On the Chase of a Tale

"Impede, restrain, suppress" - all synonyms of 'block" meaning "to stop or slow". I seem to have hit a barricade when it comes to writing. Believe me this doesn't happen often! Most the time I can just give myself a bit of a hint and my mind churns out words and thoughts. Sometimes my thoughts come out so fast it's hard to write quick enough, but this week the flow of thoughts, ideas and words seem to have trickled to a measly drip here and there.  It's maddening when this happens. Part of the reason that this is happening is that I am trying to flesh out a new tale and my Muse is not cooperating! I have a confirmed scene in my head as to where to start but I can't seem to get beyond that scene. 

Sometimes when I have trouble writing or gathering my thoughts, I use a technique known as "thought-patterning". I start out by drawing a circle in the middle of the page and I place within that circle a word which represents the idea I am trying to develop. Then I begin to spider out lines from that circle. On those lines I start putting down snippets of things relevant to that word. The drawback of this technique is that sometimes you run out of space, but it's easy enough to turn over the page and just keep going! It's sort of like brain-storming, but you end up with lots of possible paths that you might incorporate or follow in developing that idea.

I tried that today, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get very far as I was very distracted. I think I need to do this little task in a more quiet atmosphere than McDonald's when they are conducting job interviews! Besides now I think I just need to let some of these ideas percolate a bit.  I will then try again tomorrow! Anyway I thought I would share that little trick with you. (It also is a great way to take notes in school but it was odd that no one ever asked to read my notes or copy them whenever I wrote my notes that way!)