#3

Wow, I haven't written one of these in forever! 

(See post #1 here and post #2 here)  

Continuing my personal series, I'll be talking about starting over today. Or going back to square one. Whatever you'd like to call it. 

How do you know if you're ready to give up what you've been working on and begin again, with nothing? I can't answer that of course, as it varies from person to person. But...I've decided to do it and I want to share with you all how I came to that decisions.

For months and months, I wrote in short spurts: different characters, different settings, action scenes, crowd scenes, quiet conversations. But it wasn't one big storyline I was working on it. Heck, I'm not even sure what to call it. Going in circles since 2009 is pretty much the only way to describe my writing life since 2009. There's also the discouragement I felt when I picked up a published book and thought, "Hey this sounds close to something I scribbled about." 

I think if you find yourself stuck like I did, let it all go. I'll be keeping my papers and notebooks but I don't plan on playing around with those words anymore. I've grown so much since I branched away from fan fiction years ago and tried just...fiction. It wouldn't be fair, I believe, to keep chipping at what my awkward block of ideas.

So as of today, August 2nd 2012, I call myself neither a writer nor a scribbler...because I have nothing. But that's not to say I will never have anything written down. I'm going back to the basics: seeking inspiration in music, art, nature, etc. and considering "what if" questions, about things that really matter to me. That's what I'll be focusing on in the near future. 

And hopefully, something good and fiction-y will come from it all. It's August already, more than halfway through the year, and there's just no more time to look back. 

Hope you have an inspired week, no matter where you are in the writing process. <3

Prewriting

Whether To Prewrite or Not
I have to admit, I'm somewhat biased on this; I've always done extensive prewriting (or, at the very least, preplanning), and I've never really just winged it for a story. I say that you should always do a bit prewriting, even if it's just a page or so; and I'm sure that everyone has heard this before, but it does help you flesh out your world, plot, and characters that much more.

Prewriting Styles
Let's start with my favourite method: Free Writing
This can be done several different ways, but I've always free-written, when writing Fiction, by selecting a few characters and writing a few pages with them. It can be centered around a conversation that I want to include, but I don't know where, or a cool scene that I'm not going to get to for a while, but the point's that I just get some writing done that may be important to the story. I've actually created one of my main characters (who was originally just a throw-away extra) and several of my major plot points during free writing.

If you're a more artistically minded, but still like to see how things connect type of person, then Webbing/Clustering might be bit more down your alley. To begin a cluster/web chose a plot point (maybe the conflict or main character?) and keep writing down (and connecting) other plot points and relationships with other characters.

Personally, this has never really helped me; I lay more on the logically-minded side of the spectrum. What helps me, when I'm not free-writing, is listing and story specific questioning. Listing is simple, though I recommend that you have an ending in mind before you begin; what you do is write down the beginning and the ending, leaving plenty of room between the two. Then write down all the events that connect the first and last events.

Story specific questioning is where you answer questions related to your story in order to flesh out your characters.

Character Questions In depth
9 Character Questions