I swear we should start calling these posts Forever Fridays, because I always have the longest posts. I’m putting them here instead of on my first blog, The Ramblings of an Eccentric Writer, because well…I accidentally abandoned it. I’m a terrible blogger. I hope I’m not boring you.
Speaking of boring, I put off the Description Dino yet again because I was struck with a cool post, and I like to get my thoughts out there before they float away from me.
Have you ever felt bored with your story? (I should see every hand raised. It’s happened to everyone, at least at some point.Don’t deny it.) That’s how I am with my WIP Defender right now. Poor Finley’s hanging out on a limb with nothing to do because I’m both stuck and bored.
I could go back and read fun bits, but I’ve decided to give Finley and the gang a break for a little while and come back refreshed. Instead, I’m going to have a little fun.
Lately I’ve been working on a fanfiction. (By the by, I am not usually a fan of fanfiction, because I feel it usually destroys good literature, no offense. But when I do write fanfictions, its usually about a game I’ve played, and I try not to change any of the events, at all. I just add to it in a way that makes sense.) It started out that a friend and I were disappointed in the lack of a love interest for a particular main character of a game we were playing. So we decided to make our own characters for him. We’ve been swapping updates ever since.
It was fun, but I’m almost done now. And now I’ve gotten this strange idea to make alternate versions of various characters of mine and see how they function.
Like Risa and Gaelan, whom you sort-of-kind-of know. Instead of their semi-medieval, queen-and-commodore, battle for love and staying together seriousness, my friend asked me, “What if they were modern day hipsters? In college?”
Boy, that opened up a whole new world. Suddenly Risa doesn’t have to be a straight-laced queen with too much stress on her shoulders, she’s a college kid in faded plaid shirts, cut-off jean shorts, glasses, and a pencil in her hair. She’s a fond of antiques and makes jewelry and sells it on Etsy and takes art classes at college. Gaelan’s no longer a chivalrous commodore of the Royal Navy who is secretly in love with his own queen, he’s a poet who’s fond of skinny jeans and silly shirts, and uses cheesy pick up lines to make Risa fall for him. Which she does. With all manner of cuteness everywhere. (Think candle-lit picnics in the living room during a storm, and coffee dates, and walking in Central Park in the snow. Yeah.)
It’s a big drastic step away from their original designs, but it was so fun to play around with. And that’s when I realized, rather than being stressed all the time about what you’re writing, we take a step back. Find something cute or silly or quirky or funny and just write it. Just get it out of your system.
There’s a reason they say write every day. One, it helps get your story further along each day, and you don’t have to worry about writing 10,000 words on a Saturday because of a crazy deadline. Two, practice makes perfect. But then, you have those days where you can’t write anything in your WIP.
This is usually where I decided, “Nothing can be done with this today,” and switch to another WIP, since I have two open, plus the fanfiction. But there are some days I’m just not in the mood to write in any of them. So I turn to my bit scenes.
I write bit scenes all the time. And trust me, they’re so helpful. There are bit scenes of cute things that have popped into my head, with characters that don’t even have names. There are scenes with characters I already have that I know I’ll never use in the real WIPs but I write them anyway because it’s fun. And because I might get to use them later.
Writing should be fun. It shouldn’t be a stressful thing. I once heard a quote that said, “If you love your work, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Well writing may not be my work, but I hope it never becomes work. I hope I write just to write, without the pressures of being published (though that would be awesome), or super-stressing over deadlines (though I know I’ll eventually have them if I’m published), or pulling at my hair because I’m stuck on a story and I have nothing else to write. So I’m going to continue my funsy stuff when I can because that’s exactly what it is: fun. It may never amount to anything, but it means I’m writing every day, and practicing my craft every day, and I’m having fun while I do it.
-Hannah