How to Remain Engaged in the Stories You Want to Tell

With Camp NaNoWriMo behind us and November still a few months away, it can be difficult to remain engaged in a writing project you’ve been working on for a long time. Today, author and participant Mareth Griffith shares a few things that have helped her stay in touch with her writing:

As I write this, I am looking through a porthole at a near-vertical hillside, covered with tenuously clinging evergreens. The yacht I work on has spent the day exploring the rugged coast of Southeast Alaska.  After a twelve-hour day spent tracking bears through meadows, driving skiffs in search of humpback whales, and kayaking up to towering waterfalls, I tuck myself into my tiny bunk, pull the curtains shut against the ever-present midnight sun, stare at the blinking cursor on my computer screen… and wonder how I will ever have the energy to work on my novel again?

Spending six weeks at a time living and working on a boat, this is not a new sensation. Exhaustion and minimal spare time are constant realities of working on boats. I’ve discovered the hard way that trying to battle my way into a draft when I’m bone-tired doesn’t usually result in good writing—or give me the recuperation I need before starting another long day on the water. For me, the trick is knowing how to stay in touch with my writing, and the worlds in my stories, even during the days and weeks when I don’t have the time, the energy, or the stamina to actually work on them.

If jumping back into the world of my novel seems an exhausting and futile task, I set my story aside. Instead, I open my journal, and start writing about my day. Even if what I’m writing has no connection to any of my larger projects, simply the act of sitting down and writing something, anything, means I’m more able to ease myself back into my novels during those days and weeks when I have the time and energy to devote to them.

“While the landscape of the story may be made strange and unfamiliar by the passage of weeks or months away from it, the process of enlarging that world by stringing words together on a page remains a familiar one.”

Most every writer has experienced the feeling of displacement when returning to a half-finished project after a few weeks or months spent away. Sometimes it’s an inability to immerse oneself in the story, or the feeling that the piece is rambling, unsalvageable, or that you’ve become blind to the reasons you wanted to write it in the first place. I find these problems are somewhat lessened by continuing the practice of sitting down to write for a few minutes every day. While the landscape of the story may be made strange and unfamiliar by the passage of weeks or months away from it, the process of enlarging that world by stringing words together on a page remains a familiar one.

Even when I’m off the boat, if a story I’m working on isn’t surrendering itself gracefully, it can be helpful to take a few days away from it. I’ve probably solved more plot problems while jogging, or in the shower, than I ever have while actually sitting down to type at my keyboard. While revising my debut novel, my editor encouraged me to completely change a crucial scene near the end of the book. I rewrote the scene, throwing more roadblocks in my hapless protagonist’s path. Instead of parrying her way through a tenuously cordial conversation, now she was pleading her case while being chased down a darkened hallway…

And then I stopped. I had absolutely no idea how my main character was going to throw her pursuer off her trail.

I could’ve plunked my head on my keyboard and despaired. I could have called my editor and confessed I had no idea how to rewrite the scene. I could have spent hours trying to finish the scene anyway, even without any clear idea about what my protagonist was going to do next.

Instead, I put away my laptop, grabbed a water bottle, and went to the gym.  

For me, running can be a creative impetus, perhaps because I don’t have the energy to self-censor as many of my ideas. My inner editor is out of breath, so they quiet down for a bit. With Florence and the Machine warbling over the sound of my footsteps pounding against the treadmill, I suddenly knew what I needed to do to fix the scene. Or more particularly, what my protagonist needed to do to escape her pursuer. And I probably wouldn’t have hit on that particular solution if I hadn’t taken some time away from my computer.

If you find you’re struggling to set aside the time or energy to write, I hope you look for other ways in your daily life to remain engaged in the stories you want to tell.

Mareth Griffith lives in Alaska, a place that encourages the development of indoor winter hobbies. Her debut novel Court of Twilight began as a 2013 NaNoWriMo novel, and was published by Parvus Press last fall. It’s set in contemporary Ireland, and features modern fairies, ancient evils, and unemployed telemarketers. Mareth tweets about writing, Alaska, and wilderness travel at @MagpieMareth.

Top photo by Olu Eletu on Unsplash.