WiP Wednesday: Motivation is the Key

Does planning my new home office count as writing progress? ;)

Of course, that room is still acting as a staging area for all the boxes yet to be unpacked, so it'll be a while before I can work on it. But our kitchen and bedroom are pretty much finished and I just love this apartment.

It's a half-shotgun, so you have to walk all the way through the house (including the bedroom) to get to the bathroom, but damn near every rental apartment in this city is a half-shotgun so I don't really mind anymore. It's clean and there's lots of storage and no neighbor on the other side yet, so for now it's perfect. Most importantly, it feels like home. And when I have an office of my own, I'll be able to shut out all the stress of work and the lure of the television and just plug away at my WiP. Maybe it'll even get a working title one of these days.

I can imagine myself being very creative here. Once all the boxes are unpacked.

I just need to keep myself properly motivated. In fact that's one of the reasons I've kept the office for last. I need to dangle that carrot in front of me to power through the unpacking process.

But all this analysis of my own motivations has helped me to work out some of my new MC's. I can blame not writing on moving all I want, but in reality, I've also been struck with a case of "Now what?"

I knew since I began this novel that there would be a shocking twist in the middle of the book. Well, I finished writing the twist, but now my MC is falling apart. I had no way to know how to put her back together again. Yesterday I found this sort of flow chart that was posted on a writing blog a while back-- I searched and have no idea where I found it, though-- and I spent some time thinking about her motivation:


What does she really want? How do her actions to get what she wants drive the plot forward? How do I, the author, keep her from attaining her desires? Hey, you've got to be cruel to be kind to your novel. She can't get what she wants the first time, and she can't get it without some kind of challenge, or without some kind of personal risk. I did some serious thinking about what really makes her tick, and how she's going to go about getting what she wants. I also have a better idea of how to keep her from getting these things.

The pieces are slowly but surely starting to resemble my cocky heroine again. Actually, she's coming together in the same sort of way as my house, one familiar part at a time. I'm thinking that by the time I've finished unpacking and I finally sit in my writing chair in my new office, I'll know exactly what she's up to next. And what troubles I'll be putting her through.

I'll keep you posted!