July Ruminations

I had planned to have a productive writing month. I actually set a huge word count goal, but found that I was had trouble writing it. Instead, I was doing a lot of planning. I’ve always been more of a pantser (“fly by the seat of your pants’ type of writer), but over the years I’ve noticed that some type of planning would be helpful.

The thing for me is that I have to find the right balance of planning just enough, but not planning too much. There have been times that I’ve planned too much for a story and discovered that I need some level of excitement and mystery when I write a draft. If I have too much planned out, I lose interest in writing the story. I have a few story ideas that I’ve thrown out my notes on and am waiting until I lose track of some of the details.

In the past I’ve found Susan Dennard’s thoughts on writing and planning to be helpful (second topic on the page) and I had adapted her system into one of my own and that’s what I’ve gone back to this month. So I haven’t put a lot of words on the page, but I’ve been working through some of the details that I think would have presented issues if I didn’t work through them. And that’s still progress.

Here are a few chats about creativity that I found recently and appreciated:

>> Claire Marshall on creativity. The entire interview is good, but I really appreciated what she had to say around the 5 – 6 minute mark. It’s something I’ve been more intentional about this year. (And I also just added a bunch of older movies to my Netflix queue. Time to start watching them! :))

>> This post on the Carve Out Time for Art Insta. I especially loved the last sentence of the first paragraph in the caption.

Also, if you’re interested in reading more about what to do in the Twin Cities, I wrote a post all about it over on The Siberian American. Olya just had surgery and was looking for posts that she could put up during her recovery, so head on over to say hi and send some well wishes to Olya!

What’s been on your mind this month?

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