Monday, April 08, 2013

Some progress...

I had a rough couple of weeks (nothing really serious, but just not fun), however by Friday I was feeling well enough to tackle some writing. I'd booked the day off more than a month previously so had a good chunk of time, especially as Sean was working a double shift. Rather than messing around with plotting etc, I just opened my ms, read through the previous couple of scenes, then picked up where I'd left off (mid-scene) and just forced myself to write. Yep, didn't wait for the muse or hope for inspiration, just started listening to my characters and typing.

Is the scene perfect? Is it even finished? No and no, but it's more than 800 words longer than it was before, so I'm happy. As I've learned to do with other mss, when I ran into words/phrases etc I a) wasn't happy with or b) wasn't sure if they were in period, instead of stopping to mess about, I bracketed them and kept going. The ONLY thing I did do was look for some historical furniture to help set myself in the scene...but even then, I kept writing, rather than allowing myself to get lost in an endless search for the perfect sofa and wall paper for the parlour. I'm determined to keep moving on with this as the not writing is now getting worse than the seemingly awful dreck I think I'm producing.

I keep reminding myself of Nora's words about "fixing everything but a blank page."

How do you motivate yourself?