Writers, I’ve Got an Idea for You by Christine Duncan

      I read Michelle’s post about ideas she couldn’t finish last week, and nodded my head.  Yup.  I know the feeling.  The thing is, I think it’s a good thing.  There are some stories, some articles, some ideas I am not meant to write.  And sometimes, it takes starting the thing, in my head or on paper, for me to figure it out.

    For instance, I have 3 kids and a step son.  I could write on step families, I could theoretically write on parenting.  I could write on sibling rivalry.  Boy, could I write on sibling rivalry.  Or should be able to anyway.  But I can’t because either I don’t have the answers–at least on sibling rivalry, or I come across as preachy.  It just isn’t my thing. 

   

   If you think I’m wrong, think about the people who find out you are a writer and want you to write their idea.  I don’t know about you but most of the people in my life have, in one way or another, offered up an idea they think I should write.  And I have never been able to do it.  Not because it was their idea, mind you.  Some of them, initially, even seemed like stuff I should write.  But like Michelle I never could fully develop it.

   I think when you reach the point that you know that, you’ve actually reached a point of maturity in your writing. You have found your limits.  And that’s okay.

  

Brain Fog by Karen Fainges

Ever had that feeling of brain fog where you can’t seem to remember anything and spend the whole day wondering what it was you were going to do next?

I hate it but it can be useful sometimes. I often find myself daydreaming during this fog, and those daydreams can sometimes make wonderful stories. Allowing your mind to just wander unimpeded by grammar or spell checks may free it to search out ideas you would have never thought of in a normal state of mind. Now sometimes, these daydreams are useless so don’t expect miracles. Still, it only takes one great story idea to make your day better.

Brainstorming works well in this same fugue. Try word associations, doodling and writing about what you see, cloud watching or even meditation. Allowing your mind to go completely blank can be very liberating.

Brainstorming

Sometimes I’m a bit uptight about getting things ‘right’.  This uptightness strangles my creativity.  There is a simple solution.  Brainstorming.

Mind you, I can easily transfer my rigid thinking to brainstorming but I’m slowly learning to catch myself and let go.

So yesterday, I finished editing my novel.  The edit was successful in that I’m loving the story as it stands but it’s now about 20,000 words short.  What to do?  Brainstorm new endings of course.

Here is a list of my brainstorms of possible endings.  They appear in the same order they came out, note how ridiculous and short the first couple are…an indicator of a good brainstorm session in my opinon.

Emily could jump off a bridge

Emily could get pregnant

Chantal could lose her mind

Eduardo might get called away

They might meet up in Los Angeles, go to Jan’s and then Emily gets pregnant

They could meet up in New York, go to the Jay Leno show and Eduardo proposed on TV

They could meet up in San Diego, go to a ball game and Eduardo proposes.  Emily says no, they go their separate ways and then meet up in Sydney and get back together. 

Of course, I’ve not included the actual ending that i’m going with – that would be telling.

 

 

Winging It? by Christine Duncan

This post is a bit of a gripe and is not related what I was trying to say last week. But do you ever sit down to a deadline (for say, your blog) knowing you have to write something and yet you have no idea what to write?

Uh huh. Me too. There are some days when it feels as though every topic, every thought in my head is already covered and copyrighted somewhere by someone else. And yet, I have to write something. I tend to go looking for ideas at Crimespace or in my research when that happens. Or I go looking through my hard drive. Often I have jotted a note down somewhere about a blog topic that I ‘ve thought of but don’t have the time to research or write about just then. Yet many bloggers and tweeters seem to just…write whatever comes into their heads.

Over the years there have been a number of writing exercises out there like this. You know, the warm-ups where you sit down and just write with out stopping, without censorship, without planning it out-whatever you’re thinking about at the time so that once you’ve done your ten (or fifteen or whatever) minutes, you will be primed to write on your WIP. I believe Bird by Bird has an exercies like this, and I’m sure I’ve seen it in writing magazines and the like.

It may prime the pump, folks but it’s not necessarily great reading. I don’t want to read blogs just for the sake of reading. I don’t what to see tweets on the clouds you just saw outside your window. Hey! I’ve got my own clouds.

K-Love quoted a study out this week stating that 40% of all Tweets out there are about the minutia. (Okay, they were nicer–they didn’t use the word minutia. I’m paraphrasing, okay?) I have to say, if all you got to write about is what the cute girl who was riding past you on the bike was wearing, I’d rather you took a blog/tweet vacation. I’ll catch you later. I promise.

Go ahead. Tell me I’m cranky. I know it.

Weeding out Ideas by Christine Duncan

I was out in the garden earlier today, weeding out around the roses and planning all the writing stuff I was going to do in my head. I had ideas for my WIP, ideas to talk to my publisher about, stuff I wanted to tell you all about on this blog. Do you think I can remember a single one?
Now it’s hot in the garden right now, but I can’t blame this on heat stroke. I have done this before. Regular readers of this blog will remember me complaining that I will go running and plan a whole chapter in my head and come home to the computer and write…nothing. It’s gone.
I was more than slightly frustrated about this until I remembered a column that Lawrence Block wrote long ago in Writer’s Digest. He talked about ideas that pop up at you in the night (or on the run) and said that some won’t stay with you. That was all right, he claimed, since this is the brain’s way of getting rid of the clunkers. (Yeah, I kind of doubt that Block said clunkers too–but you get the idea. I am quoting this article YEARS after the guy wrote it.)
On thinking this over, I think he’s write, err, right. The thing is when I finally do get to the scenes I’ve mulled over like this, they tend to write themselves. Somewhere in the back of this thing I call a brain, some decisions have been made and the scene is usually a good one–even if I don’t really have a conscious memory of how I planned to write it.
Of course, you have to remember, I’m one of those people who can’t plot either. Maybe it’s just how my brain works. How about you?

Ideas

When I think back to the ideas I’ve had over the last 12 months, I can see that there’s a pattern to how and when they come.  My creativity is strongest in the early morning and my creative mind loves theta activities so most of my ideas have come while I’m doing something else.   For example, taking a shower or driving on the 50 minute drive to work (I’m yet to create anything on the way home, I’m always too tired). 

Like most people, my creativity comes in peaks and troughs.  Right now I’m in a trough and so just writing this post is a grind.  I’ve learned not to fear these troughs.  Instead, I use them to get other things done.  For example, today I’m going to do some housework, organise all the paperwork in my office and get my bookshelves sorted out.  That way, when my creativity peaks again (which could be any day) I’ll be able to focus fully on writing.  I’m much more productive in an uncluttered and tidy space..so even though tidying the house and organising my office doesn’t seem related to writing, for me it is.