Monday, January 14, 2008

Just Thinking

I haven't really been racking up the word count over the past month and a half. But does that mean I haven't been writing? I don't think it does.

Had a lovely lunch with Fleur and Moe yesterday. We talked about lots of stuff but mostly about writing. That's just what Pirates seem to do when they get together. Moe said something about how non-writers don't get that writing isn't just the physical act--that there's a lot of writing that goes on when we're nowhere near a notebook or computer. I saw an interview with Tim Robbins once, and he talked about how his kids would tease him when they'd go into his office and see him staring out the window. "You said you were working." "I am."

That's the kind of writing I've been doing. Making notes, both mental and actual, about characters and situations and plots and settings. I've been doing this for Vesta and for MMG. Things are falling into place. You can almost hear the clicking some days. And it feels like playing in this mode. Anything can happen. It's not written down yet, you see, so it's still maleable. The clay hasn't been fired. I even had a flash for TNN yesterday morning: Southern Gothic, but with humor. Groovy.

The hard part is to realize that we are still being creative. That we are "writing." Because we don't have something to show to others. I've been beating myself up over being blocked. But I'm not. All kinds of good things are happening. Can't wait to see where all this leads when I do start committing it to "paper."

2 comments:

YA Sleuth said...

I couldn't agree more: brewing is just as important.
And lunch was good. Got me fired up to revise the first draft of my third YA.

The One and Only John said...

I once heard that fifteen minutes of planning can save five hours of execution, or something like that, I'm not a numbers person. However, I'm sure doing prep work can save time in rewrites. I have a similar situation sometimes at work, though it never comes up, I sometimes have to stare at what I'm working on, and figure out how best to do it. Even though there's not much to show for it, once I have to do revisions, it's so solid in my head it takes less time than it would have had I simply thrown lines onto the drawing.