A chapter is going great. It's flowing well, the dialogue works, the characters are coming to life on the page. Something pulls me away from the chapter, and I don't get back to it that day. When I do come back to it, usually the following day, everything still works pretty well, but I can't get back into it. I can't find the voice I'd been writing in. I can't make things flow as well.
The only solution I have to this is to finish a chapter the day I start it, but lets be realistic. School starts against on Monday, and I'm a full time university student. There are going to be days where I barely manage to chew out 100 words, let alone a full chapter.
Does anyone have a good fix for this? How do you get back into the swing of things when it's already moving and you have to jump back on mid-swing?
Or is this something I just have to suck up and deal with myself? I betting it's that one. There aren't many easy way out of things when it comes to writing.
Sigh.
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You know, I often have the very same problem and it's pretty frustrating to get back into the flow of things sometimes. What usually helps me is to "mentally keep at it". I do this during work a lot or whenever I get time to muse about what I like about this chapter and what I don't. Sort of a mental edit as I go if you will. Then I'm trying to mentally picture the scene to see what the outcome is, how it links to other scenes and what I need to improve or what is just awesome about it. Sadly enough we don't have mental whiteboards in our brain let alone a recording device that keeps all these thoughts in check. But what I've found mentally going on with the chapter helps me do is stay in touch with the particular voice of the character and the tone of the chapter (although it's probably unwise to fall into "Damian speak" in the middle of work - I doubt people would appreciate that one).
ReplyDeleteIt's not really a fix, but just something I found helpful. Hopefully writing won't suffer too much once school starts back up.