Sitting at the Keyboard and Making the Tippy Tappy Noises.

Diary of Being a Writer; Month 57.

Last month I was talking about getting back into writing after a break and how taking some of my writing time to just potter and ponder was invaluable, and it was. I love the ideas I came up with. Now it is time to get back to the discipline of actually writing. Not researching, not plotting, not planning, but actual words on a page. To achieve this, I turned to some of the writing exercises we did in my last crime writing course.

They were incredibly helpful. Especially at getting me to sit at the actual computer instead of wafting around the house.

You may not know how to start your story, but if you have had the characters and ideas running around your head for long enough, you probably know what they will do in a situation prompted by a writing exercise. And the fun bit is finding out more about them, discovering something you hadn’t known and even though that bit of writing may never be seen again, it can really help you flesh out your story. I discovered mine has a domineering mother who would help her cover up a murder. That may not come up in the book but, good to know. It tells me a bit more about my character that I didn’t know before.