All About Writing: Writer's Block

So Sunday I sat down to bust out my blog post which was supposed to be about ideas and where mine come from. Instead I just stared at the computer screen like I had been for days when I was supposed to be working on my WIP. I realized that I was so blocked that I couldn't even blog which meant that I needed to do something and fast.

Writer's Block for me is a lot of being plain old stuck. When I write I know a lot of what I want to happen and for the most part I just have to write that all out. Occasionally I discover pieces that are missing or something comes up while I'm writing that kind of begs me to be added. Unfortunately those things almost always end in me being blocked because I don't have any clue how to write them into the story. Or I get half way through writing them into the story and then slam, I run into a wall.

When this happens, I know that I need to skip over it and move ahead. Especially when I'm working on a zero draft like I am now. But of course I'm stubborn and I want to write through things so I sit here and stare at the cursor instead of moving on. And I do that every day for three or four days before kicking myself in the ass and making myself move on. it's such a giant waste of time and I hate that it happens every time. Writer's block isn't real for me. It's just all in my head and when I'm "blocked" on one thing I tend to be blocked on everything.

Obviously, since I was able to write this post, I moved on this morning and put in notes for when I go through for my first draft. Now it's time to play catch up. I wanted to get to 50,000 words and the end of my zero draft by the end of today....probably not going to happen, but I'm gonna work like hell to see if I can at least add another 2 grand before I go to bed tonight.

Bits and Pieces: Balancing Life and Dreams

Life is a constant balancing act; work, family, friends, sleep, household chores, staying healthy, fun....you name it and we have to balance doing it with everything else we have to and want to do in life. Balancing is something that I've never been really good at. I'm not good at managing my time effectively, mostly because I'm a huge fan of procrastination even though I know better. So when I try to balance, I always end up screwing things up and things get left behind. Either I don't finish laundry, I don't write, I don't exercise or I don't visit my family.

A lot of people say there aren't enough hours in the day and while that is somewhat true, I don't know if that's my problem. I spend a lot of time doing nothing when I could be doing something, but again it comes down to  excuses. Instead of doing most things, I sit and space out watching TV because I'm too tired or whatever the excuse is. I could easily wake up an hour earlier in the morning and work out, but I don't. My bed's too comfy or too warm. Why get up when I can keep sleeping? Why do anything productive when I can do something fun or something relaxing or actually just nothing?

If I want to make my dreams happen or if I want to get healthy, I need to stop being lazy and start doing something. Doing nothing will get me nowhere. It will keep me on the same path that I've been on since I graduated from college in 2009 which is a path to nothing except a life spent at my boring, meaningless day job that keeps me living a comfortable life, but doesn't give me anything fulfilling.

Changes need to happen and now that I realize that, I'm bound and determined to make sure they do. I'm no longer happy struggling to balance things. I will make it work because I have no other choice. I only live once and I'm not going to let myself down.

Sunday, not Sunday....

So only the second week of my blog schedule and I failed miserably and of course I have excuses, but it doesn't really matter what they are cause I failed regardless. So today there will be two posts so I can make up for my Sunday failure.

This weekend I ended with a word count of 39k and an end in sight. I am loving the way things are working out in my WIP and I can't wait to get to the end of this zero draft (aka basically an extended outline). I should be there by the 1st of May and then I can move on to the first draft where I add in all the descriptions and stuff that I never seem to put in during my zero draft. One time I wrote a story where I never once mentioned that my protagonist was a blonde because I never described her. So glad that I learned that I did that so that I don't worry about the parts where I get stuck trying to describe something and end up staring at the computer with writers block. I know I can skip it this round because odds are I didn't describe something a chapter back or four chapters before that.

One thing that I'm super addicted to at the moment that I had never tried before are sprints. On Saturday, Carolyn Crane tweeted that she was going to do a 1k1h sprint and asked people if they wanted to join her. I couldn't at the time she was doing it but decided to do it later that day. I sat down, no distractions, with the new Linkin Park single on repeat and wrote for an hour. I hit 1k by the half hour mark and ended with 1,891. It was the best I had ever done in word count before in one day, let alone a single sitting. I will definitely be doing more of those in the future.

The only other thing with Genevieve's story that I'm struggling with is whether or not third person limited is going to cut it for the POV. Everything is in first person these days and I am struggling to find some well written third person novels that I can use as a guideline. The ones that I love have their own unique voice which makes them a little difficult to study, whereas I have a myriad of books to choose from to see first person POV done right. I guess eventually I'll figure it out or die trying.

Bits and Pieces: Turning off the Brain

Occasionally I suffer with crazy long bouts of insomnia. No matter how exhausted I am during the day by the time bedtime rolls around I can't fall asleep without help. My brain just won't shut off. I think of all the things I should be doing at that moment even if they are things I couldn't possibly do at midnight (like vacuum or plant flower seeds). Bedtime is the time of day that I am the most motivated to workout. And it's the time where scenes and lines for my current WIP and new ideas seem to bombard me. It is the most frustrating thing in the world because I have a day job that I cannot miss and I cannot be too tired for.

I've been looking for tips on how to shut my brain off at night. I've got a prescription from my doctor for a medicinal solution, but that's not always an option since I sometimes don't realize it's going to be "one of those nights" until well after my eleven o'clock drug cutoff (if I take them any later, then I'm near useless at work the next day and I might as well have not taken it and not gotten any sleep). One thing that's worked for me lately has been thinking about the most mundane thing I can come up with and repeating it over and over. Kind of like counting sheep, but without the change of the numbers.

I wish I had the luxury to stay up and work on things as late as my brain wants me to, but my body and my job won't let me. I'm sure that I'm probably missing amazing ideas so that I could get a decent night's rest. Perhaps I'll get lucky and on my next vacation I'll have one of these insomnia weeks and for the first time since they started I won't suffer.

Excuses are like...

This week I made a promise to myself that I would blog every Sunday about writing. I almost didn't post today because I'm exhausted, sore and I haven't written all week, but then I realized that is exactly why I needed to post. Part of my problem, and why I haven't finished any of the novels I've started, is because I let being exhausted and sore (and sick, and busy, and insert other excuse here) keep me from writing. This week I worked on my annual deep Spring cleaning of my apartment. Instead of writing, I cleaned. I could have done both, but I didn't. Two days this week I missed work because my asthma was acting up and I did nothing, but I could have written something during that time, but I didn't.

At the end of last year, my friend T and I decided to start a writing group where we talk about what we plan to write, how we are going to do it, what's holding us back and what we plan to have done by the next time we meet. We are supposed to be holding each other accountable for word count, chapters or outlines, or whatever it is that we say we want to have done, but we are both guilty of giving a lot of excuses instead of a lot of product and it needs to stop.

I want to finish my zero draft of Genevieve's story before the end of the month. I think it's doable. I'm taking part in Spring KazNo with author Karen Mahoney which is similar to NaNoWriMo without the super strict guidelines. Although I didn't write much this week at all, I plan on changing my tune starting tomorrow (I know, another excuse, but really I'm barely staying awake right now and I'm only doing so because going to bed too early screws up my sleeping). Come May I'll be able to start my 1st draft rewrite and get things really moving. Until then, no more excuses! and that's another promise that I plan to stick with.

Enter to Win and Coming Soon...

One of my favorite reads of 2011 was Kindling the Moon by Jenn Bennett. The next book in Cady's adventures, Summoning the Night, comes out April 24th. Three copies are up for grabs at All Things Urban Fantasy. If you loved the first book, go enter to win the second.

Also, coming soon is a whole new blog schedule. I've been slacking on blogging cause I have no followers, but all bloggers started with 0 followers (unless they had friends and family follow them out of the gate) so I really don't have an excuse. I want to have a uniform blog schedule of 3 days a week to start out with at least that's the plan. They will go something like this...

Sundays: Much Ado About Writing
Tuesdays: Book Reviews
Thursdays: Bits and Pieces of Life

I will stick with this this time. It's a promise I'm making to myself and I hate breaking promises to myself.