Week 2 dawns and Derek hints that this week we'll be working towards more character profiles and even a mini-story. Things move on apace.
But we start with an interesting discussion. Writing rituals, and superstitions. Lucky pens, and lucky chairs. Thinking spots and caps. Muses and Blocks.
It comes as little surprise to me that authors can be quite inventive in their rituals. After all, it's a profession centered around imagination and fantasy.
Monique's morning style is interesting. I could imagine something like that working well for me. I often have fairly vivid dreams which fade rapidly after I wake unless I make a conscious effort to record them. Whilst such notes are not going to be Shakespeare (or even really make any sense at all) I think it will be a good way of seeing what is floating through my imagination.
Michèle's psychotic breakdowns sound a little hectic and confused. Not really for me, however I have been known - when particularly bored - to just open up Notepad and start typing what I suppose is my inner dialogue.
14:02 Bored, bored... bored. Hmmm thirsty, should go get some water. It's a long way away though.
14:04 Mmmmm water.
You get the gist. I'm not sure how helpful it is. Whether it lets 'language out to dance' I'm not convinced. Passes a few minutes though. Very rarely it has morphed into a few paragraphs of what could become a short story.
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So my general writing practice is to just write. I almost never do any planning beyond a concept. I am usually writing with little more than the vaguest idea of where it might end and let the story go where it will. This style almost certainly developed from the Storygaming origins of my writing. When readers are voting and deciding on what happens at the end of each chapter it makes planning very hard to do. The options they come up with for dealing with the various situations can be varied and surprising. Typically any plans are cast aside quickly.
I have experimented with a more formal planning session. For some of the competitions I entered on Writing.com I made brain-storm diagrams and word bubble pictures to come up with various possible options before choosing the one that felt most formed. It worked in a fashion, but felt forced.
Adding some more structure through use of the notepad, and whatever other tips we get during this course may help me find a more productive balance between planning and writing.
Happy Writing :)
When I am inspired I just write, and it is like opening a 'faucet' and the words pour out faster than I can get them down typing full-tilt. Apart from my name appearing as Ho;; I often find my right hand moving one key to the right and creating other similar puzzles for the revision process.
ReplyDeleteWhen I am not driven to get an idea down in B&W I just enter a short-story contest and write within the word limit and theme. Then it is much more similar to this OU course.
Doing the final stage in this week's stages, I combined the original character sketch and the first word I heard on the radio. Not sure that we were meant to include the character, but doing so made me use my brain to combine a girl seen in a canteen whom I had supplied with a backstory hinting at reduced economic circumstances and a sick mother, with the word "cruise".
I do like a challenge! Or to put it another way I like the discipline of working within constraints, but not all the time.
In a way these are also the options that you have explored, but from a different starting point.
Gill T.