Jason over at Scribblings of a Madman writes about what happens when the muse abandons us and writing becomes a chore.
Most of the writers I have spoken to have this problem. When the inspiration hits our fingers fly, until that first stumbling block, or maybe the second, or the third…then it all becomes hard work and we put the work down, never to finish.
This used to be me; I could never get past about 10,000 words before the story stuttered to a stop and I moved on to the next inspirational idea. The ideas never stopped coming, but I wasn’t growing as a writer because I could never finish anything.
Two years ago I decided that I was going to finish a novel, come hell or high water. So I sat down and treated the whole thing as if it was one of my technical papers; I researched, I developed my characters, built my world, plotted, wrote out a detailed outline. I forced myself to finish all of this before writing even the first word.
In other words, I caught my muse, chained the little siren to a chair and told her she could damn well work for her supper.
Did it work? Hell yes. I wrote 56,000 words in 5 weeks, writing 1 hour a day. I was flying through the story.
And then we moved across the continent and I never got back to it. Not really a happy end to the story!
But the point is, the words flowed. Not because the muse was being kind, but because, by being more organised and disciplined, I could work on it every day without having to worry about being inspired, or waiting for the muse to throw me a bone.
It worked because I treated it like a chore from the beginning; a job to be done. But it wasn’t all bad; yes, some days were tough, and it was obvious from the prose which days they were. However there were more days that were simply a joy; when it was still fun to write, even when treated like a task to be completed.
The muse, far from being offended and going into hiding, actually came over and sat on my shoulder the whole way. She threw out some great ideas for character and plot that deviated from my original outline, but improved the story, gave it more depth and interest.
So in that 5 weeks, we came to an understanding. She would work for me; I, in turn, would give her a 70% cut on all the profits from my novels.
Lucky she’s not too bright, because I haven’t produced a publishable novel yet. She lives in ignorance; I live in hope.
What a great partnership.
5 Comments
July 7, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Hey! Nice to see your contribution. That’s an interesting idea. That’s probably what my problem is, a lack of organization. That and just plain self discipline. Luckily, both can be worked on. Thanks for the input, and thanks for stoppin’ by my blog.
July 8, 2008 at 2:28 am
Paraphrasing Thomas Edison: “Writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
July 15, 2008 at 8:08 am
[...] tag surfing (again) at WordPress, I ran across a writer’s blog where he was discussing the need to plan and organize BEFORE beginning to write. Caging the muse so [...]
July 15, 2008 at 12:50 pm
‘I wrote 56,000 words in 5 weeks, writing 1 hour a day. I was flying through the story.’ Damn, that’s impressive!
July 15, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Stephen King says much the same thing in his book On Writing. He says he’s learned to treat writing as a job like laying pipe, and he also mentions his muse coming to him when he sits down to write.