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Practices

What are your writing practices? What do you do to shapeshift into a bard of tales for the ages?

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Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Sit, grunt, type.

For the most part this pretty much sums it up.


But if you want to hear some more flappy-lips stuff. For me to get into a character's head, you need to know what they want and why. Once you know that, things tend to fall into place.
 
I don't know. Some people have rituals. I usually write after i listen to music, coffee in hand, and windows open.


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Fluffypoodel

Inkling
I try to treat every bit of writing as an exercise. Whether I am taking notes or outlining I try to always have a consistent narrative. I can't speak to the fact that it makes me a better writer but it does keep me focused which is half the battle.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
Same time of day. Early morning before anyone else wakes. Every day.

Pandora radio set to movie score. All possible distractions behind me. Go!
 
Type a whole bunch and then go back and see how much of it was crap. I work night's so if I can manage to write at work (if I can force myself to get in the right frame of mind) I will, but usually it's in the morning when I get home. For some reason sitting in my recliner is a must.
 
I can't write unless I'm at a table or computer desk. Or on my stomach.

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Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
I'm currently a stay at home mom because my toddler has some significant handicaps. The only time I get to write is between 8-10 at night. So usually I need some good indie folk music (I love Of Monsters and Men to get my right brain in gear). I hide away in my dining room with my music going quietly and try to ignore my husband watching Netflix in the next room.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
I'm currently a stay at home mom
Me too! Although we just have one kid shared between homes at the moment, so stay-at-home-wife is more like it. The benefit is that my husband works during the day and that's when I write/work. Writing is my work. I get up at 6am with my husband, have coffee with him, then get right to it. I work until he comes home on the computer or handwriting. Rarely do I ever write somewhere else, which is kind of starting to drive me crazy.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
I wish! I'm up at 6 with my kids until they are down to bed at 7:30. Then I make a pot of tea and get writing. Once a week I go out to a coffee shop with my head phones and sit there from 6:30-9:30. Those days are the best.

Usually I get an hour a day when the little one is napping (like right now) and my older one gets a show (so he will be quiet for an hour). Thats when I do things like outlining and planning and character sheets and stuff. (Or surf Mythic Scribes).
 
C

Chessie

Guest
I'm very lucky. If it weren't for my husband's support, things would be different and I'd still be working doing something else.
 

Addison

Auror
My method varies depending on what happens before. Although all methods involve hot chocolate. If the morning is chaotic, like this morning, then I'm running around like a zombie making sure my siblings have all their stuff, don't kill each other for a turn in the bathroom, drop them off, come home, clean up, drive back to school because of course they forgot something, come back and keep cleaning. After I've cleaned up either one of two things happen. I've done such grand cleaning that I'm fully charged and I can sit at the laptop and type. Or I'm not quite there so I take the dogs on a walk, after which they're tired so they don't try to pull my shoes off while I'm typing.

Good mornings, unlike this one, the kids are cooperative, they didn't trash the house the previous night so there's minimal clean up. I'm awake and quickly at full charge so I can make my hot coco, sit down and get busy. Oh, and I also need some background noise or music. Whether it's a playlist of random inspirational music (Peter Crowley, Equilibrium, Piano Guys, Fall Out Boys etc) or some old TV show that I've seen so many times I'm not distracted by the show itself.

But hey, to each their own.
 
I always carry a small notepad and jot notes and ideas down throughout my day. I purposefully go slow abd take majority of my time going through notes because many times i change and edit the direction of my story.

When it comes to writing i start from a large point of view. I list major parts of the book ABC and D. Then i focus on the major points of how A gets to B and outline this. I do this and get smaller and smaller.

I usually write at night or evening because I'm busy throughout the day.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
When I began writing seriously I consciously tried to avoid developing a sense of "in order to write I need to do X". I wanted to be able to write any place, any time. This was mainly because I was working and had to squeeze writing in around the edges.

I believe I have benefited from this approach. I still write slow as an old beagle, though.
 

M P Goodwin

Scribe
I write if I'm on a train, which can be quite often when I am working, I always carry a notebook for any sudden inspiration, which happens quite a lot, and when I am between projects I write all day...unless I am drawing maps, which need major time investment in their own right, so I try to ensure neither gets all the time, but always major on the written word.
As for shape shifting, well there's a part of me that has always got a sword in hand or bow drawn chasing dragons so scenes just unfold all the time...my problem is keeping them from unfolding during the day job.
 

MineOwnKing

Maester
What are your writing practices? What do you do to shapeshift into a bard of tales for the ages?

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I can only speak for myself because I think every writer is different.

I was always good with words from an early age, reading especially was just something that came very easy for me.

It never occurred to me to try to write for money and it took many years to interpret the signs that I was born to write.

Part of the reason I abandoned the idea, was that I came of age before computers were friendly and before the internet was born.

Writing on a typewriter with a bottle of white out and a pocket dictionary, is a little more daunting than cruising through a WIP on a modern laptop with WORD as your guide.

Researching for a manuscript now, is light years ahead of what it was to fumble about for an afternoon in a library looking at outdated material.

Now the decision to write hinges only on being financially secure enough to find the time to do it.

Shedding the briers of this working day world are the only obstacle to unleashing the literary beast from its cage.

The rest is history waiting to be written.
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
I like what Chris Fox calls in his book 5,000 Words an Hour a "tortoise enclosure." It's that special place you go to that cannot be tampered with by technology or people alike. My place happens to be on the train and at a restaurant I have breakfast at every morning before work. I've come to love writing in the mornings so much that it's hard for me to write at night nowadays. Which is good because I'm tired as hell at the end of the day. I think if anyone has struggled with writing at night, then waking up earlier than you have to can work out pretty well if you give it a try.
 
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