If Wishes were Horses...

[clarentine]

...I wouldn't be slogging through the mud, eh?

As Murphy would have it, now that my latest Work In Progress (WIP) has finally started talking to me again and looking like I might actually make some progress, my brain is otherwise too tired to really gain ground on the project.

This project - the pirate story, whose protag is Josh - is a strange creature for me. I'm not sure whether my reluctance to push forward has to do with the fact that (a) I have some idea where I'm going with this one, or (b) I'm just not connecting as firmly as I'd like with Josh, or (c) the worldbuilding (as in, I've stepped outside my comfort zone and I can't get my feet under me) isn't reeling me in. Or any combination thereof.

That said, I may gain some forward momentum tonight, simply because I'm too tired to fight my subconscious.

I wish I could figure out how to release that Muse without exhausting myself first.

Comments

If you find a way. . . .

[docdad2.livejournal.com]

I wish I could figure out how to release that Muse without exhausting myself first.

If you find a way to do this, Please let me know - and then immediately post it to OWW for the rest. We all suffer from the "But I want to sleep now. . . " complaint.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

You know, I've found that working in different worlds where you're not comfortable is helpful.

It's going to sound odd, but I think...the more you familiarize yourself with the unfamiliar, it gets easier.

Or at least that's how it worked for me.

(But ohmygosh, if it works for you, take good notes, because eventually they get confusing. :D)

Re: If you find a way. . . .

[clarentine]

I wish it was as simple as physical exhaustion--which, by itself, probably tells me something more about the reason it takes a reduction of mental barriers to uncage the Muse. *I* created the bars of that box. I ought to be able to cut through them at will. But what else do they release?

Hmm.

[clarentine]

It's going to sound odd, but I think...the more you familiarize yourself with the unfamiliar, it gets easier.

You'll get no argument from me on that. I like learning new things, for the thrill of mastery as much as for the knowledge itself, but at the moment I feel like I've traveled to a place where I know three words and have to step up and deliver a soliloquy. *g*

As for research, yeah. I have one research document of something in excess of 180 pages. I typed my notes so that I could search them easily - and that's working just fine. I spent the winter of 2005 combing the card catalogs and internet and book bibliographies for books on pirates and botanists and the places they intersected. InterLibrary Loan is your friend!

But I'm still feeling distanced from my protag, and that I do not like.

Bah.