In which I battle a virus and creative resistance…
Hey, writing friends! Today I am happy to report that I completed the 60 minutes of work required to meet day 5 of my November writing challenge.
I didn’t want to though. Oh boy, I sure didn’t. My husband has been sick for 2 weeks, and my son stayed home from school today with a fever and nasal symptoms, and I think I might be coming down with it, too. Headache, exhaustion (more than my usual daily fatigue that I battle), and sneezing… Not good! But I took three Advil, a decongestant, and made some tea, and trudged upstairs to office.
I was also battling two “resistance” hurdles to my writing efforts. First, I am not sure whether I want to write this story in first or third POV. Although I am really just sketching out the plot/pre-draft right now, so it doesn’t matter at this stage, usually I know when I start writing what point of view the story will be in. This indecision is rare for me, and if I let it, I could have dillied and dallied and dithered about it and basically let it set me back by procrastination. But that is one good thing about this challenge, or any creative challenge–procrastinating results in failure. So I said the heck with it and forged ahead. (If I get to the actual writing part of the draft during this challenge, I might blog about why I’m so indecisive on this…)
The second issue of resistance is in regards to the plane emergency scene(s) that I had to begin planning out tonight. Frankly, the thought of writing them was daunting, and was giving me a deer-in-the-headlights reaction whenever I thought about writing them.
I was glad that yesterday I pre-planned some of the events, breaking them down in a moment by moment timeline, because then I was able to use Dwight V. Swain’s MRUs (Motivation Reaction Units) to approach writing the scene.
For example, instead of having to visualize the entire scene like a movie in my head, I was able to break it down into little chunks of action/reaction. Each event in the timeline that I had written (for example: A large boom rocked the cabin), and which was based on events that happened on a real flight, could be an instigating motivation. Then the characters would react to it (via feeling, reflex, speech or action) This helped me so much, and will really help me to continue to tackle the scene tomorrow.
Resistance is one of my personal demons as a writer/artist. If you’ve heard of the term, Steven Pressfield wrote brilliantly about it in his book, The War of Art (and that link, full disclosure, contains my affiliate code), which I read ages ago. Here’s part of the blurb about it on Amazon:
Think of The War of Art as tough love…for yourself.
Since 2002, The War of Art has inspired people around the world to defeat “resistance”; to recognize and knock down dream-blocking barriers and to silence the naysayers within us. Resistance kicks everyone’s butt, and the desire to defeat it is equally as universal. The War of Art identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.
Resistance is real, folks. And these challenges that we set ourselves are such a great tool for busting through that resistance.
If I do come down full on with the virus circulating in my house, I will need some serious tough love to get me through the next few days of the challenge. Here’s hoping I beat it before it really starts.
Hope that your writing was rewarding today! Happy writing!
–Karyn