Writer Hacks (Crazy Things I Do)
The blank page aka the white nightmare. On parchment, the lines mock my lax beginnings. On the screen, the cursor blinks explicit expostulations. Like most writers, my brain is near bursting with ideas, worlds, people, and situations. Mine struggle to exit my person and live their own lives. Keeping these imaginary friends at bay tends to feed, only, my insomnia. However, when faced with time and the energy to create, these pals grow fickle and flee into the recesses of my brain.
How do I get them to come out? How do I encourage them the play nicely? How do I keep them from stomping all over my compositions?
Every writer has their own tips and tricks… here’s a few of mine.
ROUGH OUTLINE
My habit is to see a scene in my mind and then take off. Scenes and dialogue flood the page to the point of breaking the dam of cohesiveness. (Much like that last sentence) There’s a time for free writing and a time for managing your mind. This is your created world. Yes! But it still needs to make sense.
A very rough outline gets me back on track when I’ve meandered off the trail. Squirrels happen. Chasing them can lead to some wonderful plot twists and epic situations, as long as they link to the main theme. I title each chapter and the 3 main scenes I want within them. As long as my chapter sticks to it’s three main bones the rest can flow around them.
DOODLE
The words are in there they’re just shy. I draw and doodle all around the margin of my paper. The action and motion of physically writing turn on my tired mom brain. I’ll be sketching a horribly disfigured doodle of a dog and suddenly there are words surrounding the doodle… words that spur on sentences and so it begins.
DANCE
Get that booty up and shake it. Surprise those fair weathered storylines by doing something completely unrelated to the subject. Once they get brave enough peek out from the mental fog, lasso them and write.
WHITEBOARD
Sometimes words won’t come to the keyboard or the notepad. But they’ll flow like mad against a whiteboard. I think it’s the chemical high. (Just Kidding) Something about the mortality of whiteboard notes makes them feel less threatening. If I don’t like what I’ve written on a whiteboard and wipe it out. Also, I know I’m weirdie but I really really like the way writing on a whiteboard feels. The glide of the expo marker, the choice of colors, and the differing thickness of the markers make it a sensory wake up call. I love to write on a whiteboard. If my writing is awesome… I snap a picture with my phone and store it up for later typing.
MINECRAFT
Yup, I said it, Minecraft. I love getting into its cubed world and building the land my characters live it. Writing Sci-Fi? You can build it. Historical Fiction? You can build it. Nautical Adventure? You can build it. Cozy Mystery? You guessed it, you can build it. And I do. I spend a good few days building my world, while my kids add their own elements to my writer’s land. We’re together and that makes it more fun. They bounce ideas off me and I rebound them off of them. It gets my mind into writing without having to do any actual writing. Which, oddly enough, makes me WANT TO WRITE!!
And wasn’t that the purpose of all this nonsense, to begin with? Hope that helps, from one crazy writer to another.
