Write Every Day, Day #11

[auroracloud]

Today I noticed again how much better it is for me to have some crafts on hand when I write. Usually some piece of crochet that I can work without too much attention, something with a repetitive enough pattern. When I get stuck or need to mull on something, it's so good for me to have something for my hands to do. It can help me so much in thinking and becoming unstuck, or at least it serves to give me just enough to do that I don't get distracted and do something entirely different, like browsing Etsy for a million pretty cross stitch patterns or ballet skirts or... you get the picture. Not that this is a common occurrence or anything So I'm more likely to be able to get back to working on the writing rather than leave it entirely.

And it just really, really helps my brain if my hands are doing something.

Do you have non-writing related activities like that which help you to write? Crafting or doodling or colouring, or putting on the right kind of music (I can't usually write while listening to music, but I know a lot of people love it), or something else entirely?

Today's Writing

I managed to do my writing early in the day, and I managed to write, let me see, 326 new words of the novel. I also spent a while browsing through my notebook where I've been writing scenes from the novel from time to time. I need to read them properly to see which ones are usable for the current shape of the novel, but I do think the last few can be used at any rate, so I'll try to take some time to type them up soon. Going through the older scenes will take more time. I hope I can still read my handwriting for them.

Some day I ought to do the same for my generic writing notebook, which contains... well, anything that isn't the novel or the Ambush Project (TM)*. See how many starts of stories and random scenes I actually have stashed away there.

* The Ambush project started as something random to scribble on my Dublin trip and is now on its second notebook, with several worldbuilding sketches on big drawing papers on my living room floor etc., though I haven't been adding to it lately. Come to think of it, I should probably type it up as well and see how much I've already got...

Tally

Day 1: alexcat, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 2: alexcat, alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, china_shop, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, deifire, elliet, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 3: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman

Day 4: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 5: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman

Day 6: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 7: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, luzula, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 8: auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 9: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, deifire, falkner, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 10: alexseanchai, auroracloud, badly_knitted, caprices, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, lferion, luzula, nafs, sanguinity, shadaras, sierranovembr, sylvanwitch, yasaman

Day 11: auroracloud, china_shop

Let me know if I missed you on the tally, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet! You can join in or drop out any time.

Comments

[falkner]

No actual writing for me today either, but on the flip side, I'm getting a ton of reading done these days, which is fantastic for getting ideas. It's just that lounging on the front steps outside under the sun is way too tempting to do anything else but that all day long.

Vaguely related: it's much easier for me to get writing done on days I work than on days off. And right now it's nothing but (unpaid (Ｔ▽Ｔ)) days off. I wonder why.

Maybe on the same vein, I also seem to get some help from having some easy crochet or knit WIP on hand! If I hit a roadblock while writing and need to stop and mull things over for a while, I inevitably get distracted by other things, but if I just switch to yarn work and think while doing that it works like a charm.

I get more writing on these comments than on fiction.

[auroracloud]

Yay for reading! I've had trouble reading in the past weeks, it's been hard to concentrate, so it's great that you've been getting lots of reading done. And it is indeed good for getting ideas, and it also builds up your sense of writing in other ways, story structure and characters and vocabulary and all that.

Hmm, interesting that you have an easier time writing on days you work than on days off! I suspect it might be because your mind is already in a more active state, so it's easier to apply that to writing as well. And sometimes it's easier for people to write when they've only got a specific time slot available for it, rather than knowing they could do it any time of the day. I've definitely heard about that happening to other writers.

Yay for getting help from crochet or knitting at hand! It's just like you describe, if I need to mull over things a bit, the crafting helps me not get distracted by something that takes my attention away.

Good luck getting back into the writing! But if you find that you need this break from the writing, that's all right, too!