The Outcome of My Recent Resolution

Anyone with even a slight penchant for cynicism probably would have predicted the outcome of my little "I'm going to wake up early to write" idea without even trying. Yes, you cynics, you were right, that never happened. Not once.

HOWEVER, it is my pleasure to stick my tongue out at you cynical bastards and say I STARTED TO WRITE ANYWAY. (Do you like how I've suddenly turned this into some sort of bizarre adversarial thing between me and unnamed "cynical bastards"? I can be dramatic like that for no good reason other than it amuses me.)

The point is, all of a sudden* I found the energy for it. Isn't that great? Last Saturday, during the little one's nap, I sat down on the couch with my laptop instead of at my desk on my gaming computer where I go to play The Sims. I reread the 48K or so words I had done on the sequel to The City Darkens and then began adding to them. I've written about 10K more so far.

Onwards and upwards. What obstacle have you overcome recently? Even the little ones count.

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* It didn't happen out of nowhere. It's all due to my friend and beta-reader Kathryn, who finished reading what I had written and told me the main character, Ginna, is a badass. And I was like, "Yeah, Ginna is a badass. I really like Ginna." And all of a sudden I wanted to be writing Ginna again.

Finding a Way to Write

Other than the aberration of NaNoWriMo, I haven't written since this summer. I haven't been in the mood. And yet, I have been getting ideas for new stories. So I've thought about working on them, but I just can't bring myself to do that while my two WiPs, which are both around 50K words at the moment, languish in the background. Meanwhile, my incredibly talented beta-reader (this should probably actually say "unpaid editor," because she's that amazing), Kathryn, has been reading one of the WiPs at my request, and showering me with encouraging praise, also at my request, in an effort to jump-start my mojo again. So far, to no avail. And it's all starting to affect my mental health, as not-writing tends to do after enough time passes.

I could whine for several paragraphs about why this is all happening, but what it really comes down to more than anything is time management. And what I realized this morning is that what I must figure out a time for writing other than during the little one's nap, because that's not working at the moment.

The only other time I can come up with is in the early morning. This time period hasn't historically been a successful one for writing, but I think I have to try it, because maybe doing that will kick my mojo back into gear and I will be able to do it during the little one's naps again. I suppose we'll see. At worst, I'll wake up early a couple of times and get a couple of thousand words written, and then I'll decide I can't maintain the schedule, and that will be that. At this point, a couple of thousand words is better than no words at all.

I'm kind of excited to try this. :)

How about you? Do you have any tricks for jump-starting your creativity when you're in a slump?