Practical Ways Of Writing With Chronic Illness- Part 2
PART 2: When you're not feeling 100%
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So Part 2 covers suggestions for when you want to write or work on your current project but aren’t feeling 100% yet want be productive. You can find Part 1 here.
THINGS TO DO WHILE HAVING BRAIN FOG/ MIGRAINES
-Sometimes when I have brain fog I can still watch cartoons. So if you can, watch a Disney film for 15 minutes or a film you’ve seen before. Find the characters goal (what they want), motivation (why they want it) and conflict (what’s stopping them from reaching their goal.) Note down the inciting incident ( what kicks the action off and sets the story in motion.) You can leave a gap between watching and thinking i.e. if you fall asleep and then later on in the day or the next day answer the questions. This will train your brain to identify key things in stories and make storytelling instinctive, quicker and easier.
e.g Cinderella
Inciting Incident – The family receiving an invitation to the Prince’s ball.
Cinderella’s Goal- She wants to go the ball
Motivation-To get out of the house, to have a evening of fun in her dreary life. Also she wants to see the palace and the prince.
Conflict- Her step mother forbids her to go.
-Use Pinterest or Milanote to create a collage inspired by your book. You can capture the mood, the world your book is set in and the characters appearances. Or perhaps create one for your next book. You could also create a collage of your favourite books, films, shows and video games to inspire a new project or make connections about why you love them. Just listing some of my favourite books down I realised a lot of them were about time travel and ghost mediators.
-Organise your desk. Check the ink levels and paper in your printer. Check the ink levels in your pens, see if you have enough post it notes, index cards, highlighters and notebooks. This means when you feel up to writing again you’re prepared. You could also organise your notes (but not your manuscript in case you accidently erase it) or order that writing book you had your eye on.
-Just rest even though it doesn’t feel like it it’s one of the most productive things you can do.
WORKING ON YOUR WORK IN PROGRESS FROM YOUR BED
You can use your phone to record your thoughts and ideas either in the notes app or the Otter app which converts speech to text if you can’t hold a pen or type.
You can
· Brainstorm a title for your work.
· Create a Logline- This is a one or two sentence summary of your story that persuades the reader or agent to choose your book. It should include the protagonist, the antagonist, the conflict and the stakes in your story. It’s what your book is about in a nutshell. It’s also called an Elevator pitch. It should be around 25-50 words.
· Summary- This can be a summary of a scene or a chapter. It will help with your outline, synopsis and pacing.
· Blurb- This is the writing on the back cover which gets the reader to buy your book. It should contain a hook, something that hooks (interests) the reader into wanting to knowing what will happen next in your story. It should also include the characters and the conflict and have the same voice and tone of your book. Avoid clichés. Keep editing so that you have the minimum number of words that create the biggest impact. It should be between 100 -250 words most are 150 words.
· Outline- This is a plan for plotting your book, it gives your book structure. It can be 1-20 pages long. The 3 Act Structure or the 4 Act structure is most commonly used.
Writers are generally split into: Plotters and Pantsers. Plotters will meticulously plan each story beat and every scene in great detail. Pantsers are often discovery writers who are happy to see where their writing will lead them and feel that detailed planning ruins the fun. In reality, I think many of us are on a scale between the two. An outline can be a list of beats or scenes in chronological order or on separate index cards so that you can play around with the order of scenes. It could be a rough story sketch with just basic notes on world building, characters and their desires and the conflict stopping them achieving this.
· Read what you have written and add notes
· Daydream about your story. Daydreaming is a form of world building. You can think through scenes, think about what your characters’ wants and their motivations. This will make it easier when you get to write as it’s been rehearsed in your mind already. Write down any dialogue you hear as well.
· If it’s a good brain day fix plot holes by brainstorming and asking what if questions.
WORKING ON CRAFT FROM YOUR BED
Listen to Writing podcasts like Writing Excuses, Fiction Made Easy and The Shit No One Tells You about Writing.
Listen to writing Craft Youtube videos Shalin Writes, Abbie Emmons and Reedsy.
That’s all, hope you find these suggestions useful.