Quantum Storytelling

The importance of breaks and rest for writers is not often discussed. I bring it up because I find it is important–even crucial, for writers to take breaks. I don’t just mean breaks during a writing session. What I’m talking about is a sabbatical. Days off.

Yesterday (Sunday) when I woke up, my first urge was to dive into the site redesign. I had already spent most of Saturday working on it. I had it in my mind that I would get it done before Monday. I encountered a few snags, as often happens on these types of projects. There ended up being more work involved than I previously realized.

Instead of jumping right into action yesterday, I stopped myself. I felt a little guilty. My wife and I hadn’t gone out even once yet for the weekend. It was a nice day, so I proposed that we head to a park nearby. We headed over to the park after picking up some refreshments.

The fresh air did me some good. I brought along my camera and took some photos. I’m always looking for excuses to haul out my camera. My wife and I took a relaxing walk through the park. There were ducks and geese being fed by other park strollers. Some men were fishing on a pier that juts out over the lake.

I did lose time working on the website redesign, but the tradeoff was more than worth it. I gained back a piece of sanity and perspective. Sometimes we become too self-absorbed in our work, or lifetsyles. We forget that there is an outside world, and that it is beautiful.

As writers we could all use a little more of that. Don’t be afraid to take breaks. You’ll get your work done, don’t worry. Get a breath of fresh air. Clear your head. It might even help solve some of your problems. At the very least, it will give you a little perspective. Not to mention some overdue physical exercise–go for a walk.

P.S. The website will be done soon enough.

I’ve invested enough already in this blog that it’s about time I did it justice with some custom graphics.

I’m working on a custom template for the site. That’s right, no more generic Blogger template! Everything should stay virtually the same. It’ll just be prettier.

I’m giving thought to some bonus content. Some things to make the site more of a writer’s resource?

If any of you have requests or ideas, now is your time to speak up!

Writing the rough draft of Cameron Fields & the Thieves of Time in thirty days didn’t leave much room for research. I was aware of my glaring ignorance during the writing process. This is why I’ve always railed against preaching glory of the drafting process. Key problems generating a first draft in thirty days:

• I didn’t know anything about private investigation
• I didn’t know anything about criminal investigation

While reading How to Tell a Story: The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tales, I encountered a section on direct and indirect narrative.

Direct narrative is when you describe the action or events in detail. It’s an actual scene. Indirect narrative is when you gloss over the actions or events. An indirect narrative is a bridge or segue from one scene to another.

For example, if you were to write your character walking down the street and every detail of that experience, it would be a direct narrative. If the character is only walking down the street so you can get to the next scene of the story, you would keep it short and just say; “Bob walked down the street and entered the hotel.” Thus it becomes indirect narrative.

What’s amazing to me is that the direct narrative vs. indirect narrative haven’t been discussed in any of the storytelling books I’ve read to date. That or I just don’t remember, which illustrates the benefit to revising your knowledge of the craft.

One of the major problems of my first draft is that all the investigative portions are indirect narrative. Why? Because I don’t know anything about investigations, or how they are conducted. I didn’t have time to find out either. Fifty-thousand words in thirty days demands ignorance. Just write! Write, write, write!

You’ve got to read, too. Research! Otherwise your story will sink into indirect narrative in parts that should be direct narrative, and vice versa.