Aftermath

So Friday was absolutely spectacular!  The only thing I am sad about is not having as much time to write on set as I expected.  That's not a bad thing of course, it meant I was actually ON set a great deal of the day which was one of the most incredible days of work I've ever had.  It's definitely something I think you've got to be interested in though, there are a lot of uncomfortable conditions in order to get the vision the director has done properly and there's long moments of just standing around waiting for one thing or other but I didn't mind any of that, I loved every second.  I really hope that I'll be able to make this a career while I'm writing because those two things work so well together.

Now, as for the writing, Saturday and Sunday?  Complete washes.  Why?  I don't always write well with other people around and my hubby was of course home all weekend!  I enjoyed spending time with him though and he lets me expound all my issues with writing in his direction and helps me smooth things out.  He's also giving me a lot of cheerleading with everything I write.  Today, (Monday, though I'm writing this late enough the post may seem like a Tuesday post) I had an incredibly hard time waking up.  I was tired and my body ached and I felt like I hadn't slept.  But the strangest thing happened when I finally got up, I sat down at my computer, played facebook games for awhile and then pulled out my writing and started transferring it to the computer.

Originally I'd wanted to write long-hand because it was helping me stay away from Facebook and all of its' wonderful games, as well as giving me a really organic feel that was helping with the creation.  Now that I've written on the computer again I realize I'm really a child of my generation.  I'm a total computer geek and instead of being as incredibly distracting as I thought working on my laptop would be I'm finding it incredibly freeing!  Yes, it's a little less organic in some ways but because my typing speed keeps up with my thoughts far, far better than my handwriting speed (at least if I want to be able to read it later) I'm finding the process flowing through my keyboard with a great deal more speed and ease than I expected.

If you're struggling with your writing I highly reccomend trying a few different ways to write, with the physicality of things as well as with the words themselves.  I suspect I'll keep using my notebook for ideas (since that's the really organic part of the writing process for me, I drew a castle map in there earlier to help ground my ideas of the place they're living), and then do the actual writing for each chapter on my computer.

I've also found doing a chapter by chapter synopsis really helpful.  It's good to clarify my ideas as well as give me a quick overview of what happened in that chapter so when I come back to it later I can pick it up without having to re-read the whole thing (as that usually ends up in massive rewrites and constant edits and I never get past the first chapter >.<).  I've also added onto the end of the synopsis all the questions I feel are raised in that chapter that will need to be answered eventually.  This is a question a book I was reading recently, The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing by the Writer's Digest, suggested was important for mystery novels (I think that was the section where I read it).  I thought it was just as applicable to fantasy and so far it seems that it's really helping me keep an awareness of where I'm going and what I'm writing into the chapter already.

Short and the long of it?  If you want to write comfortably, then find the physical area and the physical medium that works best with your thoughts.  If the computer isn't working for you try long hand.  If pen's not working try pencil, if that's not working try crayons, pencil crayons, paints, different types of paper, notebooks, even different computers or keyboards might work better for you!  And of course different physical things can work well for different processes of thinking.  (My preference for pen and paper with ideas and a computer for actually writing for example).  Also, make note of the questions you raise that will need answers as you write each section of your novel (or chapter, or scene, or whatever works best for you, just don't let too much go by before you do it or you'll forget).  This can really help later should you get stuck on a section, you can pop back to the outline and see what you've forgotten to answer or if you need to answer something to make something else work.