Some days I have nothing; I just blankly look at my vague outline and scribbled notes jotted on scraps of paper and inside raggedity notebooks. I’ll forlornly type a few sentences, reread them, and then erase them with disgust, angrily poking the delete key to emphasize my displeasure. When I’m in a funk, I look forward to Tuesdays. On Tuesdays, I can let my novel muse have a break and my blog muse out to play; loosen up her leash so to speak. I usually manage to come up with an interesting topic or angle for my blog (at least interesting to me – I can’t speak for you, dear reader). I’ll sit down to type, and an idea will pop up. As I wiggle my fingers over the keys, cohesive sentences will form, themes will evolve, and a little baby blog appears. The little distraction usually shakes a few ideas loose so I return to my novel inspired, my novel muse refreshed and ready to run with it.
Today it is the opposite. I got nothing…nada…zilch…a big fat goose egg. I guess the blog muse went someplace fabulous for vacation and hasn’t returned. I tried for hours to work out a metaphor for fireworks and writing to no avail (I know there is a good one there, I just couldn’t get it to work). Instead, I can’t stop new ideas for the novel from popping out of my head, distracting me with plot development, character emotions, and new scenes I should add (I think my novel muse drank 5-hour Energy by the gallon). I’m in the middle of writing a critical scene I’ve been playing in my head for months. It’s played over and over so many times in my head, I just have to describe what I’m seeing rather than spin it from nothingness (which is fun too). I love days like this, when all I have to do is document what my characters are doing. I make a lot of progress, quickly.
This scene is one of the pivotal scenes; a moment my characters and I have waited for. It is, I hope, a moment where people like you, dear reader, won’t be able to stop reading. When your dinner won’t get on the table, when you’ll be late picking up the kids, and when your spouse will have to turn their underwear inside out because you didn’t get the laundry done. It’s a good moment. And no, I’m not going to tell you about it.
So I guess my lesson for this week, dear reader; I write crap blogs when my novel writing goes well. Til next week…
July 5 Word Count = 36,180
