Thursday 26 May 2011

Characters Calling and Tip for Blog Comments

Welcome to new followers. If anyone is having difficulty posting on a blog, a temporary fix is to uncheck the 'keep me signed in' box when it asks you to log in. Tip thanks to Frances Garrood on Teresa Ashby’s blog.

I have been taking part in Sally Quillford’s 80,000 words in 80 days challenge and have been writing a steady 1000+ words a day since 1 May. The wip I chose to concentrate on is Rosie’s Mystery Man, a contemporary romance.

Today I hit quite a wall and am trying to write through it. The problem is that the characters from another wip are calling me and seem louder and more insistent than Rosie and Tanner. It is all I can do not to abandon them and take up my historical again.

I’m writing this blog to ask for advice. Would a rest from Rosie do me good or is it the kiss of death for Rosie and Tanner?

8 comments:

  1. Write Rosie and Tanner for a set amount of time - say one more week - and see if you can get through this little blip. If you can't, then give them a break and give yourself a date to get back to them so they don't get too dusty :)

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  2. If you can still meet your daily writing target with Rosie and Tanner then I say try to plough through it. If not, I agree with Claire, take a break from them but set a date to go back.

    And remember, your 1k words per day don't have to be on the same ms :)

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  3. Hi Morton,
    I agree with Clare above. When I get stuck, if I leave it for too long then I struggle to get back into it. What I tend to do is what i call "jog on the spot" i.e. write on the spot. Write about the characters, descriptions, etc. Sure it's normally the first that will go during your edit, but sometimes it helps you to move the story forward in your head.
    Hope this helps and good luck.
    x

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  4. I don't really know the answer, but often hit this wall myself. Sometimes I switch to working on something else, but then as Elpi says above it can be really hard to get back to the first thing again once you've lost the flow. I like to try and push on through the wall, asking myself what are the really important factors in this story, and going deeper into the emotions and characters.

    Either way, don't despair. It's great that you're writing so much.

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  5. I agree about ploughing through it if possible. You may want to write an out-of-sequence scene which sometimes works for me and then going back to tie it up later.

    Thanks for the tip about blogger. I was having that problem a few days ago and figured it out eventually.

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  6. Thank you for the encouragement. I've been writing interviews with Tanner and Rosie today about their feelings and their backgrounds and it has got me back into it. Phew - panic over. Mx

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  7. Hi Morton,

    Thanks for the tip about blogger. I'm getting mad having to sign in and then having to post as annonymous!

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  8. Nas - unfortunately the problems go on. It tells me I have 39 followers, but I can't see them! Grrr. Thank you for reading and commenting. Mx

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