Meredith Mansfield, Author

Late again. Wednesdays can be like that. Then again, so can Thursdays, obviously.

Sometimes, when I post about a problem, it almost feels as if the universe is trying to answer.

This week:

David Farland’s newsletter had a post that recalled imposter syndrome–something we all suffer from occasionally. (And may be a little of what is affecting my motivation right now, but more on that in another post.)

More to the point, Mary Kole posted about Writing Motivation, with the first suggestion being to take a break and maybe try some other creative outlets, which is basically what I’m starting to do now. The second suggestion was to write something else, but I’ve already tried that. 

I’ve downloaded a coloring book page from an author whose whimsical images of dragons are among my favorites and started playing around with that. (I picked the Easter Dragon as being appropriate to the season.) Well, I’m not coloring it in the traditional sense. I took it through a couple of programs so I could upload it into a graphics program that gives me way more colors to play with than my little set of colored pencils ever dreamed of.

Read Full Post »

As promised, this post I’m going to take a look back at the last time I remember being really excited about a story, what happened, and what, if anything it may tell me about this writers’ block.

In December, I was finishing up the polishing edit of BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM.

Not the most fun part of writing, but necessary. A time when I frequently let my imagination run free, because it isn’t needed for the editing process.

And my imagination rewarded me by serving up a missing piece of one of my back-burner stories–a retelling of the Princess Furball fairy tale. I was excited about it, but stayed the course and finished up with BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM.

Inspiration like that is a fire that burns hot–and burns out fast. Usually it’s recoverable, though, if not quite as fierce. This time . . . well, I did a little further research about that fairy tale. And discovered that the version I knew and loved was not exactly the original form. In fact, the original has some elements that I didn’t want to deal with at all.

Now, there could be a couple of ways around that. I’ll have to continue giving that some thought, but the fire was gone.

So, I tried to move on to the story I’d meant to write–or, in this case, rewrite–next anyway, MAGE STORM.

And ran out of steam in Chapter 6. Trying to work on MEADOWSWEET (my version of Princess Furball) in tandem with MAGE STORM didn’t work. (I’ve literally got like two sentences on MEADOWSWEET.) Trying to skip ahead to the sequel to MAGE STORM didn’t work. Trying to switch over to DAUGHTER OF THE REBEL MAGE (a Cinderella retelling) didn’t work.

Maybe, maybe what I need to do is to circle back and try to come up with some of those possible ways around the . . . disturbing part of the original fairy tale.

It’s also possible that I need to recharge the creative well, play in some other creative sand boxes for a while, or, well, there might be a couple of other reasons for low motivation to write at the moment. I’ll explore those possibilities in future posts.

Read Full Post »

I actually delayed this blog post in hopes that I’d do better today. But . . . nope. I have this week off and I want to use it to start re-establishing the habit of writing every day. Well, that’s the plan anyway. So far, I’ve been slacking off.

On the other hand, I haven’t been much better about anything else. All I’ve accomplished so far is some laundry, a very little bit of mowing, and walking the dog. Otherwise . . . well, sometimes the beginning of a break is like that. But now it’s time to buckle down and actually accomplish something.

Six days left.

Read Full Post »