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Sunday, October 14, 2012

What Not Writing can Teach you about Writing

Biggest contradiction ever, right? Well, not writing can teach you plenty about writing. Let me tell you a little about my writing life for the past eleven months.

  • I get into writing so much I pretty much lived and breathed it.
  • Hardly take a break or think about anything else for nine months.
  • Finally take a break in September/October this year. Read some books. Watched a lot of Doctor Who:
Source as far back as I can trace it. Including this because blog posts without pictures are weird, and Doctor/Rose is a great pairing. :)
  • Start writing again in tiny bits.Marvel at the improval in my writing because of the break.
Okay, first. Making my life writingwritingwriting was kind of unhealthy. Well, okay, not just kind of, more like a lot. It caused me to put so much pressure on myself that I started to hate writing. (Not to mention, my prose sounded really repetitive.)
And hating writing's not right, because I love writing. 

Anyway, I took a break for a month and half and, as I said above, doing stuff like reading books and watching TV had really helped my prose. For starters, watching TV gave me a good idea how people react to stuff in ways other than "she smiled" "he laughed"  etc. And reading? It's given me even more ways to fix up that stale prose. Like, I forgot that when describing something, you could compare something to something else. Like "Professor McGonagall gave Harry a hawk-like look." (Not a quote from HP that I am aware, I just made it up on the spot, lol. If there is a quote like that in HP, then my subconscious is channeling Jo, apparently.) Rather than my usual description of a stern gaze, which is "She narrowed her eyes." Saying that a gaze is hawk-like is far more interesting.

Anyway, hope you guys liked the post! Soon I may do a post on Myers-Briggs tests and writing. Also, I just noticed that I have 29 followers. That feels like a huge milestone. Thanks guys!
Also, I don't like making commits for fear of breaking things, but I want to at least try to update this once a week. We'll see if that happens. What do you guys think of me updating the blog every Sunday?

1 comment:

  1. YES, you need time to feed your inner writer! Those kinds of breaks are so healthy for you, Allison. Good for you!

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