I have discovered one writing habit of mine which I would call my weirdest, and now that I think about it, it does not only show in my writing.
Whenever I work on something, I like to divide it into three parts. I passionately enjoy the first one, I struggle a lot with the second one and it‘s a miracle if I even make it to the third one.
This not just the case with my creative writing projects. I also came across this habit back in the days when I was writing my thesis. I had written the first third about all my basic research on first language acquisition with hearing loss, had outlined my own little experiment, and actually doing it and writing about my results had taken forever and caused me to reread something as huge as „Dune“, while thinking about how badly I needed to continue working on it to meet the deadline.
As this pattern continues, I have two novel drafts (one of them being the witching novel) in my most favourite stage: The first third is done, is good and I love it and – oh my god! What if I continue and mess it all up? It feels so good to have the dream of finishing it there at the horizon and if I am done I may have to let go.
Sometimes, I find it so much easier to dream about something than actually doing it. I like having the dream with me while concurring the world, instead of already knowing how well things actually worked out. Maybe it‘s because I don‘t know what to do with the dream if it did not work out at all. When I realized that German was not my language to vibe in and that I personally did not fit into the future at the Theater scene that I had imagined for a while, I stopped almost all my creativity. I did not play my violin anymore, I did not write anymore and I stopped going on stage completely, what of course was a great mistake.
Maybe, it’s okay for some things to never come true and just be a dream to lure you away for a brief moment on a long walk, but there are some things I do not want to dismiss as easily. Some things are worth fighting for to accomplish something similar at least. For me, being a writer, or even to perform on small stages again would be one of those.
But if I continue, I have to accept who I am with all its limitations, and I am not sure if I, the others or the universe do approve so much of who I am. Or if I even exist for real. Tomorrow, I will have to deal with paperwork that makes me fear to discover a hole in my existence, but I think that may be another problem to write about.
Really going out there, pursuing goals again without expecting them to backfire dramatically and just living my life is a tough challenge at the moment (especially after everything that happened in the fast four years), I but at least I am positive that I can manage to get the witching novel out of the first third.
That is something.
What is your weirdest writing habit?
Well, to answer your question — I still use bullet points when writing. I speak for myself with this one, but I find myself interrupted whenever I write in a straight narrative and a sudden idea pops out. With bullet points before sentences, I can arrange them later to form a more coherent paragraph.
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I can see that! When I write my novel, I always have 5 word documents and two journals open at once as well.
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