Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

I wrote this in my head several times over the last few days but couldn't find any way to say that without being inflammatory so here I am scrambling for a topic.

Let's talk instead about how to lure a reluctant muse out of hiding. If there is one thing all the professionals seem to agree upon is that you can't wait for inspiration to strike. You need to write every day. There was once a community on LJ that was dedicated to that, 100 words a day. Things like gsd_rtfn help as well. Of course you can always 'fool' sites like that by writing on the new shinest thing but that doesn't really help your problem in the long run.

Of course, sometimes it can. I DO find it helpful to set a story aside to work on something else. The danger there is where I am now, surrounded by file folders filled with abandoned projects. As I said at the end of the year, one of my goals for 2012 is to clean that up. I finished one (and I do believe that Splinters of Silver and Cold Iron had to be my 2006 nano since I have files from my writers group dating to 2007 with the edits) and I have opened the last 3 chapters of Numb to find where I left off to finish (and that means I wrote this in 2004/2005) See what I'm saying about things lying too long.

That is obviously the wrong way to handle writing issues. Looking at my upcoming projects, I'm running out of time to push things off. Some times the muse goes cold when you won't let it write the story it wants. Witness my big bang. I lost affectively 3 months of writing time with it falling over Nano and the december holidays (not to mention the unexpected havoc of January). It doesn't want to shorten the story. I keep telling it to save the rest for later but it knows the story is going to severely suffer at this point and doesn't want to finish. I will not, no CAN NOT let it fall to the wayside since there are others involved in the project. How unfair would that be to them?

That means the muse must be lured out of hiding. For me sometimes the sheer competition is enough to get me going. I don't like to lose. Not finishing for a deadline equals losing in my book. The other thing that does really get my muse going is talking it out with myself or with someone on IM. Honestly, I think I find that the best muse sparker going. evil_little_dog will tell you that I do this often. Doesn't mean I take all (or even half) of her suggestions but it gets the creative juices flowing (and her talking to me resulted in some of Ed's bad behavior in her fma_fic_contest entry this time out.

So what do YOU all do?

Here's one of the creative prompts from

By Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians

T.S. Eliot wrote: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” It’s just as true of novelists as it is of poets. Try stealing something from a writer you like: a style that works for you, or a character you love, or a situation or a moment that really floored you. See if you can work it into your own plot. Often you’ll find that by the time you’re done, you’ve made the style or the character or the situation your own, and what started out as theft has turned into inspiration.

Obviously we're not talking plaguarism here. For example, Ed and Roy's personalities and their dynamics are not unique to them by any means and by lifting them I was easily able to create characters with that same dynamic and have fun with them

yearly word count

2121 / 75000 words. 3% done!

Fma Big Bang - I'm well over 15K but honestly if i had time I'd only be MID story but that isn't going to cut it. God knows what will at this point.

Machiavelli Moon - unedited

Splinters - used old and apparently long forgotten edits for ch 3-5 from my writers group. I need to sit down with ch 2 and give it a good slice and dice

Numb - printed out the last bits for persual. edited ch 2

Geeklove & Scarred Soldier - are in bits so no word count but slow progress is being made.