A page on a fence

A page on a fence
Originally uploaded by wmbittner66

I was in my car, parked in a Park-n-Ride parking lot. I'd left my keys at work. So I had to wait for my neighbor to bring me our extra set. It was pretty windy. I looked up at the fence in front of my car. I saw a page from a paperback book stuck to the fence. I seem to remember it being from a mystery novel. I probably should have taken it.

Avoiding delusion instead of searching for truth

Truth may either be relative, or non-existent. So the quest for truth may be a foolish one. So instead, I quest to rid myself of false-beliefs. I quest to become the least deluded person in history.

The Ugly Truth About Writer's Block

Writer's block is not an occasional obstacle. It's ever-present. Like a lid on a boiling pot. It's gravity. It's entropy. It's a struggle for everybody. (Except maybe bad writers who think everything they write is awesome right out of the gate.) If we writers didn't have the desire to create, to leave something behind, to be read and appreciated, we wouldn't do it. Not even if they put a gun to our head.

Writers HATE writing.

(It's just that we're so bad at everything else.)

What should come first? The backstory, or the character?

The simple answer is that it's totally up to you. Because in the long run you'll revise both so much it won't matter what you did first.

I have created characters with no back story, threw them in a scene, watched how they reacted, then created a back story for them. Then during a rewrite of that scene, they acted a little differently because of their back story. And they way they acted gave me some ideas for adding depth and texture to their back story. And so on.

And the exact same thing happened when I created a back story for a character before throwing them into a scene.

Using pictures to help you write

I did something this morning to help me write. I use a Google Sites wiki to both write my novel, as well as store ideas and notes about characters, locations, concepts, etc. And there is an option in Google Sites to make a page two columns. If the page is a chapter page, I use this format and put the narrative in the left column, and an outline and notes in the right. Now, to help me get in the mood of the scene, I've been putting images in the top of the right column. So far I've just been putting location pictures that most closely match the location I envision in my head. But I can see putting pictures of people and objects as well. And with tools like Google Images or stock photo sites, finding what you need is a breeze.