How It Works: Random Scribbling

How It Works: Some Identified States

1. Fuzziness: 2-9 days. State of cluelessness and bad hopeless ideas. Where should the story head? How? Digression. Books, authors currently-reading/recently-read corrupt most in this state.
2. Epiphany: 1 day. Identification of previously unseen problems with the novel, precise solutions, clear and distinct visuals of the forthcoming piece. State 1 to 2 traveled by Will.
3. Euphoria: 1200 brilliant words: one night.
4. Follow-through: 800-2k words: 1-6 days. Confident, venturesome, but possibly careless and sloppy. Revisions and the work will be includable somewhere in future.
5. Missing "feeling" - a wall of dissatisfaction, disinterest, waning motivation. Moving away from the novel: 1-15 days. The state exists because new problems have developed in the work. How to waste less time here? Revise what you recently wrote. See how it fits, what it changes. THINK.
6. Resumption: returning to the novel. Mindful of the factors that drive to writing. Basic reasons for writing This particular novel >> the force of all the factors that put you off from writing. But words don't come alone because you have decided to return and fight. State 6 will lead to 1: a period of subconscious meditation.

Observation: States 5, 6 and 1 often merge together or are indistinguishable.


The cycle may exist for a while, causing binge writing and wait for inspiration, but the time spent away from writing must must must recede. Number of words in a sitting, a session, a season, a State, must increase. Identifying the present state and acting accordingly should help. Problems - tensions - arise by lack of mindfulness. In State 1, for example, one wastes time by stressing on actual "writing", on Future of the story: the events to follow, while clearly the state exists primarily due to a lack of transparency in the Past of the novel.