In other news, I have made contact with a cover artist. Hooray!
Onto the post:
I'm one of those people that has yet to get the hang of typing a story. Odd, considering how much time I spend (or, nowadays, wish I could spend) on a computer. I prefer to plot out my stories with pen and paper, usually making a huge mess and scribbling it out. Once I'm going, I can keep going fairly fast. My writing gets all loose and wild like a lot of how-to-write articles tell me it should. Freewriting and all that.
My only trouble is getting to that free-flowing bit. Like many people, I lead a busy life. When I finally sit down and pick up a pen, I find my mind usually has not followed. I can't think. My mind drifts on that problem-solving curve by plotting out and planning random bits leftover from the rest of the to-do list. There is no focus.
The secret to getting focus, for me, is to start writing in cursive. I know this may not be for everyone—I know people who absolutely loathe cursive writing. But I find it works for me.
Why does it work? My theory is that, since it requires more focus for creating the letters, the mind quiets down to focus on this task and then, indirectly, to the task of what is being written. Kind of like focusing on your breathing to focus on your meditation, if you're the meditating type.
And it has the added bonus of making your page look pseudo-elegant, if you write anything like I do. Or a complete mess, which is also kind of elegant—just pretend you're an old alchemist or something who's too busy being brilliant to bother with pretty writing. If you're a fiction writer, I'm pretty sure you're good enough at make-believe to make this work.
Great idea! I'm a pretty alchemist with not enough time!... Er, something like that...
ReplyDeleteYA: Cheat, Liar, Coward
Adult: Shackled