March 16, 2008

Trust the girls

You know, writing and the way your brain puts together a story can be endlessly intriguing. Like today. I came back to a scene that was stalling a few days ago, to tweak it because I tweaked an earlier scene. And this is a scene I wrote the start of maybe three or four years ago, when I first had the idea for these characters. A scene and a character I actually thought would start book 2. But now, even though I've tweaked the premise and story a fair bit, this scene still works, not just works but is necessary to the story. And today, the direction it went kind of gave me my key to how I can make this a series. All from a snippet written years ago, when I only had the vaguest idea about this book and in fact had only written the opening scene and a love scene both of which were largely experiments in trying out first person POV.

It's days like this that I feel like maybe I (or at least my subconscious) know what I'm doing with this writing thing. Days like this feel right. And I'm starting to suspect that the fact that I'm having a pretty good writing week after getting back into meditation is not necessarily a coincidence. Writer brain works better when rest of brain is not hyper virgo brain, I think. Taking care of yourself is probably as important to creativity as actually doing the creative stuff.

But that's enough deep thoughts for now. This is the lunchtime update. I have stuff to do this afternoon but hopefully I may be able to edit this page count later on.


Progress - Witch 1

New pages - Six. So far Ten
Intriguing things - Wise witches. Bigger things.
Annoyances - Not annoying.
Music - Moby again. I think Moby is the mother song. Headphones.
Linear/Non-linear - Non
Location - At the desk. Scrivener. Full screen.
Taking care of Mel - Slept in. Planning meditation and exercise. Yes to meditation. No to exercise
Muse food - Some couch time with a book or two. Patrick later on. Maybe some iTunes playtime. I did all of this but no Patrick. Dopey TV programmers have stolen my Grey's!!! I protest.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I love days like that (when the girls make fuzzy stuff suddenly lucid), and now you've motivated me to get back to my own meditation plans.

I also love the way you track your progress. Very cool. I may have to borrow that one day (with proper credit given.)

Also, the voice 2 class started and there's a bunch of people from our girls class in there -- Barbara Robinson, Lynn, Gen, Janelle, Julie, Melissa. I'll keep you posted!

M.J. said...

Ooh I'm jealous : ) But October worked better for me.

Trust the girls. And I got the idea from Elizabeth Bear and a few others who I've seen do it, so all credit goes to her!