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year of college—and the writer in me who has always turned emotions and experiences into stories and characters has been replaced by a creature that is lucky if she's able to keep a journal.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

Support all around

It might be difficult, but find some support in writing.  There are readers who love to read.  Hell, us writers are readers too, but not all readers are writers.  They could absolutely adore what you write and could be great for your ego, but they don't understand the struggle of writing and building the story and making great characters and  working the flow.  It's hard.  Hell, it's hard just forcing yourself to do it.  I am proof that pushes are always in need.  Encouragement from those who know the effort it takes are fantastic.  If you're a struggling writer, find some writing friends.  Let them give you the extra motivation you need to keep going and push through the hard parts.  And when you find those friends, make sure you give that support back to them.

Jennifer

Happily Ever After

When I was little I was fascinated with fairy tales.  Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Snow White-- the stories made me dream of love and romance as well as a life where its appropriate to sing your feelings in public.  Even now, in the writing I do, I strive for happy endings and "Once upon a time" stories where its possible to have happiness through telling the truth and being a hard worker.  This is not reality, though.  In the real world people work hard and have tough times.  They strive for success and receive failure, people give all they can and get nothing.  Granted that's how life actually works, but it seems counter intuitive.  Let's be honest, here, Write On writers... do any of us enjoy writing sad chapters or devastating climaxes?  Because I do not, and have a tough time getting through those sections to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.

My biggest struggle in writing is to tell a realistic story that people can understand and embrace.  I love a good love story with its highs and lows, where the hero saves the princess after being told time and again that she is in another castle, but I need to focus on writing things that make real world sense.  Like Jo in "Little Women," I want to write what I know (or at least what I pretend to know.)  Who wants to read a story about day to day boredom or sadness?  At the same time, you can't just say "Uhh... time passed" and get on to the next plot point.  The goal is to have smooth transitions and a balanced plot that carries you from chapter to chapter, increasing the excitement and suspense.

When I was in grad school I loved writing papers and was awesome at getting a great intro to set up my outline.  I'd use quotations from Nietszche or Emerson or Einstein, gearing the reader up for what is to come.  That's my goal now as I start working more fervently on challenges and getting my own personal work done.  I want to gear myself up for the story even though it may not be a 'happily ever after' tale.  I want to create a balanced story that shows readers something realistic but idealized, something at times heartbreaking but ultimately victorious.

How do I do this?  I have absolutely no idea.  It's a struggle.  Writing is an escape for me.  When I am in a bad mood I watch "Pollyanna" to get out of the bad mood, and when I write I create happy stories which help me cope with everyday life.  If anyone has advice on how to more smoothly balance my stories with the good and evil please let me know.  Until then I will continue to write of happiness and hope that in the future I can add in some drama to increase the power of my writing.

Liz

Evolution of a Shy Writer

All praise the internet!  It really has changed our world in so many ways and not just for getting your porn fix.  We all get to be our little stars now.  The internet has given us an audience and a kind of secrecy that didn’t exist in the past.  I’m still a little freaked out that I remember life before the internet.  Seems like it’s been around forever and yet it hasn’t.  Floating thought…sorry.  Anyway, the internet brings out the bravery in many of us.

I am one such person.  I’m one of those “I’ve been writing forever” kind of people though it was focused on school projects.  I LOVED writing exercises, the ones where we had to come up with a story.  I was the kid who not only met the number of pages requirement but easily surpassed it.  I liked seeing the A+ and 98% marked in red in the corner of my pages.  You know, the pat on the back telling you that you did a good job.  I’m not sure when my interest in writing moved from school requirements to hobby, but I’ll guess it was around the time when a friend of mine and I would do…well, basically fan fiction and pass each other our notebooks to see what the other one said about our fantasy guys and our pretend lives.  I am revealing far too much about myself here.  See what the internet does to you!!  Moving on…somewhere along the line I would occasionally write something original, something creative (or I assumed creative) just to write it, but I kept it to myself.  I was so terrified of rejection and negative feedback.  Like bawling before anyone could read it kind of terrified.  Alright there weren’t tears but you get my point.  The idea of letting someone read my work that wasn’t a teacher (teachers get a pass because you expect the criticism) and watching their face melt into disgust or laughter when there wasn’t anything funny was far too unappealing to give up my goods.  Now there was a time or two when I did, always friends, always kind.  Those moments do stick with me.  Don’t remember the story, but I do remember the folder that they would write their comments on and they were all good.  Might have that treasure somewhere…

Even though it happened during school, the writing for pleasure, it still didn’t seem like it was “the thing” that I wanted to do.  To this day I still don’t dream of being a published author.  Okay, maybe I sneak that one in the fantasy reel every now and then but just for kicks.  But I have become more serious about writing.  I went like ten years without a real creative thought in my head then this magical day came.  Again I don’t remember the specifics, but a flood of ideas nearly drowned me.  They were coming like crazy.  Buried maybe, biding their time to come forth and explode in my head.  I started writing again, writing for the enjoyment, not for school assignments.  There wasn’t much granted, because I’m lazy, but they would come occasionally and the ideas were still flowing.

Now what would I do with these stories?  Well, keep them to myself of course, but one day I came across a website that interested me.  It’s called Elfwood.  What’s cool about Elfwood?  Well it’s massive and has some beautiful fantasy/scifi art, but it also has some serious crap.  The idea of Elfwood was that it was for EVERYONE.  Whether you’re a brilliant artist or can’t even manage a stick figure warrior, you were welcomed as long as you followed the rules which consisted of no more than be a fantasy/scifi piece and not too graphic.  They later added writing to the group. 

Elfwood seemed liked a good place to anonymously put my stuff out there.  There are thousands upon thousands of material out there.  How are they going to find me to abuse?  I wrote a silly story and submitted.  At Elfwood, everything is reviewed for approval by a team of volunteers.  These moderators also have the privilege of pointing out special pieces that come through so they aren’t lost in the shuffle of hundreds each week.  This was like an award called Moderator’s Choice and your piece was placed on the main page for a period of time.  Guess who got Moderator’s Choice?  Damn right!  My first submission and I got it.  You would have thought I won American Idol.  I freaked out, screaming and jumping in place.  My reaction was ridiculous but at the time it was the best thing that ever happened to me.  I put my stuff out there for the world to see and I got a great response.

Since then the internet world has been my cushioned heaven for my writing.  I don’t expect great responses all the time but overall they have been wonderful.  There were the occasional less loved comments, but usually mixed with something positive.  I’d dwell on the negative, fume for awhile, try to see what they meant if it was constructive then get over it and try to improve if I agreed.  Luckily I’ve picked the right places.  Most of the places I’ve put myself out there don’t go out of their way to be mean.  The responses I got made me more confident in putting my stuff out for everyone to see.  I’m still very sensitive to criticism, but I also crave the good responses (as we all do even if you won’t admit it to yourself) so it’s hard not to keep throwing up new stuff when I’m feeling confident about a piece.  Even if it’s so so, the internet has taught me that there are all kinds out of writers out there and there are all kinds of readers so what the hell, put it out there anyway.  You just might get the response you’re looking for.

Jennifer

Where have all the good characters gone?

Ok, confession time.  So, I am sure that anyone who has ever so much as started to write a story has come across some aspect of writing that gives him or her more trouble than the rest.  For some it’s scenery, for others it’s making all the plot points flow.  For me, it’s characters.  I have a terrible time coming up with three-dimensional characters that seem like real people and have typical reactions to the situations I throw them into.

            This, of course, is a big problem.  Many of my most favorite stories are ones that are character driven so that is the kind of story that I want to write.  The problem, therefore, is that I can’t very well write a character driven story if my characters are flat and don’t really have any drive of their own.

            This would be why, for many years, I resorted to fanfiction.  Fanfiction has the wonderful ability to give you a world and a set of already developed characters to play with.  Many people look down on the fanfiction writer, but I see it as a wonderful way to experiment with different writing forms and to learn how to develop a plot.

            The problem for me, then, was getting out of fanfiction and actually standing on my own two feet, as it were, and writing something completely my own.  I began this transition by adding some original characters into my fanfic.  But this was always a little problematic because they were still interacting with already established characters so I wasn’t learning how to make interactions from scratch.

            My first few attempts at completely original fiction that weren’t part of a creative writing class or any form of structured assignments didn’t go very well at all.  I looked at my characters and saw that they had no depth.  They were just going along with the plot that I had given them, making what appeared to be arbitrary decisions with no real reasoning behind them.

            Thus I realized I needed another tool.  I began to character map before I would start a story.  I would list out my characters and then put down certain traits that they had.  I would then go back and hypothesize what had happened in their back-story that would have contributed to those traits.  This helped a little, but it still felt contrived.

            That’s when it hit me; if I’m better at using already developed characters, then why not just keep doing that?  I began to look at the people around me, my friends and family and even passing acquaintances.  There was a whole treasure trove of characters around me to choose from to work with.  So, I needed that snarky strong willed determined character? Model her off of my best friend.  Need a flighty absentminded but good-natured character; my friend Liz is perfect for that. 

            After I got the basic concept of using those around me for inspiration, I started to experiment with mixing and matching personality traits.  Take a little bit of my father’s attitude and mix it with my grandpa’s strong devotion to family, then throw in a bit of my grandma’s self sacrificing nature and I have my main character from my last Nano novel.  And you know what, it worked!  That novel (though still unfinished) was the first one that I reached the 50K goal on. 

            So I guess what all of this is saying, if there is a part of writing that gets you down, that slows down your creative process and keeps you from reaching a goal, don’t give up.  Search for new methods to work through those blocks and you’ll find something that will eventually help you to overcome them. 

The lesson that I learned from experimenting is, if you are trying to write realizism, then don’t be afraid to pull things from your own life.  Things that you have lived and experienced cannot get any more real than that. 

Cassidy