Climb Ev'ry Mountain...?

Personally, I'm in a bit of a writing slump right now.  There's a lot going on in my life—between my transition back to the United States after four months in the UK and all of the emotions that entails, my lack of a summer job, and the impending doom of my senior year of college—and the writer in me who has always turned emotions and experiences into stories and characters has been replaced by a creature that is lucky if she's able to keep a journal.  It's like my own brain has gone into lock-down, overwhelmed by the excess creative stimuli, and is blocking out the inspiration.

Now, I've been told, and I've believed in the past that "inspiration" is helpful to writing but not necessary.  I mean, that's basically the driving force between NaNoWriMo: none of us would have gotten to the 50K mark if we had waited for inspiration to strike.

However, I've never hit a block as solid as this one.  I've had times when I was procrastinating, but once I knuckled down and started writing, things eventually came more smoothly.  I've had times when I didn't know what was going to happen next in a piece, but I would move on or start over in order to get any further.

But this is something different.  I can feel it.  I don't feel like I have anything to write.  I have a lot of things I could write, but it's almost painful to try.  The other night, I just sat down and forced myself to write a page of non-academic writing, and though I was able to do it, I'm not sure how, or whether it was worth it.  It didn't give me any more confidence, it didn't make my inner writer feel any less trapped…in fact, it made me feel like I'm doomed never to write again.

I look at my notebooks, and they actually fill me with a sort of fear.  Not just a procrastinator's dread, but a fear as if there's something bad waiting for me inside them.  I still cary them around, and periodically, I write down quotes I want to remember, ideas for characters, dialogue, settings, etc. in them, but that feels more like flexing a vestigial muscle, now.  There's no connective tissue piecing things together.  

I guess I just wanted to share that with you folks.  I wondered if any of you had ever experienced something like that, and whether you pulled out of it eventually or not.  I'm hoping that it will all pass after I've been home for a little bit, or once I start up my summer rec. reading.  But right now, it feels seriously impassible, and every word I type in fiction gives me a toothache.

Mary

Character Details

It seems like a lot of the focus lately has been on character building, which is great!  Fortunately for me but perhaps not for the blog theme, that is not something I've ever had trouble with.  Characters are by far the EASIEST part of writing for me.  Usually the characters happen and wander around for a while before they find something to do. 

            But of course there is still balance, in that there are still writing things I can't do without feeling like I'm pulling my own teeth.  Right now the things I'm getting yelled at about by my proofreaders is details in processes.  I know my characters so well by the time I get to writing them that I tend to forget that other people don't know them that well, and it's up to me to describe what they are doing.  Like, I can tell you that my main character is a chef, and tell that he's over cooking in the kitchen, but would a chef not talk about WHAT he was making?  How many experts in their field wouldn't talk about it?  But, well, I'm not a chef.  I wish, but I'm far from it.  So I try to do some research, but I don't want to put in what I feel is too much.  And that apparently falls far short of what other people expect.  Who knew.  That's what proof readers are for.

            So now I'm researching recipes for a book I 'finished' a year and a half ago.  I found one for my favorite scene, but the rest are still vague references to food and cooking process, sandwiched in between other happenings.

            And the cooking isn't the only place.  How does the process of shooting this gun actually work?   Is there anything I could add about filling out this paperwork that would help people understand better what is going on?  What do Missionaries actually do in third world countries?  I mean, on a day to day and hour to hour basis?  I know they help poor and sick people, and teach, and grow things.  But 24/7?  Surely there's DETAILS in there, that I either need to find out through research, or I need to make up from somewhere.

            Maybe part of my worry is a fear of adding in details and being caught in an error. If I'm vague, no one can say I was wrong very well.  But when you add in specifics, there's more that could go wrong.  Maybe I need to relax and not assume that every reader is going to go look these things up just to prove me wrong, or that every reader will be an expert in every field and hate me forever for getting my crème and my cream missed up in the cooking scene.   But I don't want to limit my characters to only doing things I am already an expert at.  So back to more research.  Ah well.  No day is wasted if you learn something in it. 

Melanie

Character Refresher

Had a meeting last night and it was totally a blast.  There was the usual food and chatter, but the giggles were brought on by the beginnings of a writing exercise that everyone seemed to walk away excited to elaborate on their forced creation.

What am I talking about?  This.  Are you having issues coming up with a new character?  Do you feel like your characters start merging into one?  Maybe you need to step outside of your own head for a bit and see what kind of character you can create with aspects that are forced on you.  

You've seen the character sheets, right?  Something to help shape your basic character into something more 3D by dwelling on what makes them who they are?  We had our own character sheet to fill out and it included the following catagories: Name, Sex, Hair/Eye Color, Height/Weight, Physical Distinctions, Fashion Style, Allergies, Bad Habits, Family Background, Education, Home Location, Hobbies, Pets, Talents, Strengths, Attitude, Rumors/Reputations, Fears, Secrets/Desires, Past Traumatic Events.  I wrote up a series of options for nearly every one of these categories.  Some answers were very normal, some were very weird, some were funny.  The options for each category were painstakingly cut out and put in little baggies  for all the present members to blindly choose from.  Once they filled out the categories, we read aloud our character sheets.  It was fantastic.  Everyone was crying from laughter.  

When picking the options, because they were so random, the options seemed to clash so terribly with other options and we felt there was no way we could make a character out of them, but the more you looked at your sheet and the more we discussed our characters out loud, the easier it was to come up with ways the different options could fit together to create a true character.  Granted the character might be crazy, but life is crazy and there are all kinds of people so why not go to the extremes.  It's more fun that way.  It was also interesting hearing the different directions that each person would go with their character because of their specific interests and creativity.  We are incorporating our characters with the May challenge and I feel like this will be so awesome.

Here is the character I drew from the ziplock bags....

Suzanne Tiffany Laurel is an 84 year old female with olive hair and plaid eyes.  She's only 4'3" and 195lbs.  Suzanne suffers from Phantom Limb Syndrome of her left arm which was taken from a bear she now owns as a pet.  Her bear, D, is also her home location.  She rides the back of D wherever she goes.  Suzanne only wears dresses.  She's allergic to peanuts and she loves spending time naming storms and woodworking.  She's good at the woodworking because she uses her laser eyes to cut them which is helpful since she only has one arm.  My character was raised and home schooled by frogs.  She's a magician by trade but has a reputation of being a thief.  She fears tipped salt and is fueled by blind fury.  Suzanne has a bad habit of over touching people.  She also has a desire to being the opposite sex and had a traumatic past event of sleeping bad.

As I was writing down the options I picked out, I was concerned with what the hell I was going to do with this mismatch of information, but as I read it over, read it out loud, and discussed with the other members, it seemed like a perfect combo.  I love the character who is developing in my head.  

So if you want something fresh, try something like we did.  Make a character sheet of your own or steal one online and pick some components that help develop your character.  At a time that you're not trying to make a character, come up with random options for each category.  Lots and lots of options and make some strange ones along with norm.  Make your range wide.  Don't dwell on what you would do with these options while you're creating them.  Just pick your brain, pick your friends brain, pick the internet.  On another day when the options aren't as fresh in your mind, dig into your categories, choosing randomly, blindly, from your options and create your character.  See what crazy things you get to combine and find out what wonderful characters your mind will make.

Imagination...creativity...it's such a great thing.

Jennifer