CONduit XX: Day 2

Today's conduit was pretty fantastic. We went to the following panels: Riding the Rocket(surviving career blastoff); Writing for YA Audiences; The Mike Show (a Q&A); Writing Excuses; Series vs. Standalone; and Writing the Rogue.

Everything was pretty great. I enjoyed all the panels and found some time to rub shoulders with Authors. I also spent too much money on books and got them all signed. In the process I also made a connection with Dan Wells. He's going to send me some of his current writing to help me understand a concept for something I'm writing. The only thing it costs me is to send him feedback on what he sends me (not that I feel qualified)...

I took pretty decent notes, and i think that to help me blog, I'm going to try to go over something that stood out to me every day. That'll help me solidify it at the same time it helps me be in the habit of doing better at blogging.

I got some great tips on how to tackle being stuck in my writing (don't call it writer's block... apparently that doesn't exist).

Here's the three opinions I got on the phenomenon hitherto known as 'writers block':
-Paul Genesse:You aren't prepared in one of two ways: 1.) You're not refreshed. You physically or emotionally cannot write because of whatever reason. Take some time to recharge and try again. 2.)You don't know where the story is going. Take some time to plan or plot or map or work on an outline.

-James Dashner: You aren't in the right mood. Get in the right mood. Go see a movie. Dashner says that some of his best writing happens in his car or the closest coffee shop immediately after he gets out of a movie.

-Barbara Hambly: There are two kinds of writers block (she can call it that, she's old school) Really there's either something wrong with you or something wrong with your story. 1.) Clinical Depression: you just can't get up to do your writing. Seek professional help and try again. 2.)You took a wrong turn at a crossroads in your story. Maybe you gave out too much information or approached a scene from a perspective that doesn't work very well. Go back to a point where the story was working and figure out where it stopped. Try a different route with the story and see if you can take it farther.

Another approach suggested by Barbara was to make a timeline. Figure out exactly what happened on days one two three four and five, where day three is the day you're stuck on. She had to do that a lot when writing mystery, and found that it also helped her to write when it was difficult.

That's it for conduit today.

I've got a couple other projects I'm working on. I own some web space (I'm not linking to it because there's nothing there to see) and I'm going to start trying to turn it into a toolbox of useful resources. For example, several helpful web pages got suggested to me at conduit and I'm going to put up the links there. Maybe when it starts looking like it's something worth your time I'll put up a pointer to it from here.

Also, I'm going to start a new blog, wherein I'll have little bits of dialog with my characters. It'll be great exercise for me, and hopefully entertaining for everybody else. Watch for a link to that soon.

-Jason

...so much for gradually killing Shlange... oh well. He'll live on in our hearts. At least until I kill him off by changing my profile name.