We all have those days, right? You wake up on the wrong side of the bed, or worse, something happens to spin your morning straight into the dumpster. Yeah. Gotta love those mornings. (Note the sarcasm.)
But something I've noticed over the past couple of years is that my mood affects my writing in a huge way. If I'm in a bright, bubbly kind of mood, my writing is going to be full of humor. It's going to be snappy dialogue and quick paced. Whereas if I'm having one of those days, the words are harder to push out. Everything takes on a dark tone and my characters are full of snarky remarks. Which is fine if that's where the character needs to be at the moment, but odds are -- they don't. (My characters tend to be pretty light and sometimes even funny, so, you can tell it's off.)
I know something I struggle with is feeling obligated to work on one of my projects every single day for several hours. Some people can do that, and that's awesome and fantastic for them, but for the most part, I cannot. (In fact, I usually get an hour of good work out at the most. Unless we're talking revision work.) I work best when I'm happy, not angry, not stressed, just content. So I have learned (through trial and error) to take a break from the structured writing time when I'm just not feeling it. Because if I force it, it's not going to help the story at all. The tone will be off, the character won't resonate -- it'll have to be rewritten anyway.
What about you guys? Do you find you need to follow your moods with your writing, or am I a special bird? lol
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