Moving Backwards for Inspiration
I made the realization the other day that I have lost a dramatic amount of motivation on my novel due to all of the short stories that I’ve been working on. I was having trouble wrapping my mind around characters and situations and it frustrated me. So I started at the beginning. I began re-reading from the first word everything that I’ve written to this point (sort-of). And it’s working!
Sometimes it’s a matter of starting at the beginning to push you through those stuck points. A friend of mine Barista was telling me that she’d gotten frustrated with her blogging as she felt that after reading her old stuff it was so much better than what she was writing currently. Reading my older (starting points) had the opposite effect on me, I too felt it was better, so I was encouraged knowing that I am capable of writing like that. I just have to unearth the motivation. In looking back I can see my strengths and weaknesses and I’m slowly getting rejuvenated about connecting with my characters and storyline.
I am trying to learn that balance of being able to leave the novel behind and still peruse random short-story adventures. I feel like a slow learner. It doesn’t help that I recently picked up Steven King’s book On Writing, he’d published two novels by the time he was 26…really? I’m behind! But he also didn’t seem to take a 10 year sabbatical from the craft. I’ll catch up Mr. King, I’ll catch up!
I am also looking into branding myself. Going live as a dot-com to grow my readership from the two of you, to hopefully four or more! I’m going to attempt to commit to writing more often, even if it’s brief, and try to use my resources to my advantage. I’m going to attempt to reign in my A.D.D. hobby habits and stay more focused. I will not be distracted by facebook, or google games, or youtube, or all of those other awful things that were created for procrastinators like me!
