July 21, 2010
So I was cruising through all the fabulous blogs I follow and came upon a post at The Writing Room (by Catherine A. Winn) that has had me thinking for days. Her post Working on WIP or Goofing Off truly struck a cord with me – her essential idea being that so long as you are thinking about your project, you are still working on it.
I love this idea! It explains so much about why I feel unproductive some days simply because I haven’t gotten my page quota finished, yet I feel like I’ve spent the whole day thinking about this character or that scene. It explains how the characters that begin in my head suddenly become friends and house guests that I don’t want to leave. If we as writers spend so much time getting to know our characters (while we cook, while we drive errands, while we fall asleep at night…) then of course they become more well rounded, more present to us and then their story simply falls onto the page (okay more or less…) At least that’s how I see it.
It seems to take me AGES to finish the first 50 pages of a new book. Painful almost. But then suddenly I’m in too deep and the story just takes over…the characters do what they were meant to do, no matter how much I might disagree or warn against it. They have a mind of their own.
So I’m curious, do you spend a lot of time thinking and “living” your characters before putting them on paper? How do you find your stories unfolding? And if you have a moment, take a stroll over to The Writing Room at www.catherineawinn.blogspot.com!