Crisis of Confidence

I am in the middle of a little crisis. A crisis of confidence. As with most writers (or so my reading indicates) confidence comes and goes; travels up and down and like so much else in my life, it cycles.

But I have wondered lately if it is truly possible for me to do this.

Can I write?

I try but I know I could do more.

Do I write well enough?

I’m not after a response here, I’m not asking for affirmation. I just need to talk it out.

Actually there is a lot I need to be doing, all of which will help build my confidence and skill.

Firstly, I need to write more.

Although I think about my stories a lot, I am actually writing very little at the moment. And I need to be doing some more exercises to keep my writing brain active.

One exercise suggested at a workshop was to write about an object in detail for 10 minutes; and to do this for different objects every day. It made sense to me at the time but I never followed it up. This morning I spent 10 minutes writing about my cup of coffee. Does that sound dull? I actually found it extremely useful. The exercise focused my mind on the detail and I tried hard to use appropriate descriptive words.

This brings me to my second step. I need to improve my vocabulary.

As I read I often think “That was the perfect word to use.” I don’t do enough of that in my own writing. 

There are several ways to improve vocabulary: subscribe to A Word a Day; use the thesaurus and read widely. I subscribe and read anything I can get my hands on; I need to be making the conscious effort to use the thesaurus more.

These seem to be my main weaknesses and the more I work on them the better I will get and the more confident I will become (I hope).

Happy Scribbling

Cycles

I am waking in the dark now. Rising before the sun. It happened so quickly that it came as quite a shock and I checked the clocks repeatedly that first morning in case I had woken in the middle of the night. But the sun turned the edges of the sky a brilliant pink not long after and I relaxed into my writing.

I have recently been focused on cycles. All sorts of cycles, but not the bicycle sort. Life seems to move in cycles, mostly for women it is rumoured that we work on 28 days, men only 24 hours. We all see ups and down, periods of high energy and periods of low.

Thinking over this I started to think about those natural cycles we see around us – the seasons, day and night, life cycles of the cabbage moth decimating my broccoli, just to name a few. There is so much happening around us, changing around us that we can use in our writing.

There is so much to each cycle: the processes, the physics of it, the physical changes, the colours, the impact, the next step. What would happen if the cycle stopped or went a different way, or even reversed?

The fun with writing fantasy is that anything can happen. A pudgy green caterpillar does not have to turn into a white moth. Perhaps it stays as a caterpillar, only changing colour depending on what it eats, or there is no change at all other than size. Maybe it changes into something very different; it may emerge from its chrysalis with a hard thorny shell, metallic wings and sting in its tail.

We need to have some understanding of what does happen around us before we can change it or move it or do something different with it. We could have a night that lasts for a week with three moons but what would this mean for the world beneath this black sky? What would it mean for the plants? Or the water bodies?

But even for the non-fantasy writer looking more closely at nature can be of benefit. Partly because looking at the detail in life helps us to be better writers and if we notice the detail we will hopefully include it in our writing, making it richer and deeper and more engaging for the reader.

The point is that we can have some fun with what we do and we can take from around us to do that. I recently watched a whole documentary on the lakes district in Britain because when I saw the advertising for it, the scene they showed was breathtaking. The greens were vivid, it was open yet sheltered and I immediately saw two of my characters discussing their current situation beneath the tree. Standing close to each other, him trying to be calm, her voice growing louder…

I love that feeling, when it all just falls into place right there. It didn’t need the commentary of the fishing in the area, or the history of the previous land owners. It just needed that perfect landscape, just the right spot for my characters to take off and shine. It just needed the right colour green. But I then I have this thing about green…have I told you about it?

Try this exercise – find a different place or landscape and put your characters into it. How do they react? Is it right for them, are they comfortable?

Happy Scribbling

Picture from aptgarden.blogspot