Block

I am in a fairly deep writing rut that has been going on for two months or so--a.k.a. after I finished writing my sixth book, which was the goal of my summer. Since then I had a small burst of inspiration that caused me to begin work on a new idea for a novel and stole my attention away from my attempts to finish off a few short stories that are half-finished. I managed to write the ending to one of said short stories, but not the middle connecting chunk, which is, admittedly, a bit of a  problem. My main issue, however, besides not being able to come up with the information necessary for me to move my stories along their plots, is that I simply find it near impossible to be productive when I have free time--which is weekends ninety percent of the time. There is something about living on campus--along with campus itself--that causes me to have an incredible amount of difficulty in performing non-necessary activities. Most of the time I can study and do things for class without much difficulty, but when I try to get other things done, such as reading, writing, or cleaning, I don't have the will or energy or attention span to complete them. I end up wasting my time on other pointless things. There are times when I sincerely want to write, have the document up and my environment set up as I normally would for writing, but can't seem to get going on the part of the story that I need to be working on. I have been able to write out parts of later scenes, but currently can't move the main part of the story forward.

I hope to be able to get past this soon, and am planning on putted concentrated effort into working through it and making progress on some literary piece, whatever it may be. Hopefully I will have something more interest to post about for you next week.

Tschüs.

My Process

A lot of writers get asked about their writing process, which I think can potentially be helpful to people who write or want to write but haven't quite been able to figure out how to go about it. I figured I would go ahead and share with you how writing works for me.

Inspiration can come from nearly anywhere for me, but once I've got enough of an idea of what a story is going to be, things usually follow roughly the same pattern. At some point I spend an hour or two picking out names for the main characters and then move on to writing descriptions of these and other characters. Normally these descriptions are rough notes or endless lists of things separated by commas and full of misspellings. What is also normal for me is to alter or add on to these notes as ideas come to me about the characters while I am working on writing the story.

Typically I write out rough ideas of what I want the story to be about or how I want the plot to develop, and depending on how much inspiration I have, I might write out semi-detailed descriptions for scenes or dialogue that I want to show up at some point in the story. Often, due to characters or plot developing in different directions than I had originally intended or foreseen, it is not possible to work all of these notes into the story.

Once I feel I have enough of a rough idea of what I want and when I feel driven to work on that particular story, I start writing. I just start from the beginning and go. I keep a running tab of notes at the bottom of the document I am writing in so I can scroll down and check things as needed. Inevitably I spend an hour or so putting my notes in chronological order--and this is about as close as I get to actually outlining the plot. I never outline the plot. I know that a lot of people say that it is really helpful to do so, but I have tried it once or twice, didn't get much out of it, and decided to keep doing as I had done before.

There really isn't more to it than that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Tschüs!

A Decidedly Unremarkable Beginning

Welcome, one and all, to my new writer's blog--a blog that shall, in theory, be devoted to my literary endeavors. 

My first order of business is simply to state that my name is Skye Tackkett, and I write poetry and prose. At the time of this post I have six self-published books, five of which are novels of varying lengths and the other of which is a novella and three short stories.

I write fiction that, generally speaking, I find difficult to categorize. Some of my stories fall into the genre of paranormal, others potentially verge on some form of fantasy, other lean towards science-fiction, and yet others end up getting referred to simply as general fiction.

The final piece of my agenda is to give a brief history my experience as an author. I first starting writing in middle school solely out of a desire to bring to life a character, or rather a concept, that was floating around my head. After one failed attempt with a story that I have to admit was going nowhere very quickly, I wrote a book. Well, I started writing the book in middle school and finished it in my first year of high school, and that same year my parents helped me self-publish it. Writing a novel is an experience, to say the least.

During the writing of this first novel, I had ideas for other stories, some of which I worked on, others whose fate was to lay in the corners of my computer collecting dust. The first book was a gateway into the world of writing, and seeing the thing I had written in physical book form only drove me to keep writing. I wanted to take all the ideas in my head, all of the things that I wanted to read about but which I could never find in books, and put them on a page. Essentially, that's what I did, and what I continue to do.

That's it for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I put up a link where my books can be found.