Mind Mapping your way out of problem

I last mentioned that I was having problems getting to the bottom of my plot. I needed to know exactly why the plot was happening in the first place. The problem is I had all of these thoughts but no way of linking them together and expanding upon them.

So I turned to mind mapping, a simple technique to resolve any creative problem because it's basically a mind dump. Here's a précis of the techniques suggested by Tony Buzan in The Mind Map Book

1 The quick-fire Mind Map burst

Draw a stimulating central image on a large blank page. And for 20 minutes (no more) let ideas flow as fast as possible.

Take a break (to rest the brain)

2 First reconstruction and revision

Make a new Mind Map:

Identify the major branches or Basic Ordering Ideas, combining, categorising, building up hierarchies, finding new associations, and reconsidering in the context of the whole Mind Map any ideas that initially appeared 'stupid' or ‘absurd’.

3 Incubation

Go for a walk and relax.

Sudden creative realisations often come when the brain is in a relaxed, peaceful and solitary condition- perhaps when walking, running, sleeping or daydreaming.

4 Second reconstruction and revision

Do another quick-fire Mind Map burst to consolidate the results of this integration.

Consider all the information gathered and integrated in stages 1, 2 and 3 in order to make a comprehensive

Mind Map.

5 The final stage

Search for the solution, decision or realisation which was the original creative thinking goal.

Link disparate elements in the final Mind Map, leading to major new insights and breakthroughs.

A leaky plot

Not so much of colander more of bucket without a bottom. Whilst editing I've discovered a hole in the plot that desperately needs filling.

I knew it was there, but figured I'd just ignore it since solving it will take a lot of work and thinking. Let's face it it's more enjoyable to be writing and letting it flow and worrying about plot points later.

Now is later. Working through the revisions in my spreadsheet it's easier to see where the hole's are. The problem is I'm not sure how to fix this hole, maybe I'm also scared that the potential explanation will get out of control, so I'm self editing before I even write it.

Resolving this issue has now become my main priority!  Mind Maps here i come.

Writters Block

It's been a long time since I posted and there are many reasons excuses but the main reason was writers block. I'd written 17-18,000 words and had ground to a halt. I couldn't see how to move forward. The idea of painfully sitting and reading the whole thing with a red pen was excruciating. I did it for a while but Christ it was boring. I knew I needed a new approach if this was ever to move on.

I was reading Darcy Pattisons blog and somewhere she mentioned about spreadsheet editing and since I was messing around writing short stories and doing some e-book formatting in InDesign I needed another distraction.

Spreadsheet editing takes a series of columns labelled:

• Section -  a number
• Chapter - The chapter name or number. This includes several sections.
• Purpose - Why is this section here what purpose does it serve
• Time
• Day
• Time-of-day
• Characters
• Major
• Minor
• Setting  - In a living room in an office or wherever
• Summary - I don't use this as a summary more of a place to keep all of the work that I've been editing. so it's the most up to date version of the novel
• Follow Up - bits' that need to be researched websites, images etc.

I took my original draft and broke it down into sections and at last I had something I could look at in small chunks.

Once in the spreadsheet I tried to edit directly in there, but spreadsheets are crap for editing large amounts of text, despite working on a large widescreen monitor. So I went back to basics and copied the Summary text into Q10 which I keep on a USB flash drive with PortableApps installed.

And now because I'm only ever working in chunks of 500 or 1000 words  it's easier to see what I'm working on at any given time and therefore ensure that there are consistencies and because it's always in the spreadsheet I can see at glance that I've got the character names correct and should I need to move a scene around from one place to another I can.

So with things going again it's full steam ahead.

Keep plugging away

Well it's been a while since I updated this page  and nobody seems to be reading it so what the hell? Resistance is the worst thing that we face. It's easy to come up against resistance and not break through it. As a writer with a full time job and a 3 year old it's hard to find the time to actually do the writing.

So what have I done about it? Well over the last couple of weeks I've come across a couple of really good self help books, bear in mind that I can't normally read these things as they're full of unproven platitudes for the weak willed.  So what changed? The first one "Do the work" by Steven Pressfield tells you how to break through the resistance we all feel when doing any big project but the one piece of advice i found realy useful was from an interview he did where he told a writer to just write for 2 hours in one go, ignoring all else that is going around him and not self editing as he was doing it. I never managed the 2 hours but 90 minutes was enough to type 5000 words completely unedited. I'll worry about the editing at the end, the most important thing for me right now is to get the bloody novel written.

The other book is "59 seconds" a self help book with a difference, all of the techniques have been backed up by psychological research and will take you less than a minutes to do. Want to get creative do suduko or a word finder puzzle before hand and your sensisble side will be taken care of to let your creative side do the creating. Ok, so I'm paraphrasing but you get the point.

So push past the resistance and get writing

Time Management

As I settle into this writing lark and find that life without an office is a tough gig, after all there's no boss hanging over me making sure I do my work and don't play games and no threat of being fired if I look at porn all day. So how do I motivate my self?

 It may seem absurd but I just downloaded a Daily Schedule, and although I don't really like routine, it is something I need. Now at the end of each day or in the morning I print out a copy of this and scribble on it. I don't work to the 15 minute segments that it gives but I plan roughly what I'm going to do each hour, so today I ended with this:

There's time for writing, time for study, timer for making the dinner, tidying the house and other stuff. So let me  know how you manage your time.

Spent a couple of hours working on the short stories but somehow only wrote 100 or so words. It's hard to get going sometimes and I really have to force myself to work towards the the goal of getting these books published.

Being connected to the internet is one of the biggest distractions we as writers have and it's amazing what we'll find to look at when we're meant to be doing something useful. Today I was distracted by the following:

1. looking for a new keyboard

2. looking for ways not to get distracted, which found me on the NanWriMo website

3. reading the Write or Die website

4. a rather daunting list of how many words I need to write to call my book a novel, short story or whatever else.

5. Google reader with more links to more blogs than I realistically need.

But although it wan't much today, it was something. So whatever else you do today, sit in front of screen and keyboard and write something.

The beginning

Everybody has a novel in them or so I hear. Mine has been waiting to come out for sometime, rather like an overdue baby. This one, (or will it be twins?) has been gestating for at least 15 years and somewhere along the way, not only did it change gender but species as well.

Like many people I started and stopped and started again often without a plan or sense of direction. This fine if you can do it, but what I realised is that I can't. I need to plan out my novel in order to give it a sense of direction otherwise it simply runs out of steam.

But even before that I needed to get over my fear of rejection. I was afraid that once I had finished my opus I would get rejected by publishers and agents alike. Strange for someone who makes a living out of writing (I'm a copywriter) but there you go. And then I came across an interesting blog by Joe Konrath who, whilst being published by publishers, also makes a decent living out of self publishing his work on Amazon, so that's the route I'm going to take. Once complete this book will be professionally edited and have a decent book cover, I'm simply bypassing the unnecessary gatekeepers and going it alone.

So now I have two books on the go, one is murder mystery and the other is a collection of short stories about peoples' day dreams.

One of the problems with plotting is that it isn't writing, although it requires a lot of effort, so I have my book of daydreams on the go at the same time.

The murder mystery is getting plotted as I write and the characterisations are developing all the time, and when I need a break from thinking too much I just get on and write about the daydreams.

So for now, that's as far as I've got. I hope to complete writing these books by June and have them ready for release by September. So if anyone is reading this you'll be the first to know when they're available.

I'm going to keep writing.