I was reluctant to start back at Traces tonight. It has been going slowly for a few nights, as I mentioned the other day. I was worried I'd managed to dig myself into a hole. Yes, even at 500 words a night, it can be too late when you realise you're in trouble. I took the night off last night to give me a chance to think about - or rather, not think about - this.
Night off worked nicely. An elegant solution emerged, but I was still reluctant to get back to work - this is the danger of allowing yourself any sort of life away from the keyboard.
Then, musing idly, I thought of a couple of funny (to my ear, anyway) lines for another story. The idea of the story itself - the character and setting - was not knew, I'd dreamed them up last year at some stage and just put them in the shantytown for lost characters in the back of my mind. But now, suddenly, I had a couple of lines.
I opened a blank Word document, typed them out. They looked good. I added a few more, and suddenly - whoosh - I was away. I reached a thousand words without knowing it and I enjoyed every moment of it. The new character is fantastic and he's allowing me to bring out the humour that's been lacking in Traces for some time.
And this is the cool bit - after rattling off 1,000 words of brand new narrative (tentatively titled Scratches), I wrote my 500 word quota of Traces as well. And the positivity of Scratches carried over to Traces - suddenly, there was a bit more humour and vitality in the story, and it seemed to be moving again.
Traces over 12,000 words and Scratches over 1,000. So a good night.
1 comment:
That is an absolutely great example of how to get unstuck! Good luck with moving forward on both projects.
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