Life or Something Else?

Insert a deep sigh of relief here.

The week is over. I survived. 10 points to me. The wedding was amazingly fantastic (anyone interested in photos??), and the new job is great. Admittedly, the kids haven't arrived yet, so I reserve the right to alter my judgement after Tuesday O:)

Last Monday I posted about giving yourself permission to have time off, and about knowing your own limits. This past week I've had a perfect opportunity to put that into practice :D

I didn't write Monday, because it was the wedding. I didn't write Tuesday, even though it was a public holiday, because we spent all day looking at/editing photos from the wedding, talking to all the relatives, and then collapsing into a heapy heap to recover afterwards.

Then Wednesday I started my new full time job.

For a while, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to write again for weeks; my brain just seemed to full of everything else, and whenever I opened the document to write, it just wouldn't work.

But then on Thursday I had a revelation. I was in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, and was vaguely pondering Sanctuary. I knew I needed another scene with the MC at school to set things up properly. I'd gotten the MC into the classroom, and into her seat... And then nothing. Not. A. Thing.

I had kind of just assumed that it was because I was tired/busy/stressed/preoccupied, so my creative brain wasn't working.

But on Thursday night, it hit me: I'd been trying to take the story in the wrong direction. I'd had a loose idea of what needed to happen in the scene - but it was all wrong! My MC was being too passive! Will all that anger and irritation and frustration building up inside, I still had her sitting around in class being passive!

Bah!

So I stopped for literally about ten seconds, closed my eyes, and said to my MC, "Fine. You tell me what's happening in the scene."

And guess what? She did. And on Friday after work, I wrote it all out straight in about ten or fifteen minutes, and squiggled in glee. It's a fun scene with no less than three occurrences that have given me the basis for main plot points, and the MC attacks a boy in the class, and things are just generally FUN.

My round-about-way point is this:

Next time you think it's life getting in the way, take ten seconds out to make sure it isn't you getting in the way. I'm really good at telling my characters what to do. I need to remember to let them talk too ;)

PS Vote for my cupcakes! Liana & my blog is Heart of the Home ;)