http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/dreir/ Friendly science fiction and fantasy forums, discussing science fiction and fantasy books, film, media, writing, conventions, and related subjects such as science and history. en Tue, 21 May 2013 06:11:49 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/dreir/ http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/dreir/128-another-way-to-find-motivation-to-write.html Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:08:24 GMT I'm a sucker for second-hand bookstores (because of the price, of course!) and a lot of the time some of the books that I grab in my buying frenzy are not exactly top-shelf material. So what happens is I try to read the book, and after at most two pages I go, 'What's this dross?/Oh god this is so boring/Yap-yap-yappy-yap/etc', and 'even *I* can write better than this!'

So I put the book down, get my notebook and begin to write. Quite possibly similar levels of dross, but at least I'm writing - at a point during which I've originally had no pressing drive to write.

Imagine if you do this a couple of times every day and manage to write one page of your own story each time as a result. You'd get 730 pages of your own story done within a year!

Of course, this means you'll have to keep a steady supply of dross around, but with second-hand bookshops, this is no longer impossible!! :D

- Dreir - ]]> dreir http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/dreir/128-another-way-to-find-motivation-to-write.html http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/dreir/124-the-in-convenience-of-maps.html Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:21:12 GMT I've always found that maps can be very useful when writing fantasy, both in helping to build your story along and in giving you more ideas on the backstory for your world.

I've also recently found that under certain circumstances, they should be ripped out of the drawing/writing pad, crumpled, torn into a hundred pieces and consigned to the flames. Especially when they're having the reverse effect of restricting your creativity and forcing your to write your story in the way that you really shouldn't.

I'm probably more vulnerable to this because I'm a map person. I doodle them out a lot - sometimes I can't even think of a story without first having a map to trigger the flow of ideas.

Thankfully, in the latest of my rethinkings on a story that's been hovering at the edges of my consciousness for years, I've realised that I just can't make any further progress without completely disregarding the map from which the initial ideas came in the first place. The source of the story has become the chains from which it could not escape. This would mostly be a good thing if the story was finished, but it's barely even started.

So, after so long, I've decided that enough is enough, and will from now on draw the maps to fit the story, not the other way around. This is probably glaringly obvious to most of you, but I'm glad to have finally realised it for myself! :D

- Dreir - ]]> dreir http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/blogs/dreir/124-the-in-convenience-of-maps.html