Thursday, April 29, 2010

What to do in a slump

Osiyo!

Has it been a month since my last post? Really? What a BAD, BAD writer I've been!

But hopefully some great stuff has come from my time away. I set aside the wip I was working on and pulled Tobi and Tanner back out, with the official writing title of "Healing Whispers" tagged on it. I set my wonderful critique group on it to help me tear it apart and get it ready for an agent/editor pitch in June. We are having our every other year FAB Summer Heat Mini Conference again this year, and I can't wait to polish this baby off and get it sent to a publisher to hopefully meet the real world. (That would be all of you reading this!)

So I got edits and crits up to chapter five back from the girls, and hit a slump last week and have gotten very little done on it since.
I think it's because I have another book to get written by summer and that one is not cooperating in the slightest for me! I have a tentative premise, a tentative hero (first name only), and his father's name (again, first only). I have the heroine's mother's name (yep- you guessed it- first name only) and that's about it. I do have a possible town in mind. All that's left of the town today, I believe, is the cemetery. I need to research more on that whole idea to solidify it.

In the meantime, that story is giving me fits with HW! I need to focus!

What do you do when you have one on the burner gumming your concentration, and the next in the prep stages NOT eating away at you, so you end up getting very little of anything accomplished on either one? I'd really like to know.

Donadagohvi

6 comments:

Alyssa Fox said...

When I get an idea for a new manuscript, I write down a few things about it and then moved back to the current. That's usually enough to get the new one to behave, so I can move on and work on the current. If that doesn't help then I take a couple of days break to clear my head and that helps.

Gale Stanley said...

That's kinda what I'm doing now. I'm polishing up a first draft and book 3 is in the back of my mind. Whenever I get a brainstorm for 3 I jot it down and go back to what I'm working on. By the time I really get into 3, I should have qutie a bit settled.

Calisa Rhose said...

These are great...usually. For some reason this new one is just not coming to me at all yet.

Elisabeth-I do that too. But that's not my problem with this new one. It not coming to me is what's distracting me from edits on the first one. lol I HAVE to have a first draft by summer and I've got NOTHING! big sigh

Thanks for the comments.

Riley Quinn said...

Something I learned from DD and Elle - make a list of 20 possible conflicts for the hero and heroine both and 10 conflicts for each secondary character. Even if it's a little crazy, write it down. You'd be amazed at all the ideas that come flooding in. When I do this, I usually get whole scene ideas pop into my head. Hope the muddle clears up for you soon!

Anonymous said...

If it's a matter of being stuck, I jot down a list of 20 plot changes I make to the story.

If it's because I'm intimidated by the work, I carve it into tiny bite-sizes and put those bites on my schedule. Then I seek partners for sprinting to keep my butt in the chair.

Calisa Rhose said...

I'll try these. Thanks. I was hoping someone would have some suggestions to help me get this going. Lists of 10, I never thought of that.