Muse Monday 0005

Hey look! It’s a shiny Muse Monday! Throw a great ball at it!

*wiggle*

*wiggle*

*wiggle*

*CLICK*

Hey look at that! You caught a shiny Muse Monday! Congrats!

I’m mostly back on track with my various writings, but admittedly I had to take a media break. This is important as a writer.

Let me tell you why. (And why it’s here as a Muse Monday thing.)

A media break is where you take a break from writing to take in some other form of creative media. From binge-watching your new favorite show on netflix, to seeing that movie in theaters that you’ve been wanting to see, to just doing some pleasure reading – it’s all really useful for recharging your brain.

Even switching to another project for a while can help give you a break from your primary project.

Why is this important? Because eventually, you’re going to run out of the ability to create. Creativity is both a finite and an infinite resource. It’s like bamboo. It something that grows remarkably easily (and pretty prolifically), but you have to plant the seeds first.

Sometimes, this works as simply as switching to another project, or finding a creative prompt. Sometimes you’re more low on the creative juices than normal and just need the break.

Taking in new stories and new things helps your creativity, your muse, have a better and easier time coming up with new ideas. This means it will be easier and easier for you to knock out your word count goal every time you sit down to write. If your creativity is too tired or burnt out, you’ll eventually give up and you’ll no longer want to write.

So definitely take the time to recharge your creative battery. Plant the seeds of creativity and take a break.

I personally try to build in breaks into my schedule, specifically, I try to make sure that I get far enough ahead in my writing that I can take the weekends off. Treat writing like you would a job, where you have those breaks built in and you’ll discover that writing won’t tire you out as much as it once did.

My personal schedule, thanks to probably one of the most laid back jobs you can have, matches my work day literally. I work in an office where they don’t mind if I write in the down time. So I’m actually sitting in the office right now, busting out words with my portable wireless speaker sitting on top of the desk organizer and my laptop next to the primary computer. So far tonight, I’ve written nearly 1.8K words, and am relatively on track for 7k words in my shift. As a side effect of this awesome job, I have a lot of time to sit at my desk here and just write. So I’m working on getting into the habit of doing that, so that I can have my weekends free to do whatever I’d like. Which also includes reading for pleasure and just generally recharging my mind.

If you’re not lucky enough to have time to write on most days, then go ahead and make a schedule that you can keep to for writing, and guard your writing time fiercely. If you can get into the habit of doing it each time that you’ve set aside, eventually, you’ll have programmed your creativity into working best at those times. And your mind will have it’s recharge times built right into your schedule.

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So, take some time to recharge your muse, to make your muse better.

Technical Tuesday 0001

Woo, looks like I’m on track now doesn’t it? (I’ll tell you a secret, I wrote at least two blog posts in a row on Monday.)

So, onwards to TECHNICAL TUESDAY!

Technical Tuesdays are for discussing the actual work of writing. And today, I’m going to tell you what I’m currently learning and finding quite useful.

STORY STRUCTURE.

So far, I’m learning a lot from K.M. Weiland over at https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com, and honestly, what I’ve learned from her is seriously helping me out with my steampunk story (Of Mage Lights and War Machines). In fact, she’s made me realize that it’s quite possible that in order to get everything done, it may need to be more than one book. This is quite seriously news to me, and quite possibly news to the person who’s been my go to person for exercising my brain.

You can find everything that K.M. Weiland says about story structure at this >LINK<. If you’re unsure about her methods, pick up her free podcast series about story structure, and download her free ebook on the subject. Free things don’t hurt your budget, and you never know, you might learn some things in the process.

–NOTE: I HIGHLY SUGGEST HER PODCAST, I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO IT LIKE THERE’S NO TOMORROW.–

Word Crawl?

So, if you’ve been hanging around the NaNoWriMo world recently, you have more than likely discovered mention of a “Word Crawl”.

What is a word crawl, you ask?

A word crawl is a very neat thing. It takes something you either need to do, or are a fan of, and gives you writing challenges in that theme. The most popular ones are Harry Potter ones this year, though I myself wrote a star trek one.

Word crawls tend to net an average of 2k to 3k words for the participant, and they seem to be great fun for the participants.

I am currently working my way through the Harry Potter Year One crawl, and I’m having a lot of fun doing it. {LINK for those interested, only valid until the 2016 forum wipe} I’ve already added 2.2k to my word count while doing it, and I’m not even to the school yet in the challenge.

I’ll probably do my own crawl, the Star Trek one, later. I’ve got lots of trekkie friends, and they seem to like it.

 

Enjoy your NaNoWriMo, I know I am.

As Usual, I am Behind

As is actually quite normal, honestly, I’m behind. It varies every single year as to when I get behind.

In 2009, I was behind for the whole first week, and then I managed to catch up and make my first win.

Normally, it yo-yos back and forth between the line between weeks two and three, and thanksgiving week.

I’m almost always behind going into week four. I’ve done dictation in the past, to catch up on a twenty thousand word deficit. I’ve managed a 6k day to finish out a ten thousand word catch up in two days.

 

I’m good at being behind. Usually somewhere in the range of eight to fifteen thousand words behind. Currently I’m just short of a full ten thousand behind. Well, I was this morning. I’ve managed to cross 19.2k putting me right at something like nine thousand behind. My plan? Well, it currently includes making that gap as short as I can over the course of a couple of serious writing sessions today. I’m not quite aiming for a 5kday, but I’m sure as hell going to try. (I’m also going to try one of these word crawl things that are seriously taking off this year. Harry Potter Year One – here I come – provided I find some digital dice. I should add my dice to my ML kit.)

 

Basically, the TL:DR of this post is quite literally – IF YOU ARE BEHIND, YOU STILL CAN WIN.