Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Of Writing and Sleeping by Konnie Enos


Trying to come up with an idea for a blog post is a daunting task. Especially when you can’t come up with even one thought that could be extrapolated into sufficient coherent words to fill several pages.

As is usually the case, when I can’t come up with ideas, I start reading hoping to jar something loose. My efforts yesterday included reading some of my stories.

I started with a few of my WIPs that I never managed to complete at least one rough draft on. The longest one I read was only around thirty pages. The next longest was barely over ten. Another one was three or four scenes, while the shortest was only one scene.

And although most of my stories are romance, only one of the ones I read yesterday was. The others were either fantasy or sci-fi.

And none of them jarred anything loose but it wasn’t late yet. Thinking about getting my mind off of finding an idea for my blog, hoping that would help germinate an idea, I decided to look at my fantasy, which I’ve been editing lately.

All that served to do was to keep me editing just one more scene until about two in the morning. Then Jerry’s alarm woke me up only a few hours later. So now I’m tired and still not able to come up with an idea that will fill more than a page.

Since I hadn’t had enough sleep yet, after his alarm woke me, I went back to bed and ended up sleeping past my alarm. Meaning, I slept longer than I should have and now I don’t have enough time to formulate any other idea than rambling about why I’m now so tired.

And I can’t help but think that it tends to be a recurring theme with me that I don’t get anywhere near enough sleep the night before I’m supposed to write the blog post. And part of the reason that is, is because I stay up way too late, either writing something else or down the rabbit hole known as Facebook all while trying to generate an idea for the blog. Then I have to get up earlier than I usually do to actually write the blog, which of course, I usually don’t even start the night before.

Since this happens frequently when I have to get a post written, you would think it’s a regular occurrence, but really it isn’t. It doesn’t even happen every time I have to write for our blog.

It's far more likely that I’ll be well rested on Wednesday morning yet have no idea what to write about and just do a rambling stream of thought. Which happens far more frequently than I admit. Mostly because it works for me.

Then there are mornings like today when I can’t seem to think in full sentences and have to keep backtracking because I wasn’t making sense. And everybody knows the harder you try to pull out the words, the more elusive they are.

Right now, all I can come up with is that I have way too much planned to do today especially considering I’ve only had about four hours of sleep. On the plus side, I managed to do a rough edit on nearly half of my completed fantasy WIP. Unfortunately, most of what I did edit didn’t include fixing the POV issues, which means I have to go back over those chapters again.

I also think I should change the ending because the last couple of chapters feel too rushed. Too much like I’m trying to get in too much information into too short a space. Worse still, it feels that way because I am trying to get too much information into too short a space.

At this point, I have no more time to contemplate the problem because I have to get my post and then start preparing for my busy day. I imagine I’m going to be crashing from sheer exhaustion about the time the sun goes down today.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

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