Write-vember Diaries: Day 14

Sometimes all you need is a cup of tea and Bake Off

Inner-ramblings-turned-outer-writings of a girl trying to hit 50k in 30 days

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Hello hello one and all! We are very nearly halfway through Write-vember/ NaNoWriMo and the days are clipping past at a PACE. Anyone else feeling the hurtle towards 30th November?!

Today’s been a great day for writing, pondering life, and imagining the future. I’ve got this week’s Bake Off on in the background, so let’s get to it.

Daily word count: 2,025/ 1,667
Total word count: 21,629 / 50,000
% complete: 43%

Music of choice: Hades soundtrack

From the game of the same name, I love writing to this quick, rich soundtrack. The game has you play as Zagreus, Hades’ son, trying to escape the underworld, and the other Greek Gods bestow you gifts along the way. Where the format of the game is rogue-like (if you die, you go back to the start) there’s a persistence and pace to the soundtrack that really propels me into keep going keep going keep going as I write. And the artwork and characterisation (hands up if you love the Greek Gods) is so beautiful and impeccable that I can’t help but be inspired by their world-building when I turn to mine.

If you can’t tell, I love the creativity in this game, and it’s definitely one to add to The Archives at a later date. So if you’ve played it or watched people play it (like me) then I’d love to hear from you!

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Session Notes

Despite being tired yesterday, I had still been inspired by my character’s current scene. So imagine my surprise today when I rocked up and found the page left me entirely lacklustre. How could that be? Yesterday it was golden, an intriguing place to explore and create. Why were the vibes so different? Why was I struggling to connect with the key character I had introduced?

During a little tidying this morning, YouTube offered me this video from bestselling SFF author Brandon Sanderson. Published during a previous NaNoWriMo, I suspect the algorithm sensed a clever opportunity to hook me. And hook me it did. The video includes Sanderson’s 5 tips for writing during this month, one of which is to have your characters tell you their life story.

So far, I’ve talked directly to my characters in my mind, and I’ve confronted my characters on the page when they’ve misbehaved, but I’ve not sat them down and asked them to tell me their life’s story.

via Pinterest

Facing down a scene that wasn’t sparking joy, I opened a new page and asked one of my characters to sit with me for a cup of tea. When he - the secondary main character - was ready, I asked him:

Tell me your life’s tale

And off we went, writing solidly for 45 minutes. The funny thing was, I barely touched the full background of his character. While it started with his family heritage, it evolved into something more of a historic, world-building deep-dive. I found out how magic was taken from a portion of the world, and how it was passed down through generations. I discovered why some of the families or realms or households (I am not tied to any terminology yet) fought with one another, and what led them to war.

These notes had always been roughly stored in the back of my mind. But they were simple notes in a blurry peripheral vision. Today they became more solid, more visible. Of course, this is still a first draft. She’s messy and haphazard. She knows better than to pretend that anything she offers is the end result. But there’s something here. A lump of coal that could be refined into something shinier.

So it wasn’t that I pitched up today ‘struggling to connect’. The work wasn’t ‘lacklustre’ and the vibes weren’t off. It’s just that I was looking in the wrong place. In the past, I think I would have forced myself through the scene I was already writing. Pressure of word counts and self-imposed expectations would have kept me stuck baking a cake that I didn’t want, just because I had those ingredients in the house. But no one should ever eat cake they don’t want. All I had to do was take a short stroll to the shops for some new ingredients, seek out a trusted recipe, and bake the banoffee pie I truly wanted to eat.

Ok, Bake Off analogy done now. As is the episode - and I’m starving!

But I do wonder how many times I could’ve solved a creative block by just asking a character to tell me a different story for a short while? It’s certainly something I’ll do in future!

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Shelf-Talkers

Here are a couple of reminders to hang out in the Art & Illustration area of Substack - it can be a delight. Check out these sweet posts from

Jo Scott

and

Karin Celestine

celebrating their successes!

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Have you had any unusual successes with your creative projects this month?

Thank you for reading and see you tomorrow! <3