Insecure Writer's Support Group: Muse, oh Muse

Greetings everyone. When mighty Alex first started this blog hop, IWSG, I intended to post every first Wednesday. Life had other plans for me however and I became so sick that the hospital emergency room was nearly my  home. So today I've decided to share about my muse, or lack thereof. How do you come back to your writing life after an extended duration of illness or some other life event that keeps you away?

I had acute bronchitis that was caused by black mold and bug spray. I nearly died and since my home environment continued to expose me to toxic spores I couldn't get better. I slept a lot. My brain was a fuzz ball. I had trouble reading more than three blog post in one sitting. Writing became a challenge of; how do I say that, or what did I just write? You get the picture.

To remedy some of the boredom I started playing two Facebook games, Cafe World and Castleville. I still play, Cafe World eats away a lot of time but Castleville doesn't give you an unlimited energy supply to do whatever you want while there. So now, my health is better but I'm totally addicted to these games. What to do?

It's easy to say, toughen up and do the job. In reality, life is sometimes difficult and the distraction that certain habits give you is like soothing balm on a burn. However, I have stories and characters who want to come to life and explore their own worlds. So, I must buckle down and spend the time required to flesh out my characters and create their worlds and send them on their adventures. The problem is one of excitement. I'm not thrilled with the prospect, or I should say, two weeks ago I wasn't. Partly because I left one of my stories at a place with three chapters that needed major work. I was stumped.

How did I handle it?

I made an outline and threw out the offending chapters. I also realized that one character really didn't need to occupy as much of the spotlight. She is important to the story, but she is not the main hero or villain. Thus a little less attention on her solved several problems, not the least of which was focus on the plot.

The next problem is how to turn around my writing so I can make up for an entire lost year. I need to produce. With this in mind I found Rachel Aron's Writing Triangle. I don't remember how I happened upon this, probably through someone's blog post, but let me tell you, this woman is worth a visit since she has several informative post on writing.

Her writing triangle is a method to turn your writing production into a machine driven by you. The blog post is titled; How I went from Writing 2,000 words a day to 10,000 words a day. Oh yeah, do I have your attention? Take the time to visit and take notes. Now I know what I must do and to say anymore is pointless.

I hope you found this post informative and helpful.
Happy Writing,
Nancy

I'm looking for critique partners, if interested say so in the comments and leave your email address.

Rachel Aron's Writing Triangle here.

More Insecure Writer's thoughts can be found here.