I have reached a point in my work right now that I'm just going to call the doldrums. It's an odd place: I'd been going along at a fine clip for a while and then, suddenly, it's like my sails deflated. My speed has dropped from 60 to what comparatively feels like almost zero. It's not that I don't have idea of where I'm going or even great scenes plotted out in my head. It's that I've just lost the energy. Creatively speaking.
Ginny had to remind me that these periods have to happen. That you have to slow down or burn out. And that you have to refresh your creative self. But, after nearly a year of nearly consistent production and very few fallow periods, it has been somewhat frightening. I keep asking myself if I've lost it. If some how I have completely burned out.
But, she's right. Everyone needs to take a little breather. And it's not like I've stopped altogether.
But, I'm really not sure: how can I work on refreshing my creative winds? Does anyone have any suggestions, because, I'm certainly open to them.
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Shamelessly plugging my blog posts in response to this (hey, I'm on the blogroll, so it's ok)...but in seeking inspiration and keeping things interesting, I subscribe to the philosophy of picking the most intense scenes of the story arc and writing them out of order. You can toss them later or use them as a basis for what you'll actually keep, but it gets the character voices going.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for a way to keep the creativity going when you're working on those scenes, I ask myself, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" as a means to heighten the conflict in each scene. Whatever can go wrong, will. Again, you don't have to keep it but it drives the characters into extreme situations that lets their personalities come out.
Check out the last two posts of my novel blog for more on this. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the advice!
ReplyDeleteI've been writing pretty lineally of late. Sometimes I skip scenes I know I'll have to patch in later if I just can't build up the head of steam. I've tried just writing random scenes before, but I've never finished a whole story that way. My best to you! It's certainly something I could try. And maybe that might be a way to break through the doldrums now.
The part that's killing me about where I'm sitting in this story is that it's not a slow place. My protagonist is standing in a dark barn with an unknown killer somewhere in the shadows. I subscribe to the "tormenting my characters" way of writing, so what's going on in my head right now for this scene is pretty evil, but I'm just having the worst time getting it on the page.
Maybe I'm burning out on action sequences. ::chuckles::