Original photo here.

From Playful Learning:

…I decided to go with pegboard and customized accessories for the specific materials I wanted to make available. It was a long yet worthwhile process. The writing papers are readily accessible and visible, the art supplies are kept in buckets and can easily be removed for use, and everything an aspiring writer needs can be stored in one convenient place.

Brilliant idea, fabulous execution.

You might say I’ve been on a long, almost permanent (creative) writer’s block

I came across quite a couple of interesting posts about writer’s block recently, good ideas and tips to put that shameful event in its place.

• Writer’s Block…A Thing of the Past
• How to Destroy Writer’s Block and Unleash Your Creativity
• Writing is like a Romance
• Writer’s Break
• Defeat the Wicked Witch of Writer’s Block

What do you think of writer’s block?

Two things changed my mind:

Around the same time, I saw Amos at the office pantry and we caught up and talked about my NaNoWriMo experience. He seemed so genuinely enthused, and interested in the story, and told me stuff that I knew but needed to be reminded of, like that I just needed to have a breather and step back from the story after that mad rush. And so I told myself that I’d give myself that breather and go back to my draft.

Well, so much for that, it was December, I went back to the Philippines for a vacation, there were such a lot of things going on (including machine hiccups, like the battery bloating like a damn balloon) that I never got any writing done.

While in the Philippines though, I was browsing in Powerbooks while waiting for a couple friends when I came across this poster promoting a writer and a book: Samantha Mae Coyiuto’s Flight to the Stars and Other Stories. She was (is) 16 years old, and it was already her fourth book, having started writing since she was six.

I wasn’t very different from that girl. I started when I was seven, I also drew the illustrations for the “self-published” (read: home printer, felt paper cover = win!) short story, and I also wrote short stories. I did not have any mentors until I was well into high school, but I had the support of my family. I was happy for her at the same time that I felt a pang of regret that I let myself be sidetracked.

Because that’s what it is: I let myself be distracted by other things. Up to now, yes. It’s not anyone else’s fault but my own.

So this year, in 2011, I will pick up my NaNo novel and work with it, and get to at least a fourth draft by the end of the year. I need to stop letting distraction, and my fear of failure, to get in the way of getting this done. Is it going to be a good story? Who knows. But that’s exactly it: no one, not even me, will ever know, unless I try.

2010 has been a good year for writing

In 2010, I started blogging regularly. I’m not a perfect blogger–I can miss days, lose my voice, go through weeks of absolute blogging hell–but I’ve been able to give myself a schedule and stick to that schedule for most of the time. I still struggle a lot of times, but there are just as many–more!–times where it’s been a joy to blog as I have been blogging in the last portion of the year.

In 2010, I went for NaNoWriMo. Now, I’ve done NaNoWriMo multiple times. I’ve won once, a token win, a win where I didn’t go back to the story, nor do I plan to go back to the story. This year, I decided I would write what I had always planned on writing: an alternate history, a retelling of historical legend. Did I succeed? I won, but I don’t think I succeeded, exactly. I think it has potential, but it needs to go through fire first. I finished, and did not finish; but the biggest takeaway from NaNoWriMo 2010 was the habit and the experience of trudging along to the end, my realization on how I write and what I would like to write about.

2010 was certainly a pivotal year for writing. I have always written, but I’ve never blogged seriously, nor have I been serious with my creative writing for many years past.

But I’ve come back. And I’m going to go through with it.

This week is recap week! Stay tuned for piecemeal recaps of how 2010 went for me.

But will I go back to this story this December?

Nope.

But that doesn’t mean, though, that I feel I’ve “lost” again this year. In 2007, I came out of it pretty much the same as I went in, just with 50,000+ words of a story that was unfinished, with no real desire to finish it.

This year, I come out of it with only a little over 50,000 words, half likely crap, of a story–but with better writing habits and better belief in myself.

Additionally, remember when I said I didn’t have the longevity to write a novel? I think I’ve just had proof that I don’t. I was thinking about this for a while this morning, and I’ve realized that I am generally not a marathon kind of person. I’ve always competed in sprints back in school; I loved web development because there were no long compiles and the UI was just there and easily built up. I like sprinting. It’s what probably drew me to NaNoWriMo in the first place: a novel sprint. But that doesn’t always work out well, because a novel is a long and involved process.

Does that mean I’ll give up ever writing a novel? No. But not now.

(Hopefully blogging will commence regularly again.)

The nice thing about writing in the morning is that my inner editor is still half-asleep too. So I just pound out crappy words and typographical errors and I don’t really care: I’m just writing and getting the story (or whatever it is I’m writing) out. Editing can come later.

The result? More words. (Cough.)

It’s not without its challenges, though. Sometimes, I wake up late and I just need to rush! Sometimes, I wake up to a text message and get distracted and everything else just goes down the drain. And even more often: sometimes, I just really need to pee.

There are a couple of things that help with the habit-forming, though:

1. I open my writing application (Scrivener) and leave the computer open as I go to bed. In the morning, I just get up, sit on my desk, type in my screensaver password, and start writing directly.
2. I think about what I want to write about before I go to sleep and repeat it to myself a couple of times. This way, the chances are good that I will write about it in the morning!
3. I type with my eyes closed. (This obviously won’t work if you’re not very comfortable with typing without looking at the keyboard!) I type worse when I’m not looking at the screen, but it actually helps! (Of course, I’m also half-asleep, so it’s just easier to let my eyes just close up of their own accord…) Once I’m fully awake, or sometime during the day, I do go over what I’ve written to correct the typos–if I leave it for too long, I won’t remember! (This has happened to me before with my morning freewriting.)
4. I usually do well to write emotional, vivid, and/or “dreamy” and evocative scenes while in this half-asleep state, and not action-oriented, “exciting” scenes. This is pretty much an observation of my writing style while I’m in my half-asleep state, so your mileage may vary, but to make use of this, I try to plan to write appropriate scenes in the morning.

This is something I’ll definitely continue to do moving forward, and maybe improve on it by actually giving myself a word count target for this morning writing, even outside the bounds of NaNoWriMo.