WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 27 -- Sunday

[linaewen]

Greetings at the beginning of a new week!  linaewen  here to help encourage you and provide you with a setting to talk about your writing as we approach the final days of our April WIP Challenge.

What kind of a writing day has it been today?

• I thought about my fic once or twice
• I wrote
• I did some planning and/or research
• I edited
• I've sent my fic off to my beta
• I posted today!
• I'm taking a break
• I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

For Discussion:  Dormant or neglected WIPs -- when returning to work on a story that you have not been working on recently, how do you get back into it?  Is it fairly easy to re-familiarize yourself with the plot and characters, or is it difficult to get going again?

I'm in this situation at the moment, trying to get back into a WIP that has been ignored for 9 months.  (I actually hadn't realized it had been that long until I looked when I posted the last chapter -- ugh!).  One reason I think such stories get neglected for so long is that it is difficult to get back into it once I lose track of where I was going; the longer I take to push forward, the more unwieldy it becomes!  To get back on track, I reread the last 7 chapters and then worked on my outline to be sure I have a good plan.  The outline was already worked up, but I tweaked it a bit, and made myself read through every part of it to make sure I had the order of possible events laid out properly and had a feel for which characters will be featured.  I feel like I know where I am now, so I'm hopeful I can actually write a new chapter this week, before it gets to be 10 months neglected!

Comments

[merryghoul]

Rethinking, resting.

I find it hard to get into WIPs I've abandoned, so I don't bother dealing with them.

[the_rck]

I'm still trying to get myself to buckle down and write today. I've got a week to finish this story and get it beta read and edited. I'm pretty sure I can do it if I focus. It's the focus I lack.

Of course, today is a day of household chores, so my time is really broken up into pieces. I don't generally write much during the weekends.

To get back into a story I haven't touched in a while, I reread what I've already written at least once. I sometimes jot down notes about what I remember of where I was planning to go with the story. Sometimes, retyping some of what I already wrote will let me flow into new words. I'm not really good at picking things up again when I've been away from them for a while. It takes effort, more effort than starting something new.