Consequences

Lately, I haven't had as much time for my writing as I'd like. The last couple weeks, I've had nearly none. Mostly, I've had no brain power to write.

Luckily, the things that had been taking up my time are mostly finished. Over the last half year, writing had been feeling more like a chore than something I love. I finished up my MFA program in November, and while I had been exited to dive into my next novel, the motivation vanished after an intense last semester. But these last two weeks, while I didn't have time to write, I started to actually miss it. Finally, I'm anxious to spend time getting to know my characters and have fun with words on the page.

Okay, now to what this post is really about. Last night I had a dream that I was giving someone some writing advice. I told the person to look deeply at consequences her characters faces. As the plot moves forward, the actions of the characters and the consequences should keep escalating. Hannah flirts with another boy. She feels guilty. She kisses another boy and tells her boyfriend. They fight, but don't break up. She continues to see other boy. Her boyfriend leaves her.

It's not any special type of advice, but I realized that it's exactly what I need to apply to plotting out my current WIP. I guess the person I was talking to in my dream was really myself :)

IWSG and commitment... Part two

It's been a month since my last blog post, which was last month's IWSG post. I've done some brainstorming on my WIP, but I haven't been writing much lately. I'm in the middle of a career change and the summer weather has brought out my love for tennis. If writing is so important to me, why don't I make the time to do it?

After picking my brain for what's blocking me, I've decided it's expecting too much. I set too large of word count goals and expect a high quality of writing from myself and it takes out the fun of writing.

My goal for this month is to find the fun in writing again and try to develop consistency, even if it's in small amounts at a time.

And hopefully I won't go another month without posting!