Étiquette : Novel

How to Get Back to Writing After a Long Break

A month without a word went by.

Maybe a little note here and there, a vague idea par-ci, par-là.

To be honest, dear fellow writers, getting back to writing feels a bit daunting.

However, if you’ve been around this blog, you know I went into research mode before writing a single word !

How to Get Back to Writing?

Here it goes!

  • Make Sure You’re Ready

    Life happens. A new baby, a full-frontal burnout, a broken heart.
    Before getting back to writing, it will help to make sure we’re at peace with ourselves – more or less, of course. Although in this case, More is definitely better !
    Writing because the heart longs for the simple, wonderful joy of seeing words, and all the worlds they hold, on the page. That’s how I knew I was ready.
  • Expect a Slow Start

    It will be slow. Like every muscle of our bodies, the writing muscle gets rusty after a while.
    Words will sound weird, sentence will look awful. The first writing sessions will end with the tiniest word count ever.
    If we keep writing without judging ourselves from our past writing productivity peaks, we’ll get the writing muscle back in shape in no time!

  • Set New Realistic Writing Goals

    Sometimes when getting back to something we deeply loved to do, we set the expectations way too high.
    Setting realistic goals let us have a smoother dive into the writing novel land.
    And… when I say « Realistic », I mean being honest with our own reality.

    In my reality, considering my mental health issue, responsibilities and so on and so forth, my new writing goals will be down right oh-so-friendly!
    Writing’s gotta be my ultimate happy place right now.

Bonus Tips !

  • Clean up the work space
  • Read through your writing project before writing-editing-revising
  • Phone off, Internet off, kids off with partner

Dear fellow writers, I hope with all my heart you are well, safe and healthy in your corner of the world. May all the good words be with you!

Diary of a writing project. Day 112: it is getting funnier

This day actually started at 3:30 am.

Not in a good way. In a crying, yelling, whining way.

But no worries, I know where to go to make all the mama exhaustion, guilt, frustration go away. That’s right, the MG writing project!

(now, I won’t lie, a whole bowl of fudge brownie frozen yogurt for lunch will also help a bit to make the bad feelings go away)

I had to day job in the morning, but decided to work on the MG novel in the afternoon. I needed a break.

The shiny reward did not disappoint.

It is going well, especially since I got to a really fun scene. What I need to accomplish with the revision is focus more on the fun.

This book is a fun adventure.

A bit grim, a bit sad, a bit « what the heck », but overall, a fun novel.

Writing the book you wanna read

What I loved the most about books, back from when I was a kid up to these adult days, is their ability to transport me somewhere else. To leave reality far behind.

I re-read this MG novel over and over, and honestly, I still love it.

Well, not true. There was a time I could not look at it. Both because I felt like I failed the story and the characters, and I felt like a general writer failure.

Stories kept coming back, and that MG novel was a good novel… that needed more work.

Speaking of the writing project this post is supposed to be about.

I love writing dialogue, and the fun scene I’m currently editing is also the first dialogue the main character has with her sidekicks and, spoiler alert, future friend.

With a MG novel, I feel you can have more fun with the police characters, or big strong metaphor or blunt description.
I had a blast, heehee!

On that cheerful note, good night and good writing, writer friends!

3 signs its time to shelve your current WIP

First sign its time to shelve your novel?
When you’re not having fun anymore.

I really, really tried. My hardest, my bestest.

One night last month, I was working on my middle-grade mystery novel. And oh dear, it was not fun. Not one bit.

First sign its time to shelve your novel? Definitively when you’re not having fun anymore.

My favorite creative writing teacher often said: taking writing seriously has to go together with fun (or something like that). If you are not enjoying writing a novel, a short story, a script even, it will show.

It’s all in the outline

I re-outlined the novel at least five times. I got to a point where I tossed the 40K words draft I had going and started over. Still, the word count was depressingly low, even though I spent hours writing. I was re-writing every sentence, many, many times over, not satisfied with anything.

Yep, you guessed right! The second sign its time to shelve that WIP of yours is: when nothing seems to work with your story, no matter how hard you try to make it work.

The outlined is good. The characters are fun. The plot twist, without being a world-changing idea, is very thrilling. Everything seems to be there. Yet, even though it was hard to admit, mainly because it feels like a big huge failure (not to mention two month wasted), nothing works with that book.

It is never easy, but still

Funny thing about that book though: I was sooo sure it would be easy-peasy, a walk-in the park, cruising on the writing flow kind of a novel. After all, it was based on an old perfect British tv show and my own childhood memories. I was owning this. It would be fast to write, it would be good to read. This one would be published, for sure.

After a while, it felt more and more like a failure. I felt more and more like an incompetent ridiculous old wannabe writer incapable of writing an « easy » novel.

Third sign its time to shelve your novel is when your start feeling like the s******** writer that has ever roamed the surface of this good old planet Earth.

It’s not a good place to be, rock-bottomed. Especially when you’re supposed to be writing, not only to have fun or get away from that 9 to 5 oh-so-depressing/bullied-at job (me, two years ago), but also to feel good.

Darn, if you’re writing about dragons, ghost, impossible romance or what have you, you’re better off feeling good about it.

I am shelving this middle-grade mystery novel, for now. Time to tackle those others WIP’s.

Until next time!