Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.
How do you keep from overthinking your story?
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Sometimes I feel like thinking is the bulk of writing. While I'm walking around living my life, some part of my brain is always working on writing. So the idea that you can overthink it is a little odd to me…but I can see how you can get stuck thinking and never actually produce.
My cure for that: deadlines!
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Before I had publishing contracts, I had my critique group. Besides all the help they gave me on polishing my writing, they also served as a source of external pressure. I needed to crank out some words because my partners were expecting them. So, that helped me move forward, even if I wasn't entirely happy with what I wrote.
I've use National Novel Writing Month in a similar way. If you're not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is an invitation to write 50,000 in one month (November each year), which is enough words to count as a novel by most counts. That's faster than I usually write, and though the work definitely needs a lot of revision afterwards, it can be helpful to jumpstart a project.
Since I have a tendency to fall down Research Rabbit Holes, a feeling that I have limited time to finish is good for me. So that I don't give up on the good by trying to get to perfect. Getting closer to perfect is what revisions are for!
So, how do you pull yourself out of it if you find yourself overthinking something? I'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments!
NaNo is the only deadline I make use of, and it seems to work for me. The rest of the time, I go with the flow and see what happens
ReplyDeleteI've also used NaNo as a way to force myself to write quickly and not overthink..
ReplyDeleteIt's easy not to overthink. Just get rid of your brain. ;)
ReplyDeleteHa! I might need it later.
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