#IWSG: Not a Thing in My Head But Words

This post is part of the IWSG blog hop. If you’d like to sign up, here’s the link.

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(Update: It appears my decision regarding quitting the group has been made for me. I looked at the list to see whose blogs to comment on, and I’m no longer on it. Makes sense, given my erratic posting. So, this is the last IWSG post for me for a while.)

My ponytail is still scrunched up into my hair when I wake up this morning. And panic sets in.

I’ve been so focused on writing my WIP that I haven’t even thought about my monthly IWSG post. I missed last month. Will they kick me out if I don’t have anything this month?

Maybe I should just quit. Maybe being part of a group is too much for me right now.

And yet, habit kicks in, or something like it. I pick up the laptop and open it up.

What on earth am I going to write about? I’m still groggy, miasma is making the laptop slightly blurry, and my WIP is calling from the back of my head, begging me to keep working on it until the adventure is done.

I still don’t know what I’m going to write about.

Pants it, I tell myself, and type whatever pops into my head. My hair feels funny because I accidentally slept with my hair still pulled back into a ponytail, so I start there.

And the words just flow.

And that’s the point of this month’s post. Yes, I’m winging it as I type this. But sometimes it’s better to just write, if only for the sake of habit, because, these days, when I open my laptop, my mind is already getting ready, even if it’s still groggy from sleep. Opening the laptop is the trigger that it’s time for the muse to show up.

I’m finding this is true in my WIP as well. On days when I don’t want to write, I’ll set a very small goal, sometimes as small as 250 words. I open the laptop and habit kicks in. I write down a brief (sometimes not so brief) synopsis of what I want to happen, and the ideas flow. Before I know it, I have that scene mapped out and written and the next one in the queue.

Granted, there are days when I really can’t do more than 250. Even on those days, habit helps. Because it keeps my mind trained that writing time has a structure and in that structure it’s time to get something out.

Twyla Tharp talks about this in more detail in her book, The Creative Habit. Even though her background is in dance, what she describes can easily be translated over to writing, everything from her experience of the “empty room” to putting on her leg warmers in the morning, even when she doesn’t feel like it. Putting on clothes specific to dance gets her moving enough to get in the taxi, which takes her to the studio, which starts the process.

It’s a great book. I highly recommend it.

So now this post is written and I’m about to hit Publish. And my mind is already drifting toward my WIP because my laptop is open, my WIP is open, and the habit has kicked in.

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