Sometimes, yes, and sometimes, no. For months I’ve been struggling to work from an outline I wrote at a plotting workshop I attended. For several months before that, I had no enthusiasm whatsoever to write anything.
Do my characters speak to me?
Writing a story is a funny thing. Everyone has their own method and as a person new to the craft, it takes a while for one to find their groove. I wrote the first three books in my series Love In Range (Book 2: Love UnTouched available now) relatively quickly. Two have been published and one needs editing (a costly business as any author will tell you). I worked with a writing coach and at the time, it seemed easy. However, I no longer have a writing coach and the training wheels are off. Now it’s up to me and only me, to put words on paper (or computer screen!) But what do you do when there are no words? No characters or events you can write about? Just because I am a writer, doesn’t mean the characters talk to me all day and night. Or at all!
Are writers schizophrenics?
I’m not a person who has people chatting in my head. No, writers in general are not schizophrenic, but many authors talk about characters or settings or scenes playing around in their minds in a way they have to write them to let go of them. My characters do not speak to me. At all. When I started writing, it was a way to understand the people my business was devoted to helping – authors. I wanted to learn what it was like to be a writer. So I entered a competition and wrote a book. A VERY bad book, but I did it. I sat down each day and wrote. Then the real work began because I am not a part of the 0,0001% of the population who can instantly craft a story into something people will enjoy reading.
There are ways to write. It is a craft and like any craft it has to be learned. I am so grateful I had access to a writing coach. She taught me many things about the craft of writing in our sessions together. Knowledge I continue to use about sentence structure, words to look out for, how to make action appear more believable and how to raise tension so the reader will want to turn the page. Am I great at it? Nope, but as I write more and more, I hope my stories will need less and less editing to make them into something people will WANT to read.
So, what have I learned over the last (many) months of not writing?
Quite simply, it’s okay not to have a story clamouring to be written. Sometimes, there is simply no inspiration to work from. And that’s just fine.
What have I been doing during this time of not-writing? I’ve attended several workshops and even a writer’s retreat to try and bring not only inspiration but also a willingness to write another story. I’ve also been doing other creative things.
I’m a big wool-worker (to my ears the words knitter and crocheter sound wrong, so wool-worker it is). I’ve made a couple of blankets and some gloves for our chilly winters. I’ve started a bullet journal in a notebook I made to organise and keep track of my life. It’s nothing fancy, but I enjoy making things I can use.
I’ve been playing in Procreate (a drawing app on the iPad) doodling, and creating works of art that will never see the light of day and learning more about myself through reading tarot cards. I’ve been doing more of the stuff I enjoy rather than trying to force myself to do things I don’t.
Most important of all, I’ve discarded the outline I wrote at the plotting workshop and I’m taking it chapter by chapter, scene by scene, in the new story I’ve started to write. I’ve discovered I am not a plotter. As hard as I try to work out who my characters are, what has made them into the people they are and what events will force them to change, I can’t! I need to write the story so this is all revealed to me. What I can tell you for sure is I am not a person to read the end of a story and go to the beginning to find out what happened.
I am the person who wants to ‘live’ the adventure before seeing how it all turns out. And this is reflected in the way I write. I know the couple will get together in the end. That’s a given because I write romance, but how they get there? What kind of people are they? And what will befall them has to be a mystery to me otherwise I get bored and the story will never be told.