Muse or method?

Most writers seem to have a muse (I have a mews - see left) – the creature that whispers at them, never leaving them alone until they write the story that won’t leave them alone. That’s great for unpublished writers, or people who write for the love of it – but what of the writer who is working to a deadline, the one hit by the dreaded writer’s block? The muse has gone – now what?

A writer working for a publisher is a professional, expected to deliver work on time. It doesn’t always work very well with the muse, but there must be a way to cope, or learn how to.

For this to work, you have to forget the magical side of writing. Even romance writers have to take a long, hard look at their methods of working sometimes. The trouble is, there seem to be as many ways of working as there are writers. Some writers like to write from a detailed outline, and others dive straight into the story. However, whichever way they do it, there are similarities. There has to be a backbone to the story, something holding it together, and every writer knows this. Whether you call it Goal, Motivation, Conflict, or The Hero’s Journey, there is something holding the story together, and you can’t usually tell the method used in the final result.

A writer comfortable with the method she uses may still be struck by the dreaded block. There are several reasons for this. One might be the writer’s personal life. Something has changed, and the disturbance has reached every corner of her life. The likelihood is that once the situation is resolved, the creativity will return. Another is a fault with the story. Perhaps a character’s motivation is weak, something that might not become apparent until the middle part of the story. The writer isn’t always aware of it, but there it sits, like an ambush in the jungle, waiting to put a stop to the flow. In that case, it’s time to give up, go through a series of analyses to find out what is wrong, or start something new.

It’s up to the writer to find out what the problem is. If you don’t know how and what motivates you, there are ambushes at every turn. So sometime in your career, you have to stop and think. Forget the stories beating at your ears, forget the demands made on your time – it’s time to think about yourself.

If you know how you work, you can spot what is wrong quicker, and half the problem, the worrying part, has gone. Now follow yourself right through the creativity process. There are several stages, and each needs to be optimal for a really great result.

There are three parts to making a story.

Getting the idea. How do you get ideas? Scenes, characters, or does it vary? How do you get the idea? Are you in the bath, asleep, or relaxing, listening to music? Do other things give you a spark, perhaps a movie or a piece of music?

Prewriting. This varies hugely, but everyone knows how they work best, or they do by the time they have written half a dozen manuscripts. Some like incredibly detailed outlines, layering the book up to its final form. Others plunge right in. But however you start, you end up the same, hopefully with a completed manuscript. Some run the ideas process in tandem with the planning process, some prefer to have all the ideas set before they start.

Writing. How do you like to write? What do you really need? Go through your writing rituals, and ask yourself why you do that, what you need out of the ritual to get results. Perhaps you can’t work without a cup of tea. Instead of ritualising it, so you have a special cup, a special brand of tea etc, discover the essence of the process. It might be that all you need is five minutes non-thought to gather everything together.

Editing. Often the editing process requires a different part of the mind, the analytical side. Go through the same process and try to discover what you actually need to do to be effective as an editor.

To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s my process.

Ideas. Ideas come to me all the time, usually stimulated by something else, whether it’s a house passed in the street, a piece of music, or an item on the news. So I carry a notebook, just for ideas.

Prewriting. I am pretty flexible here. I can prewrite in almost any situation, so I do that when the family is around, and always on my computer. Once the ideas are fixed in place, I need to work myself into the story, and all this clunks about in my head like wheels turning.

Writing. I need no distractions. I work to music, so I have a selection of headphones for when the members of my family are about, and a powerful stereo for when they are not. Many of my books are ‘connected’ with a piece of music. Most of my books have musical themes, and for some reason there doesn’t seem to be any logical connection. But there is an emotional one. So for a historical which throws my characters into turmoil, it might not be a period piece, but a piece of rock music that describes the emotion in a non linear way. I now look for these, pieces that speak to me, and collect them. If I’m interrupted, I lose it, and it can take a while to come back, so I try to keep the headphones on, and ignore interruptions.

Editing. I need silence for editing, and I need to concentrate. Some of my best editing has been done in the middle of the night. I might as well put my insomnia to good use!

Now I know my optimum conditions, and the way my mind works, it’s a lot easier for me to get ‘in the zone.’ Many of the props I used to use are gone now, because I know why.

So think about how you think, and what makes it all work for you – and push that block a bit further away!

Lynne Connolly, http://www.lynneconnolly.com