Taking time to think
Today's post comes from the realm of 'just cause you've got a contract doesn't mean you know everything'. I have Jodi Cleghorn to thank for this. She posted a blog yesterday which she'd written a while ago but put up again as an aid for people getting set for Nanowrimo. In the blog, called Thinking as Writing, Jodi talked about the importance of time to think in the writing process.
Now, as my last blog post stated, I've been wandering around wondering why it was so hard for me to write this novel. I mean, books two and three of the Dream of Asarlai trilogy ran out of me. Jodi's blog made me realise – during the writing of those two books, I was also working at the supermarket and that menial job was giving me the much needed thinking time. I know it did – I often had insight while throwing cardboard boxes into the compactor or stacking tins on shelves or throwing frozen peas into the freezer.
Now, I'd set myself up to write five days a week, five days in a row. Get up in the morning, write for at least three hours, every day. In the afternoon I'd faff around, read mostly. When I'd go to bed, I'd try to think about what I was going to work on the next day and sometimes it would come and sometimes it didn't and when it did, it wasn't always sticking well.
What I wasn't doing was giving my brain enough time to work through what needed to come next. I write really quickly and the story gets on the page really quickly, so I need time to realise the ramifications of that and work out what to do next.
That's what I've done today. I've done the housework. I went to the gym and then I went shopping. I told my brain at the beginning of it all – all righty, brain, we need to work out the Kaimi situation. And now I'm just letting it mosie along. It will tell me when the answer's there. I'm not going to read, or watch any drama on tv – nothing that could add information. I'll just play some video games, watch some gameshows and let me brain do its thing.
After all, it's never let me down before :)
