29 May 2010

Inspiration and Daily Diligence

There are a great many writers in the world whose writing is a matter of clockwork, it seems. They put their Writing Hat on, get out their quills and parchment, and produce prose that flows, sentences that ebb and cling, and allusions that spark the interest of every man, woman, and child who's blessed with seeing such works.

Unfortunately, I personally am not that kind of writer. Like all things, interest in writing (and blogging) ebbs and flows, and comes and goes. It goes where it will, when it will. Sometimes it's no problem to sit for six hours and attempt to re-write the entire magic system, with all the spells fleshed out from level 0 to level 7, and sometimes even collecting thoughts to smash into a 200 word blog post is the utmost torture. 

So I ask anybody who read this: How do you get inspiration to keep writing? If you're one of those people who produces 1000+ word blog posts every single day, how do you maintain the dedication? The drive? Are you a mutant? Or am I?

2 comments:

  1. I am very bad at things like updating a blog. I generally feel that unless it's something concrete, like a product announcement, there isn't much to say.

    When writing products, ideas tend to get scribbled out in what I call "bar napkin" style. It's very stream of consciousness and generally happens quickly. It's the RE-writing that is daunting. I hate the tedium of cutting out passive tense, tightening sentences, and organizing the text into some sort of reasonable structure. I generally have to do two complete re-writes of a product, not including playtest notes. THEN it gets proofread by someone who knows how. THEN it's ready for layout, etc.

    Writing is hard work. Sometimes you have the energy and time, sometimes you don't.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you look at my posting over the last 100 posts, I go anywhere from 3-21 posts in a month, and they are not all 1,000+ word masterpieces! I tend to get inspired to write several posts all at the same time. So I do, but then, instead of posting them all immediately, I stagger them.

    And sometimes the well runs dry. It happens. Don't freak out. Go do something else for a little while, and give the well a chance to refill.

    ReplyDelete

Looking Back

They say that if you don't look back at who who were from a year ago and cringe that you haven't grown enough. What if I look back f...