Momentum

Momentum is important for writers.  It is immensely easier to get your pen flowing when you've just recently pushed ink through the feed.  This concept applies to me in several ways (two of which I'll talk about here).

It has been two weeks since I last wrote a blog post.  I had intended to post twice a week throughout the semester, but this plan failed.  I'm scraping by with my requisite post per week.  Some of this is loss of energy.  Much of it is loss of momentum.  Back when I was writing three blog posts each week, my hands were always primed and ready for the next post because they were in a rhythm.  Now my rhythm is only one post per week, and that isn't complex enough a song to keep me writin' on.

While I definitely believe that writing blog posts is important for creative writers, writing creative works should be a top priority.  I have lost virtually all sense of momentum for my creative writing.  I started to build a little bit of momentum over Spring Break, writing two small flash fics, starting a third, and editing a fourth, but since then I haven't followed up on that wave.  I let myself settle in the trough.  Dommage.  One of these days I'll build up momentum.  I'll finish the novelette I've been working on sporadically since fall of 2014 and get more flash fics pumped out.  Maybe I'll actually cross some stories off of my list of projects-in-the-wings.

On the podcast Writing Excuses, author Mary Robinette Kowal said that when she's lost momentum she'll start off writing just a few sentences a day, building her way back up to thousands of words.  This is a plan I should attempt.  While I have found recently that I don't work well in flash fiction taking more than a sitting or two to complete a story, taking this idea to my novelette should get the blood pumping in both the story and my writing veins.