Thursday, November 09, 2006

Pushing Through

Wednesday morning, I pushed my husband out the door to work and rushed up to the computer. It was my first day to officially get back into the second book of my spirit trilogy. I was so hyped and excited to get back into the lives of my Nimiipuu world!

I read the 6 chapters I had written eight months ago, hit the end of the words and stared at the blank screen for ten minutes! I thought - didn't I write more? I'm positive I wrote this scene and this scene.

The scenes I thought I wrote have been playing vividly over and over in my head since I started this book, and I was so sure I had already written them I read through the six chapters again, rifled through the notebook for this story, and looked over the storyboard I put together for this story. I hadn't written them! So why wasn't I typing away and putting these scenes on the computer screen? Because I didn't know how to get to them. I knew what I wanted to put on the screen, but I had stopped at a spot that didn't inspire me to keep creating.

I pulled out all the Native American greeting cards I'd purchased while writing the first book. Stuck the one with this book's hero adorning it on my desk, set the story board where I can see it from my desk, then I sat and read one of the books I use for historical facts and listened to Native American music. After getting the vibes back, I backed up in the story I had written so far and deleted the ending, rewriting and moving on. I managed to get a chapter written in a couple hours and I'm back in the flow of this story and time.

What does it take to get you back in a story when you've been gone from it a while?

2 comments:

chanceofbooks said...

LOL. I've had this happen to me more times than I can count. I'll be SURE I wrote something, but no, it was just my head---but all that mulling over time usually makes the drafting go a lot faster. With my recent LONG break from the MS I just finished, I read back through from the begining, reviewed my outline and then ruminated for a few days--it took a few days after committing to it to really get back into "it." What really works for me is to let the characters "talk" to me while I try to find the mojo again--I try to find the voice while walking or knitting or falling asleep. Okay that sounded like psycho mumbo jumbo. But that's my process. I'm sure there's a more sane option. :)

Anonymous said...

This is exactly what I'm struggling with today Paty. How timely of you! LOL

I have to get my head back into my contemporary before this weekend's retreat and I'm panicking. I can't find any of my story board notes for my WIP anywhere. I can't even find any of the notes I took while mowing the lawn during summer. (Yes, I take a note pad and a pencil out with me when I mow. Hey, there's hardly any interruptions from the kids and I have about 4 hours to think out there.)

Anyway...Hell if I can remember where I stuck them. I've looked through every dang file I have and they're just gone. They're probably in the same place where the lost socks end up.

It's good that you got back into your spirit world; now you'll be all warmed up and ready to pump out the pages at the retreat. And WOW! That's great you slammed out an entire chapter already today. Awesome!