Extrinsic motivation

The sky is bright(ish), the birds are singing: this is a new day! And with it, my motivation has come back! Hurrah, rejoice, etcetera.

I spent some time last night talking about it, and it helped. I also re-read my first chapters and quite enjoyed it, so the can't be that awful. I have a few ideas of how I could tweak the beginning to add more tension, but today my 20k so far don't seem so terrible. So I am now raring to go!

This is to help get motivated:

Well, extrinsic motivation has never really worked on me. It's more of a treat, because, hey, it's the holidays (for a few more hours at least) and I've worked hard!

Banging on

Eureka! I see the light! I have finally figured out what was bothering me, what was blocking my progress, why I had lost my muse.

That was the good news. The bad news is that it's this: my story doesn't start with enough of a bang. Which means:
1. I have to revisit my plot
2. I'm not sure what the heck I'm going to do with what I've written so far
3. I still don't know what bang to put in!

I kind of need everything I've written. It's super important for my subplots. But it means my main plot isn't the driver of the start of my story, which is a problem. I had added a prologue to add a bit of tension, but I don't think it's quite enough.

So... what to do? What do do?

I'm thinking of books I've read that I really liked and what gripped me. The thing is, I often find book beginnings difficult as a reader. I don't often get hooked until later.

So what hooked me in Harry Potter for example? It was book 4, I should say. And I started reading it from a third in. Ok, bad example. But still, that prologue is soooo creepy, I find it quite powerful. And although it takes a really long time to start, the creepiness, the missing people... you get this sense all along that something isn't quite right.

Am I normal Yet? is another one that got me hooked. I think I just loved Evie's voice and her problem is very obvious as a reader. I suppose it's a bad example for me because it's such a different sort of book. Issues in contemporary YA often feel a lot more mundane (you know, fitting in, dealing with your mental issues), which is not to say they aren't gripping or important, they are, but they don't need to 'bang' so much.

I'm not sure where this leaves me. More thinking needed.

Chasing the muse

If you are observant, you might have noticed that there is a new icon on the left hand side of the blog saying I am a Camp NaNoWriMo participant. Yep, that's right! And although than a lower wordcount, I'm not even a rebel: I'm writing NEW words (you know what I mean).

I had no other plans than write (and do a bit of homework) for the holidays, so I figured I'd be able to do quite well. I had a few unplanned things that came up last week, but it wasn't April yet, so who cares? I was in the starting blocks on the 1st April, ready to go! I wrote 2700 words. Which isn't bad, but not the high words counts I was expecting. Then the weekend happened, which wasn't great. Monday was much better, and it looked like this:

Pretty good, huh! Then Tuesday wasn't bad. Yesterday I did some work and then today...

Flatlining!

I have lost my mojo. I don't know why, the story's just left me. I had a plan, and was going with it, chapter after chapter (they're tiny chapters) and even had a few surprises. I don't know if it's taking a break or what, but today I am staring at my computer screen thinking, 'This is sh*te, I don't want to write this.' Some people call it writer's block, but it's not that my mind or my page are blank, it's that the inspiration isn't there, and I feel that what I write is just that: uninspired.

There's a famous quite (although no-one agrees on who said it or what they said exactly) that goes something like this: 'I only write when I am inspired. But I see to it that I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning.'

I'm trying to sit down, grit my teeth and just get on with it. But instead I'm browsing pinterest boards, reading CampNaNo articles and, well, writing this. Let me be clear, it's not the process or the activity of writing itself that I'm avoiding, it's this mess of words that just won't come out, this feeling that 'it's just not quite good enough, so why bother?'

Come on, Muse, or denial-about-my-own-writing-ability, whatever you're called: come back!