Productivity, Tropes and Ruts

My Wednesday off turned into a very productive day, as I worked on my Holiday Cards for most of the day. I had my computer on behind me, but didn't even sit at the keyboard until my weekly afternoon conversation with Aearwen. The cards are going back over to the shop with me today to continue working on the section I had been, and start my work on the interior panels. 

I don't know what I would do without my Tim Holtz Stamping
Platform. I purchased this last year for my "Dawn Breaking
in the Forest" cards, and it's turned into an invaluable
tool in my array. 

Because I'm trying to use up older stock, my cardstock is a bit lighter-weight than I would have chosen. That has the potential of causing problems of bleed-through or ghosting from one panel to the other. I'm hoping that won't be a problem, but I may have to alter some things to minimize the effect. Sometimes having a ghost image of the interior appear on the cover is desirable. Not this time. 

I am concerned about bleed-through with this
year's cards. The paper's weight is a bit lighter than
in prior years and that leaves me with the
possibility of image ghosting. 

Ghosts of things appearing behind other things often happens in real life too. The decisions of the past influence the future, actions often performed can become rote. In life, as in print, it's important to focus on the current experience, the current panel, instead of focusing on what just passed or what is yet to come. But we are always influenced by those things, despite the best of intentions. 

Life exists and turns directions because of
cause and effect. Every action has a re-action. 

We learn from the past. Good or bad, history influences our actions. If a child is beaten when he or she expresses a certain opinion or acts in a specific manner, they will learn to associate the action or opinion with pain or stress. It may, or may not, actually influence that child to cease the behavior. But that cause and effect has been established and will always hang in the background thoughts. 

Tropes are a level of comfort. Superman changes to his
super persona in a phone booth. I guess it doesn't
matter that phone booths really don't exist any more.
The trope has been well-established and well linked. 

Writing can be like that too. We get used to using certain comfortable tropes for our plot twists, we flow through character development because the characters have so many similarities, or maybe the location where you set your stories is so familiar to you that you don't need to put conscious thought into it. But in cases like that, remember your reader too. Despite your familiarity with the locations/characters/plot framework, they may not be as "in the know" as you. That's when it's helpful to have a different set of eyes on the page, a beta or a general reader who isn't as familiar or comfortable in the ruts of the writing road. 

Push yourself out of that rut. Force yourself to consider a
new perspective or just wade through to look at that
rut from a different angle. Perspectives can change. 

Your challenge today? Push yourself out of the writing rut just a little. Many of my readers are writers, and many of you write fanfiction within the Tolkien universe. The location is established, and often the characters also are set - long-time knowledge, familiarity, even love for those characters underpins your words. Take a left turn. Introduce a new character, have a beloved character act in a manner unusual for them, put a new task in front of them that they may not have faced before. In other words - challenge yourself and your characters. 

On that note, I'm out of here. I'm sending positive thoughts out to those of you having a hard time right now, and extending that positive umbrella over the world we live in as a whole. It's an angry time we're living in and those times are hard for everyone. Hugs to all, I'll be back tomorrow. Enjoy your Thursday.