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A Writers block cure for NaNoWriMo
When writing, sometimes it is best to get away from the writing to see and experience other things. This is especially true if you are having a writer’s block. By seeing other things, you might get a new perspective on the object which has consumed most of your focus. This new perspective may be the breakthrough to help you overcome your writer’s block. Sometimes watching/reading the news will give you an idea, or sometimes you need to get out and talk to people. Perhaps go to a nearby bar to find the local color as Faulkner and Hemingway did. Or, possibly, you should do the opposite; go somewhere completely alone and commune with nature as Thoreau did at Walden. The snap peas get lonely too. (Thoreau is rumored to have talked to his vegetables.) Whatever method you use, the point is to set aside what you are working on completely. Don’t think about it at all. Give your brain a break. Just like any part of the body, the brain gets tired. Eventually, you must come back to the writing that you want to get done. At this point you put on your favorite thinking music, cozy up to your…
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National Novel Writers Month (NaNoWriMo)
It’s the first week of NaNoWriMo. Have you started working on your novel yet? You should and soon. You may love to read, but find it difficult to put together a novelette, much less a full length novel. What topic to write about is one of the toughest questions. First you start on one, then switch to another before even making sense of the first. There are so many great topics out there that need someone, anyone, to put them into words. After a burst of writing for a week, you look back at your progress and think “I haven’t made it anywhere.” You parse your scraps of stories and wonder “How can I piece some of these together to make a decent story under my deadline?” You realize that this piece can go with that piece, and then if you write another page or two you could link them to another piece. Finally you have something resembling a story. But it needs polishing. You rewrite it and come in just under deadline. Then after it’s all done, you look around and realize you still have disconnected scraps of stories waiting to be linked to something. “That’s OK,” you tell…