Tricks

I've been coming up to little blocks in rewriting Descent.

I wouldn't call them writer blocks so much as tiny snags that keep tripping me up for a day or two (which sounds like a short time, but is incredibly frustrating to me and feels a lot longer as it happens) With that, I've been coming up with different, new ways to overcome them. Listening to favorite songs and taking a line of the lyrics, translating it into the story or my writing style, and working from there. I did that just now, and it pumped out two pages of thoughts I had not known my character even had.

Or picking a current mood or random theme to work into a scene or even a chapter. Googling "writing prompt ideas", reading one of the four writing books I have sitting on my shelf unloved because I've been more preoccupied with writing my book than reading any others. Or even posting on FB that I need help and sitting back and watching what creative friends come up with in regards to prompts and opening chapter line ideas. Sometimes its interesting and refreshing to stop staring at the screen waiting for your brain to come up with the brilliance, and let something else small or large spark the mood for you. It seems to give new perspectives and angles to an otherwise worn story. My story is so old to me that sometimes, I just want a breath of fresh air and a little nudge in the right direction that is not determined by me. Shuffle on iTunes often helps me with mood, or figuring out writing.

It's important, as a writer, to let trickles of outside influence in from time to time. I feel as writers and authors, we often are under the impression that any ideas and influences from the "outside" are bad. That everything has to come from us directly, as if we're reinventing the wheel. Authors and artists are obsessed with either two concepts- conforming to one "style" or genre of their craft, or being so obviously original that they have difficult times differentiating between the two. Balance is hard to find. In the Bible there is a verse that says "There is nothing new under the sun" and I often repeat it to myself as I write. It sounds so negative, but it's a helpful reminder that yes, people have written similar stories to what I am currently slaving over day and night. That yeah, fantasy is not a new concept, nor is a teenager trying to save the world, or a war that involves dragons. The difference is I'm the one who is telling it this time around, and I haven't before.

C.S. Lewis once said, “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

Definitely something to reflect on as I plow forward with this draft and meet plenty of snags along the way. I'm in no race to finish this bad boy, but it is immersing me so quickly that I cannot help but speed on ahead. I'm in love with this story.