Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Priming the pump

Today's Mood: a little wild. Today's Music: Alison Moyet (in the car anyway.) Today's Writing: IFFY. Today's Quote:
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath." -F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Sorry for the lag in posting. I've been massively busy with helping direct a play, and organize birthday parties for my daughter. Unfortunately it seems that one kid somehow generates the need for multiple parties. I'm sad about this because my mothering skills have never much tended toward the party organizing. Nonetheless, I managed to pull off a 1st grade bowling party in the same weekend as a party with my side of the family (which is, at the moment, populated with many small children).

On the writing front, I managed to finish my big revision of Black Dragon and sent it out to agents--which left me at loose ends. What to do next? After a lot of thinking (and probably driving my friends and family crazy by constantly gnawing on the problem out loud) I decided to get back into IFFY and see if I could pound out a rough draft. Then I can give it breathing room while I revise Free Lunch.

So for the last two (very busy) weeks I've been trying to immerse back into the story. It's been a bit like getting into cold water though. I dip in a toe by reading what I've written. Then I step in up to my ankles and study the character profiles and pictures I've drawn of those people. I wade deeper and look over my notes. I'm up to my thighs, revising a little and listening to my IFFY playlist. But only in the last few days have the characters started to play in my head again. Yesterday I found myself thinking about the MC (main character) while I was drying my hair. And when I was getting ready for work today, a whole scene played out in my head. Yay! The story hasn't completely dried up!

Prime for long enough and the pump will produce water. Now I just need to find ways to keep working the pump, and keep those writing waters flowing. What do you all do to keep spinning your story? Especially when you can't spend all day on it (or even much of the day at all on it)?

3 comments:

outdoorwriter said...

Sarah;

WOW!! Have I been there! Not to your extent because I write shorter stuff, but ....

I have too many days lately when I sit down to write and nothing happens. I have ideas, but my brain and fingers have some kind of disconnect.

I wish I had a "magic cure" to share, but I don't. All we can do is plug on, gathering jewels and trinkets, arranging them on the sheet so we can re-arrange them later. Kind of like journal writing.

smcelrath said...

I'm all for magic cures, but haven't found any sign of them in life. I was getting all bummed out because I think my agents are probably all rejections (it's hard to tell since several of them do the "we'll contact you only if we are interested" thing. How long do you wait before deciding it is a no?) But then I happened to read something on Stephenie Meyer's website where she talked about how fun writing is when you are just writing for yourself--without all the expectations. It reminded me (yet again) that I write because I love to write. I'll still send stuff out--but I have to keep it all in perspective.

outdoorwriter said...

Sarah;

I forget that often too--the writing for myself. It might be a letter to the editor, a note to a friend, a childhood memory or some philosophical thought or observation. Writing for ourselves keeps it at it longer--or at least in my case.