What do you do?

[EntAllat]

So, you're not in that same head space any more, and you can't find it again. As a writer, do you have a way of getting back there? Do you just try to pick up where you left off and if it takes you in a new direction, oh well? Do you abandon the project?

I'm curious to know who else has faced this, and what you did (if anything) to overcome this obstacle.

I thought I'd add that, yeah, this has happened to me before. There was one fic that came to me unbidden, fully formed and with some kick-ass dialog. (And it wouldhave made a great gift for a friend of mine who loves that type of fic.) Unfortunately I could only jot down some notes and when I was able to come back to it ... it was gone. I've never gotten it back.

That's only happened once or twice. Since most of my fics have that soundtrack inspiration, it's easy to pick them back up after a while.

[EntAllat]

Though I've usually lost whatever flow I had before, what I come up with instead is usually better.

I wonder what this "flow" we all experience actually IS.

Like could someone do an mmri with someone writing "in the flow" and then another one of someone writing who's gotten out of the flow, and compare.

Cause one is night and the other one is day.

It's like the difference between hamburger and unicycles. HUGE.

Nifty idea. I'd love to see that too and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was similar in some way to a meditative state. Would the brain light up differently if you were being truly creative and 'in the zone' as opposed to say, writing an email or doing a second draft mixup if a story?

[Misplaced]

Fantastic thread... and as a writer who has come back after a looooooooong hiatus. I had some half finished stuff that I had ideas on but never finished... and I'm discovering in the case of being absent for years, I have a very different perspective.

But yeah, I do much of what was shared already. I have soundtracks for some of my stories. (If you read "Don't Want to Let Go," you'll see that in the A/N I share the song that helped me capture that "flow" for that ficlet). I also go back and re-read what I have already written. I'm a very organic writer and very much character-driven, so I've always been extremely open to new directions. Usually when I lose "it" (whatever the heck "it" is), and after being patient find "it" again, "it" has evolved... and often turns out better than I originally planned anyway.

Shoot, when I started "Reflections of Another Universe" it really was only meant to be a "short story"... but the "flow" led me elsewhere. And I never, ever, EVER intended to plan a sequel when I finally finished posting it the first time at HoT. Now it's gonna be a freakin' trilogy. For this I blame WarpGirl. Just because I can.

Some things aren't quite like that. "Unexepect This!" I sat and wrote in one day. But it's not really like my other work. Just some fun.

Life happens. And in my experience, life happening often makes better writing in the end.

Oh and some things I do write out of order, some I do not. *shrug* Just depeneds on how it comes to me. Like "Goh Veh" (not posted here yet, but at ff.net). I wrote the flashback scenes years ago, but the middle stuff just didn't come together right, so I gave up on it for a while. And lots and lots of life happened. And I'm not to disappointed at how it turned out when I finally got back to it. It went differently than I planned originally and I'm glad.

Alright I've been verbose enough. Somebody stun me with a phase pistol so I can finally shut up!

[WarpGirl]

Shoot, when I started "Reflections of Another Universe" it really was only meant to be a "short story"... but the "flow" led me elsewhere. And I never, ever, EVER intended to plan a sequel when I finally finished posting it the first time at HoT. Now it's gonna be a freakin' trilogy. For this I blame WarpGirl. Just because I can.

Well, I've never been so happy to be blamed in my life. Because everybody benifits.

I applaud your bravery though coming back to a fandom after years. I want to go back to KOTOR but I'm terrified.

[Linda]

Usually when I have an idea for a short story, if I get on it right away. I get a draft written. Then it is just a matter of revision and refining and spell check. And running it by a beta. Longer stories, especially multi-part ones are more likely to get abandoned with me. The complexity overwhelms me. I have only done a couple of these longer stories. One turned out well though I was scared to death of putting up chapters without knowing how the end would turn out. I don't like to work that way. So I am trying to finish this novella length story before I submit any of it. But it is languishing even though it is the story I most want to write! Even though I have an outline and some chapters written and a character list, real life things keep whacking me on the head and I feel differently each time I sit down to write more of this story. So trying for some cohesiveness is difficult.

[enterprikayak]

I write blodges and blodges of notes and bits of dialogue in one big horrible, uncontrollable, sentient-being-takeover document.

Then I organize all the blodges of writing into chronological order.

Then I start at the beginning, and start to turn the nuts and bolts into sentences and paragraphs. And if I get stuck, I skip ahead and do a later scene. And as I think of new stuff, I scroll down into the horrible part I haven't unsnarled yet, and I add more blodges.

Eventually, one day, the notes are gone, and I have a story.

The awful part is in the middle, when a good chunk of the story is completed, but the notes part is still getting longer and longer (as I add more and more meat to the story in the form of more hysterically penned future blodges) and you're TRYING to GET RID OF the blodgey notes part, and it keeps just getting longer and stickier, like an elephant growing a cancerous long tail that won't stop.

But finally, it forms itself into a coherent thing.

[WarpGirl]

So chaos theory? I wish I could do that, I truly do. For some reason it sounds easier. But I have tried and it won't work. I must do everything in chronological order. Chapter by chapter, scene by scene.

[Misplaced]

So chaos theory? I wish I could do that, I truly do. For some reason it sounds easier. But I have tried and it won't work. I must do everything in chronological order. Chapter by chapter, scene by scene.

Oh man, I am way, way too type right-brained to commit to that. I'm being a little less organic working in "Dark Echoes"... trying to have an outline (for the sake of my sanity) but already the characters decided they wanted to try something different than I had intended. So meh. I go where they take me. It's all about the characters.

I am jealous of those that have a much clearer picture of where their stories are going. I know Rigel Kent has said that he works from a strict outline and his Endeavor series is incredible.

I think the secret is finding what ignites your personal muse and running with it.

[WarpGirl]

You know it's funny... I have a very basic outline of events that I want to happen. But dialogue and details I never ever plan. But I still need to write in chronological order. And if I can't it's writers block for YEARS.

[aadarshinah]

I'm a chronological person myself. I can't even talk about my day out of order, not even to complain aobut something that just happened. Usually I end up having the whole fic blocked out in my mind before I sit down to write it, but occassionally they just kinda happen. It scares me when that does. Though I did once write a 26-chapter fic with the sole intention of the last line being, "Oh my god, I hope it's not to late," when it quite obviously was....

But my big thing is chapter titles. Wyrd, I know, but I have to know what the titles of my chapters will be before I even sit down to write a fic. For one I used this whole series of "In Which I....", which I plotted out about a year before I ended up writing the story. For another I did letters - greek letters for the first, NATO for the second, and Hebrew for the third - and yet another I did it as movements of a symphany. Some of the fun is taken out with my ENT fic, 'cause it's all episode titles, but some of them do have subtitles and those I've plotted out long before I'm going to end up writing them.

Now if only I could get over this awful depressed-hump-mood I'm in and actually write something...

[WarpGirl]

Chocolate helps. Chocolate always helps.

[aadarshinah]

I know it does... which makes this stupid diet all the worse.

[WarpGirl]

You know I spent 2 years under the care of doctors telling me what and how to eat. And they all said, it doesn't matter why you need to be on a diet, or what the diet is, you need treats! I'm not kidding. One candy bar will not hurt, if you need to feel better, have a treat.

[Rigil Kent]

I wish I could help you, Aquarius, but I'm very much in the same boat as you are in regards to my Endeavour stuff (and my Star Wars fics and my NCIS fic ... but in those cases, I blame the utter and complete suckitude of the source material for killing the inspiration with two shots to the chest, and one to the head.) I know exactly how the next installment needs to unfold ... I'm just finding it extremely difficult to get the words or general inspiration to function. With my ongoing Divergent Paths story, I just set it aside for a small eternity and was somehow able to pick it back up without too much difficulty.

If you figure it out, though, could you clue me in? Please? Pretty please?

[WarpGirl]

I truly believe the only real answer is to pray lightening strikes again. I'm hoping for my KOTOR, but it's been 3 years. That said I hope Endevour's lightening strikes you between the eyes soon Rigil.