I’ve got four drafts I haven’t touched in weeks. At the end of the year I begin to get…lazy. I tell myself I’ll start writing and editing more next year.
In other words, I lie to myself a lot.
Surprisingly, it’s during my writing slumps that I tend to scribble random poetry lines on the back of different pieces of paper. Eventually I’ll gather them together and sometimes I find that my random lines are better than my thought out ones.
This is where I tell myself that some good can come out of being a lazy writer. I write less, but listen more. I hear an interesting phrase. I’m able to think without the pressure of writing it all down. If I remember it later I can scribble it down. If I don’t…that’s okay.
So here’s my excuse for not writing a lot lately. I was listening instead.
That book The Shallows talks about people walking around with notebooks, both to write down quotes of what they’d read, and self reflection… Commonplaces I think it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
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I completely forgot about that. That’s so cool!
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I am also very much a random lines girl! I just can’t follow an organised writing approach no matter how hard I try
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Yeah I can organize so much of my life, but the moment I try to organize my writing schedule I can’t keep to it very long.
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It’s good to know others feel the same, haha 🙂
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Tapping into the intuitive mind on those slips of paper pays off. I am writing up a storm — business writing and journalism, but none of it fiction, and your post is reminding me to find my way back to my draft in progress.
When I do get in flow with a story (working at least 30 minutes on it almost every day), I tend to work out characters and plots while moving — working out, doing housework, etc.
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If I’m continuously working one piece of fiction I think about it throughout the day even if I’m only writing a bit each day. When I get to these writing slumps and I scribble whatever sentence I find interesting I find that it’s only poetry. I don’t ever write something about a character or plot or dialogue. I have to be focused with fiction, whereas with poetry it’s whatever strikes my fancy.
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praying for you!
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