I really don't have any set pattern. I know some people do and it works for them. Being on other writing sites before this, people have shared their experiences and given tips like always take a note pad out with you in case a breakthrough comes or an idea. Of course you can put any such note on your phone these days. Personally I prefer when I am out and about just to be going about my regular business, focus on that is usually enough.
By the way, I have never attended a writing class.
Writer's block is the other thing people have shared and many famous writers have suffered from this for one reason or another and written about it. Happy to say I really don't get this affliction. I have so many ideas on the go and works that need completing. For me it is rather more the opposite. I could write a story about what's really happening on my grains of toast or what happened when my wet coffee granules came alive and joined the carnival down the road, everybody thinking it was a real person dressed in costume or something. As for my toast: I was concentrating on the crumbs which became mountain peaks, finding myself trudging through this buttery substance - something like that. Whether anyone would care to read it would be another thing ... My issue would be more that when an episode relating to my health is bothering me I sometimes have to stop ... Even so, I try to scribble with pen at those times and having note pads to write on doesn't always help when I can't find them. So I may end up writing on envelopes or scraps of paper etc and hope to find them later. Yeh, really disorganised like that but it works for me. The central idea will still be there somewhere in the back of my mind so I don't worry about it.
Cross-fertilisation and challenges work for me. I was once challenged to write outside of my genre when I was on ABCtales so I wrote a western called "On Route to Tama" which is a short story and this led me to write a flash fiction piece called "Riders" which earned me a cherry and I did a short video on, then some so called Russian channel decided to upload said video to what I'd term a totally inappropriate site no sooner had I posted it on You Tube. I've had to write letters and all sorts to try to get my entire channel removed from them!
Competitions sometimes have themes and I can see those as a challenge and an opportunity to stretch myself too. I don't always enter them but I can still write around the theme and to the word count just to see if it works for me.
Coming on BSFS has already given me two ideas for stories I would not otherwise have really thought about and that's purely through interacting with people and it isn't even straightforward - more like - but what if?. Turn something on its head. That also can also trigger "more bounce to the ounce".
Editors I think can be useful but do they understand people not from their own cultural comfort zone? Does this matter? I would say it does. Making money is one thing but wiping out everyone else's identity factors in preference for the western market and is totally unethical in my book, having the kind of consequences we all live with today. An alien visiting this planet would have a very warped perception of diversity left to media coverage and mainstream book outlets.
I hope sharing my simple revelations here may prove useful to someone. There's some awesome talent on this site which I hope will maximise to deserved fruition.
In relation to the above, I found this article on Twitter
One Love
Patricia
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