Welcome back to Tammy's Tidbits on Writer's Words of Wisdom. This week I thought I'd discuss the one thing writer's fear more than rejection letters or poor reviews.
We all go through it at one time or another. Sometimes it hits us right in the middle of a pivotal scene and other times it stops us dead in the water before we even put one word to the page. One thing for certain, it's frustrating as hell when it happens.
So what do we do to break through it?
- Don't panic! It's not the end of the world if you can't move forward with this particular scene or start a project at the moment you decide to start.
- Step away from the project for a while. Put it aside and try another one. Sometimes just changing to a completely different story line will get your creative juices flowing. Before you know it, you've plotted out a few more scenes for the new story, and then the characters from the first one will be begging for your attention again.
- Listen to the voices of your characters demanding to be heard. That's your MUSE talking. If you stifle it, the story may stay locked to you for a lot longer than you wish.
- Give yourself permission to walk away from a project that seems to be going nowhere. Let it go. Accept the fact the rest of the story may never come to you. As soon as you do that, the pressure is off and the words start to flow again.
- Don't be so caught up in your writing that you neglect your "ME" time. We all need vacations from our day to day lives and our jobs. Your writing is your career. Make sure you give yourself down time from that as well. It not only helps you to relax and rejuvenate your health and well being, it will recharge your creative juices and open up your connection with your muse.
If none of the above suggestions work for you, then make it a goal that you write for one hour each day. It doesn't matter what you write, just do it. It can be pages of complete nonsense as long as you keep the words flowing out of you and into something else such as a blog, journal/diary, or even napkins if that's all you have handy. If you commit to that one hour daily, you'll be surprised how often you end up doubling that or even more.
I have small spiral notebooks I picked up in the dollar bins at Target and Michael's Craft store. I make lists, plot points, sketch scenes of future books or those I'm working on now. I work on ideas for blog posts or write my opinion about something in the news or from a book I'm reading. I carry at least two of these notebooks with me at all times.
From those writings I've been able to plan out multiple books in several series I wish to write under all of my pen names. I don't worry about which pen name's supposed to write what story. I just write it down and figure it out later. It's the same reason I don't write a story from the start to the finish. I write the scenes as they come to me. It's in the editing stages where I cut, paste and rearrange the scenes to make the story flow well.
This year I'm going to do NaNoWriMo. Starting November 1st and running until November 30th, I've committed to write a 50,000 word novel. It's not going to be perfect. That's not the point of this challenge. It's to get all the words down on paper/in a computer file in whatever order the scenes come to you. When you've reached your goal, THEN you can do the organizing and editing to make it perfect and ready to submit to a publisher or to an editor if you're self publishing.
There's still time to sign up and join me for my first NaNo. With all the book ideas I have already plotted out, this is the perfect challenge for me to buckle down and commit to one. Of course if I feel like I'm blocking, I'll still write my word count goal for the day. It just may be on another book! All those words count. Who knows? Maybe I'll have TWO novels written by the end of November.
Okay, now who's with me? Let's smash all those walls blocking us from achieving our writing goals!
Until next week,
~Tammy
Learn More About Tammy
Now happily married to her own Muse and soul mate, she continues to live her dream and act as secretary to all her characters demanding to have their stories told.
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