Low Down In Between Blues

[Christa Faust]

In the week (or so) right after I hit a tough deadline, I always seem to find myself wandering around in a sort of scatterbrained daze, unable to focus or concentrate and constantly feeling like I’ve forgotten something critical. I wanted to be done with CHOKE HOLD a month ago, but it got derailed by this upfront paying gig and so now I’m way behind. I was hoping to slip right back into it, but I feel restless and unsure of every word. I know I’ll come around eventually, like I always do, but I wish there was something I could do to speed the process. It’s like a kind of writer’s PMS.

[Sandra Ruttan]

Sometimes I just have to force myself to push through, until things click. Then it's a bit like getting your second wind in a race, but until then it sucks.

[Paul Guyot]

Any time I've ever tried to speed up the process, it's resulted in disaster, creatively.

[Stephen Blackmoore]

I leave myself little reminders, usually a music list of songs I've put together, to jog me back into the mindset of the story. I try to surround myself with it as much as possible, listening to the same music over and over, driving to some of the locations I've set things in, and so on. Otherwise, I'm stuck going to the beginning and trying to piece it all back together, and that just hurts.

Do you have anything outside of the novel itself that reminds you of it? Any kind of outside tag? Maybe hit some MMA fights to get back into the spirit of it?

When I don't have something like that, I try to change my environment a little. Go do something I might not normally do just to shake things up in my head a bit.

But, yeah, there's really no speeding it up. It clicks when it clicks.

[Christa M. Miller]

Sorry, that describes daily existence for me. Where do you think best? For me it's either in bed right before I sleep, or in the shower. (Cliche I know, but true.)

Once I figure out where to start, I ideally go to work where it's easiest for me to do so - in a coffee shop or our "study" upstairs. But that's probably because both places are away from the kids.

Even if I spend a good part of time staring into space, at least my subconscious is at work because I've devoted time to the WIP rather than getting distracted with day-to-day stuff, you know?