We have a new visitor to the area and it is one of those visitors that stay too long and you never really wanted to visit in the first place. Hurricane Sandy is here and rain is coming down hard enough that trains and metro have shut down and offices, including my own, are closed. This visitor though has brought me gifts though. I now have the gift of time to write. I am so rarely bored because I instead go and do some writing. That is one of the joys of being a writer. Even when you are not writing you are probably thinking about your next storyline and the next motivations of your characters. Hard to be in a state of ennui when your brain is contantly moving.
So since Sandy is visiting right now I am able to do some more writing and get some of these plots and motivations from inside my head down onto the paper. That means that I have moved on and can announce that I am on chapter nineteen. This is exciting to me because that means I only have about ten more chapters. It is also exciting because I am coming to the cataylst of my story and the real action will start happening. This action will introduce new, interesting characters. When I say interesting that could mean bad and evil or good and heroic. Those determinations will arise within the next chapters. That is what makes writing fun and interesting.
Often our stories and characters take on a life all their own and what you predicted or outlined in the beginning has evolved into something truly real and a surprise even to the writer. The final surprise of course will be the ending but I will discuss that in another blog post soon since I am starting to think of the ending. It is a bit like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and getting closer but not being there quite yet.
Well, Sandy is still visiting and I thank her for the extra time to write but she can leave anytime now. I really do not mind. Since I still have a visitor I am off to hunker down into my warm, dry home with a pen contantly in my hand to finish chapter nineteen.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Beware of the Big Black Hole
I just realized how long it has been since I have been able to jot down a few thoughts in my blog. I can not say I have been overly busy. Although, I did finish another chapter. I am rocking and rolling now into uncharted territory that is for sure. I can say though that the past month has been full of drama and stress and sometimes those are roadblocks to creativity. As I have discovered this past month, once you start putting up those roadblocks it takes a while to get through to the other side again.
Many of you may understand this if you live in the Washington, DC area especially. The city is always under construction. My beautiful morning walk is turning cold but that isn't the worst part of my walk anymore. It is the construction that is going on. There are sidewalks blocked off so you have to walk in the road. The beautiful scenery is instead a giant hole and dirt where there used to be grass. And, to make matters worse, there does not seem to be an end date in sight. Instead it just keeps moving locations and blocking the path.
That is exactly what has to be overcome when you are writing a novel often times. It is easy to say you are too tired or too busy or you just want to relax and play "Words With Friends" instead. In this modern age there are so many distractions to latch onto that it is easy to come up with a reason not to continue on course as planned. I was very focused over the past month but it was mostly a focus on being a vegetable instead of a writer. I relaxed more but got less done.
That is not to say relaxing is a bad thing to do. In fact, it can work to your advantage sometimes when you step away and give yourself a break. Once you return you have a fully operational brain again that is moving fast and thinking clearer instead of the one that was clogged down with too many ideas and responsibilities. The problem arises when relaxing becomes a full time pastime and everything else like writing becomes a memory or an excuse. As I like to call it, "The Black Hole Excuse." The idea of something becomes so big it is like it fell into a black hole. Much like my son's idea of taking out the trash regularly. We end up hating a chore that may only take a small amount of time or can even be enjoyable because we have turned it into a giant black hole.
I have moved onto a new section of my book and I am now in a different time period and a different country. I have to do more research and be a bit more creative with word choice. I normally enjoy this greatly. I love words and have often been teases for reading the dictionary or thesaurus for fun. I love learning new words or big words or obscure words. Yet, over the past month my trepidation has turned into a black hole and I took on too much of the story in my head that I could not jot it down on paper. There it sat for a couple weeks. I still thought of my story line and the characters but it became like the monster under your bed, something so much bigger than it really was.
As a kid I could not sleep with the closet door open because then the monsters inside would escape. Well, I sat down finally and opened that door and no monsters escaped. My closet was just my closet. I put that same memory into play again.
It happened out of necessity. One evening I was commuting home from work on the train and ran into a set of unfortunate events. I had made it almost home and was overjoyed since it was another long day and I was ready to just sit and relax. I did do a lot of sitting but I did not make it home as planned. They found a bag of body parts on my train and five hours later I was able to finally make it home. Of course that was after a train ride, a bus ride and a very nice gentleman finally driving me to my final destination. I do not do well when I have to sit and do nothing for long periods of time. After exhausting the distraction of a crossword puzzle I finally took out my writing that I carry around everywhere. This sitting and waiting finally gave me the chance I needed to write.
Writing is just what I did too. I broke the seal on the big black hole and was once again able to just focus on the one event or action or thought my characters were having at that point in the novel. That black hole got smaller and smaller until I realized I had finished another chapter. I also finally made it home from the impossible train ride. I once again realized that writing is a solace for me through tough times and boredom. That big black hole has been defeated. As the cowboy used to say, "I ride again." Or, in my case, "I write again."
Many of you may understand this if you live in the Washington, DC area especially. The city is always under construction. My beautiful morning walk is turning cold but that isn't the worst part of my walk anymore. It is the construction that is going on. There are sidewalks blocked off so you have to walk in the road. The beautiful scenery is instead a giant hole and dirt where there used to be grass. And, to make matters worse, there does not seem to be an end date in sight. Instead it just keeps moving locations and blocking the path.
That is exactly what has to be overcome when you are writing a novel often times. It is easy to say you are too tired or too busy or you just want to relax and play "Words With Friends" instead. In this modern age there are so many distractions to latch onto that it is easy to come up with a reason not to continue on course as planned. I was very focused over the past month but it was mostly a focus on being a vegetable instead of a writer. I relaxed more but got less done.
That is not to say relaxing is a bad thing to do. In fact, it can work to your advantage sometimes when you step away and give yourself a break. Once you return you have a fully operational brain again that is moving fast and thinking clearer instead of the one that was clogged down with too many ideas and responsibilities. The problem arises when relaxing becomes a full time pastime and everything else like writing becomes a memory or an excuse. As I like to call it, "The Black Hole Excuse." The idea of something becomes so big it is like it fell into a black hole. Much like my son's idea of taking out the trash regularly. We end up hating a chore that may only take a small amount of time or can even be enjoyable because we have turned it into a giant black hole.
I have moved onto a new section of my book and I am now in a different time period and a different country. I have to do more research and be a bit more creative with word choice. I normally enjoy this greatly. I love words and have often been teases for reading the dictionary or thesaurus for fun. I love learning new words or big words or obscure words. Yet, over the past month my trepidation has turned into a black hole and I took on too much of the story in my head that I could not jot it down on paper. There it sat for a couple weeks. I still thought of my story line and the characters but it became like the monster under your bed, something so much bigger than it really was.
As a kid I could not sleep with the closet door open because then the monsters inside would escape. Well, I sat down finally and opened that door and no monsters escaped. My closet was just my closet. I put that same memory into play again.
It happened out of necessity. One evening I was commuting home from work on the train and ran into a set of unfortunate events. I had made it almost home and was overjoyed since it was another long day and I was ready to just sit and relax. I did do a lot of sitting but I did not make it home as planned. They found a bag of body parts on my train and five hours later I was able to finally make it home. Of course that was after a train ride, a bus ride and a very nice gentleman finally driving me to my final destination. I do not do well when I have to sit and do nothing for long periods of time. After exhausting the distraction of a crossword puzzle I finally took out my writing that I carry around everywhere. This sitting and waiting finally gave me the chance I needed to write.
Writing is just what I did too. I broke the seal on the big black hole and was once again able to just focus on the one event or action or thought my characters were having at that point in the novel. That black hole got smaller and smaller until I realized I had finished another chapter. I also finally made it home from the impossible train ride. I once again realized that writing is a solace for me through tough times and boredom. That big black hole has been defeated. As the cowboy used to say, "I ride again." Or, in my case, "I write again."
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