Hiatus

I'm afraid I'm going to go on a short hiatus from this blog for a time. Life has brought a number of large changes all at the same time and I want to focus my severely limited writing time on my work in progress. I will return in a month or two, if everything turns out well. See you then.

Writing through the wall

I hit a wall with my writing pretty regularly lately. Of course, there's a lot in my life that is demanding my time and attention-- so much that I barely have any time to think about my story beyond those few precious moments I get to actually spend cobbling it together. Often when I sit down to write, it takes some time before I actually feel ready to write-- needed time to clear away the rest of my life and day and just focus on my story. But often it's not quite so simple.

Here's the three tricks I use when I feel a wall in my current project:

• Examine my last few paragraphs, I likely took a wrong turn and need to back up and course correct before moving on.
• Jump to a different, smaller project for a few minutes (timed, to force myself to return). For me, this includes writing a blog post, or working on a short story. The purpose is to get sentences flowing in a different (or more natural) setting and then switch back to my main work.
• Spend a few minutes in free writing, and just letting words flow. I have a book of story prompts as well as story dice that I'll use to jump-start this activity. The point is similar to that above-- to get the slow trickle of words up to a decent flow, and then take that into my work in progress.

I typically look at doing these in the order I posted, though different times call for different activities. You have any tricks you use?

On Rewriting

When I was younger, I attended a writing conference for students. There's not much I remember about what I learned there, but I do recall one thing quite vividly: one speaker explaining the difference between an amateur writer and a professional writer. As this person (whose name I do not recall after over a dozen years) put it, on a first draft, most amateurs and professionals write about the same level, give or take-- the difference comes in future drafts, or the lack thereof.

At the time, I was very much a one-draft essayist for school, which served me well at the time. And that tendency has followed me through college and into my current employment. It continues to haunt my writing to this day. But I'm so glad for the words of the now-unknown speaker, as they have stuck with me as powerful as any during my formative years. Not that I always heed them.

I learned my first powerful lesson in rewriting when I got my first paid freelance writing assignment. I turned in a draft, and my editor (bless him for his patience with me) returned them stained with his notes. I recall talking to my wife about how difficult writing had suddenly become, and how little I was being paid for it. But I barreled through and received the joy of my first professionally printed piece. And I've revered the rewrite ever since.

Yet, when it comes to this blog, I've let that wisdom slip away from me. It may be painfully obvious to any who come here that I don't spend any time rewriting. Perhaps you simply thought these the words of an amateur with precious little experience (and you would not be wrong in that), but there is more to me behind these words. And perhaps some rewriting would help uncover those deeper parts for you.

But there's a flip-side: the time commitment. And that's the main reason I don't fret about the rough state of my blog-- every precious minute I spend revising here is a minute less working in my novel. In fact, I've often considered going on a blogging hiatus and focusing fully on my novel. But there's a reason I've not done that-- which I'll discuss next week. But in the mean time, do you revise your blog posts? Should I? What do you think?