferably of half a dozen different genre if possible, but that in itself can also be a ‘luxury’
There’s also the fact that my MCs tend to be bullies, or (like William Ellis Webb) they have a tendency to “pick up the ball and run” … often in a direction I as Author hadn’t planned! Then I have two choices: let them have their own way, or go out and buy a BIG whip!!!!