Strange Writing Thoughts

Yeah, that sounds like the best title for a post about my jumbled writing thoughts for this week.

As we all know, story ideas come out of nowhere and everywhere. Sometimes I wake up with one. Other times a dream sparks something bigger. Walking fills me with inspiration. A song might become an unexpected story nugget. Even a word while reading can make something happen. Or even a creepy picture posted on Twitter...

I think you get the gist of what I'm trying to say. 😬

Sometimes, these ideas are so well formed I can write a 4k first draft in a day. I actually did exactly this several months ago. I woke up with the story in my head, and had the first draft written by the end of the day.

My latest idea, another one that wanted to be told RIGHT NOW, was a little different. 

First, the character--who happens to be from the same series as the story I mentioned above--appeared out of nowhere. The time and setting were there too. Then later that day, the beginning struck me. But still, I needed a few days to mull everything over and double check a few details.

By the time I sat down to write with pen & paper a few days later, I handwrote 4 pages without stopping. It flowed well. I too notes and left it alone again.

During that time, the story was constantly in the back of my mind. Percolating in the background. Forming deeper roots than I expected. But no matter how many times I thought about how it would all turn out, I couldn't put everything together. Things weren't clicking.

At this stage I knew that the best thing to do was to just write. That was the only way I was going to find out if it was going to work or not.

So I grabbed my laptop with the intention of typing everything up, but on that day Windows 10 decided to be an a-hole and needed a thousand updates and restarts. (Okay, so it was more like five but that's a lot. A LOT.)

I was lucky to get the pages typed up (added up to 677 words) and put everything aside. Again. I was too frustrated with my laptop to continue.

Yesterday, I decided nothing was going to stop me. I sat at my Writing Nook (more on that another time), opened the Word doc and started typing. I kept writing until lunchtime and--by that time I knew how everything was going to end--went back to it after eating.

Not long after that, I finished the first draft. It turned out to be 3,884 words. It's a bit rough but the main story is there. Finally out of my head and ready to be revised.

Do you understand the title of this post now? 😁 

I had all the pieces of this story inside my head for a few weeks but they were scattered, and no amount of thinking or note-taking could put them together. BUT, as soon as I started typing, everything fell into place and made total sense.

It's strange and wondrous and weird. Every story is as different as its process. 

To me, that feels quite magical.✨

Posted in: first draft done , just thinking , short story , writing , writing thoughts