Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Thanks Ben

I began replying to Benjamin Solah's comment below, but it was getting longer and longer so I thought I may as well post instead.

What I need to find is a valve that will allow a slow regular feed of work to come from me. I know that's not how creative people work, but I've said plenty of times before - I'm not a creative person. Yes I write, but I write very methodically. The inspiration behind the whole thing is creative, but everything else is very anal.

I plan 99% of my story. If I make changes, I work through the logic of the change first, if I need something extra to make it work, it doesn't come to me in a blinding flash, it emerges out of necessity due to what's happening in the story and where I want to get with it. My second attempt at writing a book is called Voodoo. I attempted to write it without any planning. Some interesting twists came up, but I got bogged down after a couple of chapters because I didn't know where I was going. It's still sitting there.

I'm going off on a tangent - I don't plan blog posts ;c)

I've finished another assignment tonight. I'll post both of them sometime this week. Back on schedule! Woohoo. I'll get around to updating the website sometime this week as well.

I've got a couple of emails I need to send off tonight and then I'm getting off the computer. I've still got an article to write, books to read, a short to find a market for or edit, and a book chapter to write. Plenty to keep on the computer for ages.

But this is what I mean about slowing down. It's not that I don't have things to write - I've outlined Newland in its entirety so there's plenty for me to write about. It's not that I don't have the drive or enthusiasm - I still love writing. I'm just trying to take back some control of my life so I'm not writing all the time and neglecting any other areas of my life.

Does that make sense?

3 comments:

  1. Gee, I feel special getting a whole blog post as a reply ;)

    Yeah, I don't have the work load of 'creative person' either, even though my whole methodology actually is creative.

    It seems that my problem is just real life always in the way. Work just takes up too much time to devote the hours I used to to writing.

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  2. Seems we all have plenty getting in the way of writing. If only each writer could win lotto at least once, we'd have enough time to finish that break out project, which would fund the rest of our writing efforts for the rest of our working lives - hope springs eternal ;c)

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  3. Tag - I Love Your Blog! :o)

    (Check out my blog to see what the hell I'm talking about.)

    (Er, if you want to, that is...)

    ReplyDelete