Welcome back to Austen Promises and the Writer’s Journal!
The exciting part of writing, for me, is when the story starts to “flow.” What I mean by that is that I start writing and words start coming effortlessly out of my fingers and onto the screen (or out of my hand and onto the paper, if I happen to be writing things out longhand.) I get so caught up in the story, then, that I forget the time. I forget to eat, and take the dogs out, and all manner of other things.
This doesn’t always happen. There are times, when I am distracted, or worried, or angry, or tired, or ill, when getting words on a page is a struggle. There have been days when I was happy to write twenty words, or even just a short sentence. It gets worse if you have gone several days without writing at all. Every word is a struggle, and I sit and stare at my screen and wonder what I should write.
How do I recover from those hard times and get back to where the story flows? The first step I take…and I’m not 100% certain this works for everyone…is to just write something. I spew words onto a page, regardless of how much sense they make to me. My Thursday’s 300 feature was born out of a series of writing exercises I did to get past a blockage. Sometimes I will write about nothing. My thoughts or feelings on a topic. Sometimes, I will take a snapshot of something I did (getting a midnight snack, for example) and make it Regency. Frequently…far more than anyone knows…I write about NASCAR racing. Some of those I share and some I do not. 🙂
The second step I take to get back into story-flow mode is to share what I have written. I have begun sharing every day with two very good writer friends. I used to share with them…we used to all share everything we wrote…but I had gotten out of the habit. However, the encouragement of these women is just what I needed. I have continued the practice of sharing every day. In addition to the encouragement, this step gave me back a huge amount of confidence. Oh, and I also share on my blog, which became an additional source of support for me.
The good thing about these two steps, especially the first, is that once I start writing, the flow starts to come back. I might force out 200 words on Monday, then 500 on Tuesday. Wednesday comes and I’m easily cranking out 1,500 words, and by Thursday, I’m over 2,000, and it is flowing!
My goal is to keep writing, every single day. I want those words to keep coming out like a river, unceasing.
Come back next Wednesday for another peek into my journal! <3
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