Music, a porch swing, and a pen #mfrwauthor

Welcome to week 39.

Unlike some writers I know, I don't have elaborate writing rituals. There is no pile of cassettes to be played in a specific order during the writing process. The turntable is broken. There is no special corner of the house where I work. I work wherever, whenever; usually in a recliner in the living room while I keep an eye on the rest of the family.

Another reason I have is no specific writing ritual is that each session differs depending on where I am in the outlining, writing, or editing phases. It might be fifteen minutes while sitting in a doctor's office or a half-hour while waiting for the shower to be available. While more productive than pleasant, lying on the couch with a lap desk while I'm sick can be described as a ritual.

I am starting what might turn out to be a ritual and that is Fiction Focus For Writers Only by Jackie Weger. (A bit of blatant promotion, the new audio book version is to be released on 10/9.)

What little I do that can be considered a ritual comes from being a plotter (or at least an explorer) until the characters take over. That is if you can call creating a novel notebook a ritual. A novel notebook helps with accuracy and reduces editing. To keep manuscripts as clean as possible as the story unfolds, I track major points in an outline. And as names are assigned to characters or places in the world I'm creating, they are also memorialized in the appropriate forms.

So a little music, a porch swing and a pen encourages the muse.  That's all the writing ritual I can share. ~till next time, Helen