I've been having problems writing past my censor lately. Something about constantly being on editor mode makes me hyper-critical about my own writing, so I've had to find creative ways to get the juice flowing again. Most of the time it's as simple as stepping away from the computer and writing by hand.
When I apply the pen to paper, it doesn't seem as "finished" as when I work on the computer. I don't have autocorrect trying to tell me where my errors are. I don't have the quick backspace key calling for me to fix this or that.
The page is a little friendlier to the creative process for me, and I've been trying to take advantage of that. For instance, I sat down tonight feeling a little uninspired, but I knew I had to get something down. So, I sat in front of the computer and typed out about three lines. Then, it stopped. Nothing more came. After a couple of minutes of staring at the screen, I grabbed a pad, a drink, and went to the living room.
I spread myself out on the floor with a couch cushion under my chest and I set to work. The dog even came down and sniffed at my ear, wondering what I was doing. I wrote a full page for a scene that is causing me problems. It didn't unlock the scene, and it wasn't very much writing, but it was more than three lines. Sometimes I need to shake it up to shake something loose.
Since I wrote by hand, I don't have the statistics broken down for today, but here's today's sentence:
"Children's birthday parties disrupt a veteran's calm more than any other civilian endeavor, and Oliver Thompson knew this before he stepped inside his mother's house. If any doubt existed before he arrived, it retreated the moment Oliver saw eleven children, from toddler to tween, crammed into his mother's living room."
Weird - your first NaNoWriMo post didn't come to my inbox. But this one did. So glad you're doing this! Loved the excerpts!
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