Every month, the Insecure Writers Support Group hosts a blog hop with an optional question. Special thanks to Alex Cavanaugh and to this month’s co-hosts, Joylene Nowell Butler, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Meka James, Diane Burton, Victoria Marie Lees, and M Louise Barbour.
This month's question:
When you are working on a story, what inspires you?
When you are working on a story, what inspires you?
When I begin a story, I'm often inspired by a character's emotional reaction and growth in the face of a difficult situation.
But an additional spin on the question is what inspires us to keep going?
When I'm working on a first draft, I set time goals. I want to make steady progress each week toward reaching some version of a completed draft (beginning, middle, and end). I find word count goals frustrating, personally, because cutting words means backward progress, so I always use time. Knowing that I'm reaching the amount of hours designated for that week inspires me to keep working.
Once I've completed a very rough first draft, I set times goals for revision, as well. Each layer of revision has a specific focus (pacing, characterization, etc) and again, I use the idea of completing a certain number of hours a week to get through each pass. It doesn't matter how long it takes, by the way -- I just plan to achieve the number of hours I've dedicated to the project for the week. (It also helps to have a weekly back-up slot as productivity expert Laura Vanderkam advises, in case a day is derailed by unexpected events.)
But an additional spin on the question is what inspires us to keep going?
When I'm working on a first draft, I set time goals. I want to make steady progress each week toward reaching some version of a completed draft (beginning, middle, and end). I find word count goals frustrating, personally, because cutting words means backward progress, so I always use time. Knowing that I'm reaching the amount of hours designated for that week inspires me to keep working.
Once I've completed a very rough first draft, I set times goals for revision, as well. Each layer of revision has a specific focus (pacing, characterization, etc) and again, I use the idea of completing a certain number of hours a week to get through each pass. It doesn't matter how long it takes, by the way -- I just plan to achieve the number of hours I've dedicated to the project for the week. (It also helps to have a weekly back-up slot as productivity expert Laura Vanderkam advises, in case a day is derailed by unexpected events.)
I might not always feel like writing when I sit down at the laptop, starting the day's work. But if I've mentally committed to say, three hours of revision, it tends to get done on the day I planned. I think the showing up at the page is what's important.
As Elizabeth Gilbert says in Big Magic, ". . . I don't sit around waiting to write until my genius decides to pay me a visit. If anything, I have come to believe that my genius spends a lot of time waiting around for me--waiting to see if I'm truly serious about this line of work."
For more thoughts on inspiration and creativity, check out my blog post, The Myth of the Creative Muse. And ICYMI, author Lyn Fairchild Hawks wrote an April guest post, 4 Productivity Hacks for Colorful Writing.
One last thing:
In For Better Creativity, Spring Clean Your Brain, Kelsey Allagood suggests various ways to declutter your mind, including cleaning your workspace. She says, "I can absolutely tell the difference in my ability to focus when I’m in a clean and organized environment." I agree! How about you?
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