I’ve written a new short story!

Last Saturday I turned a corner, mood-wise. After not being able to write for six months, I sat down and hammered out the first draft of a new flash piece. The story is something I’d been mulling over for a while; I had the genre (noir/crime) and a line of dialog, but that’s it.

But Saturday morning I sat down and told myself to write something, anything, even if it was crap. And the whole story came tumbling out of me.

It’s a huge relief, to know that I can still do it. Even if the draft is terrible, it exists, it’s mine, and that means I’m not hopeless as a writer just yet.

I’ve spent the week since working on a “Draft 1.5”, as I’m thinking of it. I’m still too close to the story to properly edit it into a second draft, but as soon as I was done with the first draft I started seeing areas where I needed to go back, add depth or look for a more creative angle.

In particular, the motive for the crime bothered me. The one in the first draft felt too pat, too cliché. Not real enough.

So one morning I took out my little notebook and went through the characters in the story, one by one, and wrote a description — personality, circumstances, and appearance — for each. I had only vague ideas of the characters when I started, but by the end of the exercise I had them firmly fixed in my mind, along with a better motive, and plot changes to reflect that.

Thus I’ve begun another draft to incorporate those changes. I know there’ll be more drafts after this one, including a proper second once I’ve let the story sit for a couple weeks. But for now I want to make this first draft a little stronger.

If you’re struggling with writing, and not sure you can hack it anymore, let me reassure you: You can! You might just need a break, or to try a different genre, or a different format. Me, I needed all three, including permission from a writing instructor to drop my current project altogether. It’s scary to contemplate, but liberating in the end.

Go forth and write messy drafts, write bad dialog, and create some one-dimensional characters. Whatever it takes to get the words out, to get your mind working on the story. You can always, always, clean it up later, but you can’t do anything without that first draft. So get to it :)

Written with: Ulysses

Under the influence of: “Model Citizen,” Meet Me @ the Altar

I've finally made it to the other side of my writer's block. I'm back to working on the novel, hitting my word count every day.

Thank goodness.

It wasn't any one thing that got me through it, either.

i started reading again, sprinting through two novels that'd been sitting on the To Be Read pile for a good while. They were both excellent, they were both slightly outside my normal genre, and they were both kindling to re-light the writing fire inside me.

I leaned into my schedule disruption, which meant calling a halt to my exercise routine for a week. I know, you're not supposed to do that; it's the exact opposite of the advice most folks give about writer's block ("take a walk", "clear your head", etc). But it helped me to relax, to feel like I had all the time in the world to write, which made it that much easier to find my flow.

And I read a few chapters in the new Pocket Workshop book by the Clarion West Writer's Workshop. Specifically, Eileen Gunn's chapter on writer's block calmed me down significantly. It reminded me that blockages happen, and pushed me to interrogate it, rather than ignore it.

By forcing me to really look at why I was blocked, to listen to what the block was trying to tell me, I found my way forward. I realized that the novel section I was working on wasn't working, really, and that's why I was blocked on it. It was too passive, for one. Where the previous flashback section was very much driven entirely by the narrator's actions, the current section was one where a lot just happened to her. Or where she stumbled across things, and reacted to them. It wasn't compelling, and my subconscious knew it, but my conscious mind wanted to carry on like nothing was wrong.

So my subconscious went on strike. Writer's block.

I spent a few days brainstorming ways to change the section, to make it driven by the narrator. And suddenly my writing brain kicked back into gear, generating conversations and visualizing scenes again. Not all of them lined up, but that's ok, that's part of the process.

In the end, I decided to trash the 5,000 words I'd written for the current section of the book. Goodbye, gone.

And started over.

But now, this time, the words are coming much more easily. I can sit down in the morning and get my word count in, without worrying about being blocked, or not knowing where I'm going. The narrator -- the protagonist of this section -- is back firmly in control of things, and that's how it should be.

Instead of somehow wandering from Central Asia to Europe, she's fleeing there, from the consequences of her own actions. Instead of stumbling on a town with a dragon problem, she's seeking it out, because it's the only way she can keep a powerful curse at bay.

She still faces constraints, of course. But the way she overcomes her challenges within those constraints is her choice, no one else's. And that...that makes it a lot easier to write down her story.

What about you? Have you had a period of serious writer's block, that you then worked through? How did you overcome it?

I'm...well, I'm blocked.

Written perhaps 300 words on the novel in the last two weeks. No work on any short stories, no editing...nothing else.

I did finish the outline of the section I'm working on. It's just when I sat down to start writing it, I just...didn't. Couldn't find my way back into the story.

Part of it is time; my morning schedule's been chopped to bits, lately, and my afternoon schedule is gone because I've been working later (and as soon as I get off work it's time to start making supper). And at lunch, well...at lunch I just want to turn my brain off for a while.

Part of it, too, is I'm just tired all the time. I wake up tired, I exercise tired, I sleepwalk through making dinner and fall into bed at the end of the day. My jammed finger from August still hasn't healed -- I have to pop it back into place every morning so I can bend it -- my right thigh is sore every time I stand, and that foot will just give out without warning, sending me flailing for the nearest chair or counter to grab hold of for support.

Mentally, too, I'm worn out. It's like the part of me that makes decisions is just done, completely finished, and refuses to make a single new one. Decide what to wear? Nope, grab whatever's on top of the pile. Decide what to eat? Nope, get the same thing every day. Decide how this scene is going to play out? Nuh-uh, try again. Decide what other writing project to work on to get around the block? Hahaha, not a chance.

What's really frustrating is that I want to work on the novel. I want to finish editing my short stories, and send them out, and then write the exciting scenes I've planned out for the book, and maybe start a new short story, and...so much. But I reach the end of each day, and nope, nothing.

I'm...not used to feeling this way. Used to feeling lost in the book, sure, given my tendency to write my way through it rather than outline. But not used to knowing where I want to go, and how to get there, but not having any fuel in my mental tank to get there.

Not sure how to get that fuel back. Maybe read more? I took a break after reading the last two books, and maybe that was a mistake. Maybe my horror movie binge for October needs to be a horror novel binge? Or something completely different, maybe I need to read nothing but cozy mysteries for a while.

What I fear is that this means I need to put the novel away for a while. I've heard of other writers doing that, hitting a blockage and setting the work aside for a year or two, before picking it back up again. I've also heard of writers that set something aside and never pick it up. The latter's what I'm afraid of. I want to finish this book. Finishing things...it's part of my identity. Letting that go would be very, very hard.

Which is maybe why I'm blocked? Too afraid to let go, but too tired to go on? sighs We'll see.