I attended a
cupcake decorating class at the weekend. Bear with me – this is
writing-related!
At the time I
wished I hadn’t agreed with a friend to go. Wouldn’t I have been better
spending the time writing? As it turned out the answer to that was no.
When I wrote later that day, I found my
writing more energised, more inspired and more creative. I had been struggling
with my WIP over the last week, finding myself repeating words and having
mental blocks with the plotting. Suddenly I was away like a shot, the words
flowing out onto the paper. Somehow, doing something completely different had
refreshed my ‘writing muscle’ in a positive way.
I have a writing friend who likes to make
bread in the mornings before writing (she’s lucky enough not to have to work).
She finds the act of kneading the bread releases ideas for her writing day
ahead. Other people use different rituals – maybe making coffee or walking the
dogs to get them started. Then the blank page doesn’t look quite so daunting
when you already have a notion in your mind of how to begin.
If you find that your writing is grinding
to a halt, you may find it beneficial to put it in a drawer for the day and do
something completely different. Or add a non-writing element to the start of
your day.
I could start
making cupcakes on all my days off – but that’s a dangerous road to go down...
Hi Carol - I have heard all sorts of ways that people have of getting their 'writing muscle' into the correct frame of mind. One person I know says the name of their hero or heroine over and over in their head before they go to sleep. Then, when they wake up they find in that creative half awake/half asleep mode ideas about the character come flooding in. Another person chants a mantra each morning to themselves along the lines of 'I am creative, I can write 1000 words today, I will achieve my goal,' and finds that that helps. For me, I do like walking or gardening to try and sort out ideas. Glad that your cupcake making did the trick!
ReplyDeleteI've always found cooking helps me relax enough to let my characters have their way with a story and gives me space to mull and ponder over things so I don't waste time when staring at the screen later... way back when I first started writing, I was working as a chef and the long time spent cleaning down the kitchen at the end of the night (or the hours spent cleaning out the fridges during the 'dead time' in the middle of the day) was fantastic for working out tricky plot holes, or running through my mental thesaurus for the word that had eluded me in my last writing session...
ReplyDeleteMy dogs are absolutely certain about the way the day should start. No contest. If a plot is burning to be written, I sometimes get up very early and make a start ... even if to write emails and get things out of the way. Never thought of cup cakes as a starter but you make a very good point Carol. Doing somehting different is much better than staring at a blank screen. I always try to have a day or two doing something different between finishing a story and starting the dreaded edits. So, I need to finish today as we're going out tomorrow. Guess what I'm doing the rest of the weekend? Love xx
DeleteI love going to my favourite Costa once a week to write while enjoying coffee and cake (but not cup cakes!) - being away from the house, with paper and pen seems to energise my writing no end. Wish I could do it more than once a week! Also love visiting different places at the weekend with husband and coming back with more ideas.
ReplyDeleteI find walking helps if I'm stuck with my work. Somehow the physical exercise and being out in nature works to clear the stumbling block. It's best not to think about the problem and the answer usually pops into my mind - my subconscious thankfully having been working on it in the background.
ReplyDeleteLovely pic with your post, Carol!
ReplyDeleteRuth gets her best ideas whilst out walking or in the shower and I often get mine in the middle of the night.
So it would seem that physical exercise and cutting oneself off from things works well.
It's interesting to hear all the things people do to spark their writing ideas! I might try some of these - if I make cupcakes I'll be as fat as butter in no time. Walking or going to costa sound good and not too calorific.
DeleteI'm feeling a tad weird here among you because I sometimes get snippets of inspiration jogged by hearing or seeing something on tele or that I've read, but usually my main method of making sure I get words on paper, especially for a first draft, is just to sit at my desk, grab the pages I wrote the day before, read through, do minor edits and instantly it gets my mind back into the story and within 5 minutes I'm away again into my characters' world. I can't seem to do the relaxing/visualising thing. When I'm off doing other stuff, I'm ... off doing other stuff and my imagination rarely kicks into action. Like I said, feeling a bit weird here. I sit down and write and I'm in the zone. When working on a first draft, I do my writing before everything else. At the moment, between novels briefly, I'm catching up on everything I didn't do while writing my saga over the past 4 months.
ReplyDelete