Workshop 101: Relocating the Groove
Until the middle of the last week, I was on a great writing kick. I was doing a lot of writing, and enjoying it. The words were flowing easily, the pieces I had not yet figured out were coming into place, and the project that had seemed daunting and had worried me that I’d bitten off more than I could chew suddenly took its shape.
But life comes up on you sometimes, and I found myself with two very busy projects: a cute little fluffy dog to watch, and a freelance copy editing job that took considerable brain power. Did I have chances to write? A few, but they were minimal, and uninspired.
This is always the hardest part for me, relocating my writing groove. And I never seem to do it the same way twice. Sometimes I just have to write a bad chapter. I have many really horrific chapters that I’d write it one day, dwell on, and the next day rewrite. Once I’m over that I can keep going. Quite often, I can’t pick up where I left off. Wherever my brain was going has left me. Instead, I skip a chapter or two, start writing where I know what I want to do, and then I can come back to it later.
But sometimes I really just want to pick up right where I was without hiccuping, you know? Has anyone found a good way of doing that after a writing break?
I don’t have a decent answer, but I do know that I can never skip around in my writing. I have to get to a point in order to write it. If the part before hasn’t been written, some part later on certainly won’t be.
Sometimes the best way for me to get back into the groove is to do a lot of writing of other things. For example, a short story or a tiny idea for a novel opening that’s been rumbling around. Or, for example, a fanfiction (and no I’m not saying this just cause you should be working on our saga ;). It seems to me that when I’m writing something unrelated, my mind inevitably returns to the piece I’m avoiding/can’t write. And then I can get back to it.