So who is getting lots of writing done?

But I last worked on this book so long ago, I need to go through from the beginning and refresh my memory, before I can write new chapters.

This is a problem I'm all too familiar with, I keep having to read through books I've left on the back burner, which turns into long days of editing whenever I notice a sentence I can see an improvement for. By the time I'm up to the new stuff the creativity that led me to begin has departed.
 
I keep having to read through books I've left on the back burner, .
I have kind of determined that every book is a transient feeling. You have to grab and hold on to that texture and stretch it for a couple of hundred pages. If you put it away and go back to it it feels like last months newspaper. It is a moment that has passed and been eclipsed.
Like, I suspect, most of us, I have a file full of good starts that will never be revived because, you know, 'that was then, this is now'.
 
This is a problem I'm all too familiar with, I keep having to read through books I've left on the back burner, which turns into long days of editing whenever I notice a sentence I can see an improvement for. By the time I'm up to the new stuff the creativity that led me to begin has departed.

It's not exactly a book I put on the back burner. I always knew where I wanted to go with it, but the words stopped coming. Not just the words for that book, but words in general. Or I wouldn't have time or energy to write. But when I did, yes the time reviewing and making small improvements, just as you describe, ended up taking all the time I had available and I never progressed.

This is the third (and now probably fourth) book in what was meant to be a trilogy. I never lost my will to write it, just the ability to do so. Now that seems to be coming back. Not easily, but it's coming.
 
I'm not doing what I should be doing, and what I'm being paid to do (Arts Council grant): editing a novel. Instead, I'm back to my default setting of churning out short stories as if they're as sought-after as loo roll. I wrote two at the end of last week, one of which is already subbed and accepted. The one I'm working on now is for Distaff 2, The Girls are Back in Town*

In case any female-identifying writers on here haven't noticed, we're thinking of doing a repeat of last year's successful SF anthology, Distaff, by female writers and we're looking for stories. There's more information about it here.

*Title suggestions also welcome, or we might be stuck with this one...
 
I know, I'm not normally one to join in these threads any more. I'm never sure I have the right to include myself. Plus the whole doubt demon on the shoulder thing. Anyway, I'm not getting much writing done. I'm not going into work. They've got me working from home instead. By the end of 9 or 10 hours fixing supply chain issues on a computer, my brain is frazzled, and my eyes dislike looking at a screen.

Still, it's time to pull my finger out. If I'm not going out anywhere (even my weekly lunch each Saturday with my best friend has been temporarily set aside :cry:), then I am going to attempt to use my time more effectively. And, maybe be more strict about not burning candles at both ends.

So, in a (not literal, but perhaps literary (sorry, not sorry - also, using the word literary; how pretentious, dahling)) sense:

 
I wish! Husband is one of the glorious "essential" people so I am still trudging along with my usual write when I have a second between toddlers or if I am lucky enough to have a kid nap coincide with a creative tangent. Perhaps if the worldshuts down for a bit I could get in some scribbling.
 
Not nearly as much as I should be here, I'm afraid...I just can't simply put anything together. Getting started on new projects is always the most difficult, but producing at a standard of quality in these times is getting close there as well, and that includes us authors as well, I think. Fiction writers are entertainers. We're in the morale industry. That's an industry that is perhaps suffering the most from this time, and it's hard for us who work from home to come out with new products as well, simply due to stress, worry, depression, anxiety, and fear over everything...*sigh*


Or should I just go downstairs to the bathroom mirror and start scolding myself for being sluggishly sloth in my duties to my fellow man?
 
Not nearly as much as I should be here, I'm afraid...I just can't simply put anything together. Getting started on new projects is always the most difficult, but producing at a standard of quality in these times is getting close there as well, and that includes us authors as well, I think. Fiction writers are entertainers. We're in the morale industry. That's an industry that is perhaps suffering the most from this time, and it's hard for us who work from home to come out with new products as well, simply due to stress, worry, depression, anxiety, and fear over everything...*sigh*
Or should I just go downstairs to the bathroom mirror and start scolding myself for being sluggishly sloth in my duties to my fellow man?
Individual differences. Some find themselves on, say, a Greek island and think 'right, holiday no more writing for a week' :) Others like me absorb the atmosphere and immediately 'think' they are going to write the next Magus lol.
Don't whip yourself over it, you will wake up with an idea one morning and bosh out a couple of pages while the coffee is brewing. As soon as your characters are 'alive' they will begin to write it for you.
 
Me. I am getting lots of writing done. Also discovering a copious amount of notes on some scenes and chapters ahead, notes I was beginning to fear that I had lost. But I didn't!

It is just a coincidence that I am doing all this writing at this time. Unlike others here, I didn't have a day-job to get laid-off from; I was already home all day almost every day. I am an old lady, more-or-less retired (except for editing the occasional manuscript), but just now for some reason it is less retired and more of my old job, which actually was writing novels.

Maybe it does have something to do with the virus. Maybe it was fear that jolted me out of my depression and into writing again.
 
Maybe it was fear that jolted me out of my depression and into writing again.

I've got to admit, there's an element of this for me. I've spent about four years working on this damn fantasy quartet, and I've joked to friends that my unique selling point is that I'm going to finish it. And I intend to!
 
I've been working towards rebuilding my writing routine after spending the last 18 months being ill when I had a relapse of my rheumatoid arthritis.

So I'm doing a couple of online writing workshops and messing around on my current novel, and yesterday I managed to get the first chapter done, which had been bugging me for a while (I have 30K words done, but I write out of order and assemble scenes on the fly).
 
None. Had ideas but when push comes to shove it's a dusty keyboard and blank screen.
 
Well, I should be taking the opportunity to write more, but instead I seem to be watching seasons 1 & 2 of Westworld.
 

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