I’ve been away from writing for a couple of days. This isn’t to say writing has been far from my mind, quite the contrary. My iPhone currently has two scenes in it that I wrote in the middle of nowhere after having been hit by inspiration on the drive to said nowhere.
I find my story comes to me in drips and drabs. Sometimes a whole scene washes in and obliterates everything in its path. At other times, a few key sentences, a stray thought, are all that come through.
I keep trying to sit down and plot everything out. Every time I do that, I get seemingly more stuck than just sitting at the keyboard and letting words flow. I’m finding out I am the kind of writer that needs to get there before I can describe it. I don’t know all the scenes in my story because I haven’t made it there yet. I’m hoping this changes. I can’t imagine trying to build a career based on whim and mercy of the creative muse.
On the up side, I figured out how it ends. I know who the villain is. I know why he’s doing the things he’s doing. His undoing was one of the scenes I wrote in my iPhone.
Which brings up another stray thought I’m going to throw out; never be too focused on your current work that you ignore other ideas.
My wife is a photographer and visual artist. She and I have talked about collaborating on a piece of work. This really excites me. I came up with two things for this work that I kept mulling in my head. Guess what? I used them for my novel. See, they didn’t work on their own, but put the mention of them on the lips of a madman and suddenly things are cooking!
So my collaboration is on the back burner, and I need to sit and get to work.
I guess I should stop referring to my work in progress as that. Right now, the working title is The Veil. I’ll call it that from now on since it just makes things easier.
Sorry, this blog post is random. Not so much in terms of advice, but more a journal entry. I’ll do these from time to time. Now I think I’ll go work on The Veil and see if I can crack 15,000 words.