Welcome back everyone. I hope the week is treating you well. So far mine has been a ball of stress, but hopefully things will calm down as the end of the week approaches. Due to the holiday on Monday, I have a three-day weekend, which will be incredibly nice to experience. That also means there won't be a post on that day because I will be enjoying my day off by trying (desperately) to sleep in.
I've often talked about how writing is a giant balancing act with everything else in life. Sometimes this is more apparent than others, and I really can't stress enough just how important it is to make sure you find a good balance. The ability to multitask on some level is also very important, because while you may not be able to write at all hours of the day, sometimes you have an idea that just won't go away no matter what you do. In those cases I do what I call 'marinating', it's a silly term, I know, but that's really what happens.
Let's say I know I'll have some time later when I get off work, and feel like being productive in a way that doesn't involve my recent dive into crafting. I'll ask for a generic idea, likely involving the current game we're in, and while I'm sitting there trying not to let my brain melt at work, I expand on the idea. I don't write anything down unless it's just a couple words to remind me of something that I know I'm likely to forget, all I do is think. I work out specific interactions, I think of how conversations will go, how whatever the dramatic/climatic scene will be, and who the story will involve. I just think of all that and let it sit there while I work on that thing I get paid the real money to do.
The process helps me in a few ways in that it makes actually sitting down to write everything go relatively quickly because I know how things are going to begin and end, it helps me develop certain reactions to make sure they're appropriate to the individual characters, and it also helps me work out whatever forms of writers block appears before I'm in the middle of something and don't know what to do. If I don't know how something is going to progress I've already taken the time to figure all that out, and any of the 'how would this person react to this...' stuff that happens has already been taken care of as well.
I don't know if this will work for everyone, this is just what's help me out. Contrary to what you learned in school, writing is not an exact science. Sure sentence structure is neat, but everyone gets to their story their own way, and there isn't any right or wrong way to do it. Now if you way involves sneaking up on bums and skinning them alive, while getting yourself immersed in your genre is...interesting, let's not hurt anyone, ok? It's just like method acting; it's really cool how you can almost become another person entirely, but when it gets to the point of hurting yourself or others, let's take a step back and think about how we should think of a different way. Write however you feel is comfortable for you whether that be carefully plotting out each and every scene and piece of dialogue, or smashing the keys on the computer and hoping words are made.
Thanks everyone for stopping by again today. I hope the rest of the week treats you all nicely. Barring a disaster, I should be back on Friday and hopefully I'll bring with me a story you're all interested in. For now though I hope you all have a great and fun rest of your week!
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