Writing - What I Do

Writing Tips - What To Do When You're Stuck

Stuck on a sentence or a plot point?

Highlight it, leave it alone, go back in a day or two and it will often straighten itself out.

This usually works for me. If I'm in doubt, I highlight it, make a note about the problem, and then leave it alone. When I go back later, the solution is usually staring me in the face and I can change it.

My biggest flaw is stopping to revise or fix something in the middle of a writing session. IT ALWAYS MESSES UP MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT. Guess I'm a slow learner. I catch myself doing it all the time.



I do much better all the way around if I follow my own advice, highlight it and move on.

It also helps me get back into the story the next day when I go back to fix it.

Afterthought:
If you don't have a fix to take care of, do you leave yourself a tag for the next day? I always leave myself a word or two about where I'm headed or what I want to write next. It helps me jump right back in the water.

Easy to Write

Why is it easier to write when I know I have only a few minutes? Is it a form of procrastination? The Freudian flip-side, perhaps?  If I have a whole day to devote to my characters--or they to me, as the case may be--then I find a hundred little things that must be done immediately, in succession, or better yet in tandem, so that no one thing is ever completed . . . but if I have only a few minutes before I have to be out the door, the words flow like water.

So I've developed a faucet solution to a Freudian problem. It's actually very simple: I sit myself down at the computer (knowing I can only stay a moment or three), then I turn on the tap and let the letters flow. After a bit, the faucet goes off and I jump up and sweep the floor, take a walk, shampoo my hair, or a even just load the washing machine. That's when the ideas break over me in waves . . . and then I rush back to the computer and try to capture them in print. Somedays, it's as exhausting as treading water in a storm. But the words do flow. Maybe they aren't the perfect, good china words I long for, but as someone much wiser than I once said,