Inspire me...

[Pedestriana]

How do you keep motivated?

I have approx 8 hours free time p/w and have started writing a novel. I have had the idea for several years and a folder crammed full of notes, images, snippets of conversation.

I have spent the last two weeks putting all of this into Scrivener, which I am trialling.

I keep getting sidetracked by trying my best to make everything accurate. Yesterday I spent half an hour looking on various maps to make sure that it was feasible for my character to get from A to B in a set timeframe, passing C en route.

Funnily enough, I'm now stuck on a scene where this character is meeting friends from an online forum for the first time.

So, how do you keep the creative juices flowing? I do carry a notebook and pen at all times.

Resist the 'make everything accurate' urge as it's just time wasting, especially as that entire episode may be edited out in later drafts! You can always alter that kind of detail later.

I would be focusing on what it is about this scene that is making you get stuck - there's always a reason. It might be that the other characters aren't fully realised enough in your head for you to write them convincingly, or that you haven't decided quite what the function of that scene is? There's a scene in my current novel (in process of significant revision) that I've had difficulty with in every draft and only this time did I finally realise it's because it's too static - several major characters meet around a hospital bed, and there's far too much backstory trying to be conveyed on too little action. I rewrote it taking most of the characters out of the hospital room and it works far better.

Emma Darwin's blog 'The Itch of Writing' has an excellent entry on 'Character-in-Action'.

Write the story and don't worry about anything else. If you want a description of something specific, then just write a footnote and keep going. Until you've got the book, you can't really start to edit as you don't know which scenes you'll be keeping.

The main problem for writers is polishing as you're going alone - resist this. Write the story, make sure it makes sense, then go through and edit it.

Thanks folks - I think I've got hung up on academic writing, having just completed a dissertation... I shall have to ease off a bit!