Who Stole My Mojo?

I probably should have saved this post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group next month, but I am too bothered by my circumstances to wait that long. This is serious. Someone stole my writing mojo! And I desperately want it back. Writing is something I have been doing since I was a little girl. From the minute I learned the alphabet, no one has ever had to encourage me to write. The compulsion to do it has always been there. It became second nature and "normal" for me to cruise around  with a head full of characters yammering on and on insisting I write their stories down.** But these past few weeks something very strange has happened. My mind has gone silent. And that silence is deafening!

Have you seen my mojo?

 

Who stole my writing mojo? Where the heck did all of my characters go? I am so bereft without my characters' voices. How can I write with only my own voice in my head? It's futile. If I had to pick a suspect out of a lineup, I would point my finger and blame it on my busy life. Life, for me, has been jammed full of  poor health, The Husband, the kids, my job and trying to tackle oh, a thousand or so other responsibilities. For way too long I had been unable to stop and sit down for five minutes and write anything creative. Of course, now that I have decided to put my foot down and insisted on carving out some precious time for me to write, all has gone silent!!!

I have often marveled at you, my fellow writers. How the heck do you manage to find time to blog, write, edit, critique, publish and market your books and still have a life? And when you only have a precious few minutes here and there to spare, how do you get your writing juices to respond and start to flow?  Is there a magic trick or tip that I can try? Anyone else ever find that their writing mojo has gone missing? Oh, and if any of you happen to see mine floating around, would you please send it on back to the Nest? Cause this Bird really misses it!





**To those of you non-writers reading this who may think the voices in my head are not characters at all, but would be better labeled as something called "multiple personality disorder" I apologize. This phenomenon is generally something only other writers can fully comprehend.

Insecure Writer's Support Group: Target Audience

Well here we are again at the beginning of a new month wherein I find myself posting a day late for the Insecure Writer's Support Group.  I absolutely hate being in this position, yet somehow I keep finding myself in it. I'm going to save all of the whining deep, introspective thoughts I have about my pitiful time management skills for another post and just focus on today's IWSG post: writing for a  Target Audience.

My girls love archery. They have been avid archers for quite some time.
And unlike many others their age, that interest in shooting predates The Hunger Games. 

There is no denying that prior to the Hunger Games and Katniss "making it cool" (as my daughter Faith would say) my girls were the only girls in our area to visit  the shooting range. But not any more. Now, the influx of young girls their age at the shooting range is staggering. All of their friends who used to care less are interested in learning how to shoot! It got me thinking about the incredible impact our writing can have on young minds. Did Suzanne Collins ever imagine how many young girls were going to run out and buy bows while she was writing The Hunger Games?

How many of us writers start out working on a project with a specific type of audience in mind? Does the genre in which you write already geared towards a certain group of fans?  While your writing, do you keep your target audience in mind the entire time? What happens if you feel the characters are taking you in  a different direction? Do you edit material or plot elements  because of your target audience? How many of us actively consider the impact our words will have on a younger audience whether we intended it or not?

I do not have illusions of grandeur- I highly doubt my first book will have the impact The Hunger Games did on  the YA world- but watching the impact of Collin's words and the ripple effect it had on the kids my daughters' age did make me sit up and take much more notice and care with the content I include in my writing.

If you'd like to know more about the amazing Insecure Writer's Support Group, or like to sign up, please check out Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog or the Insecure Writer's Facebook Page! Finger's crossed that next month's post for this awesome group will be on time...(I believe in miracles.)