Tag: writer’s block

Of Two Minds

I am realizing that I might need to take a break from my work-in-progress, Looking for Home. I’m in the last third of the book, and I suddenly just dread sitting down, opening it, and writing. There’s a multitude of reasons why I could be stuck–the other two sections were more drafted, while this one is not. The events in this section are hard scenes to write. The character goes from a teenager to a battered wife and on and on. I don’t think I have a handle on the main character in this section.

What I do know is I feel bored with it. And if I’m bored writing it, you’d be bored reading.

But there’s a really good argument to be made for keeping on. I only have a few chapters left before I have a full draft. You can’t edit and refine what you haven’t written yet. The discipline is the key–if you keep showing up for yourself, eventually you’ll break through. Always finish projects, Neil Gaiman said. You have to keep your forward momentum going. I felt this way close to the end of Hurricane Baby and pushed through because I had something to prove.

And that’s all very true, too.

But I no longer have anything to prove right now.

I do know I’m about to go through a time with my book launch where my mind will be distracted. I want so much to enjoy this time upcoming. Maybe making working on LFH only a sometime thing after going through the whirlwind of events with my launch.

Ill have to think some more. Any advice, drop it in the comments!

What to Do When You Don’t Have Anything to Say

Just start typing. “I don’t have anything to say today. I wish I did but I don’t, I don’t understand why but the words just aren’t coming. Mabye I’m tired. Maybe I’m burnt out. Maybe I’m still thinking about the things where what my husband said made me feel some kind of way.”

Do you see what’s happening here? I’m problem-solving as I go. I’m sorting out solutions or answers or suggestions for what might be the root cause of the situation of not having anything to say.

Or you could get more specific–“Why am I having so much trouble writing from Merrilyn’s point of view. Is it that I don’t know her very well yet? Is it that I’m unclear on what needs to happen in this section to get from point A to B to C, etc.? is it because she’s never had a voice before, and she needs to assert herself–and that’s something you’ve always had trouble doing in your own life? Do you feel like she can’t assert herself because you have always had the same problem?”

Now I’m getting somewhere. Maybe if I just sit down and just write out what all happens to her in a rush, covering incidents from the next eight years of her life. Then I can fill in the details on another rewrite.

Just start typing and see what you have to say.

Confession Time

I am not keeping up with some of my resolutions.

I am not reading very much, and I’m not working on my fiction project, either.

I have just been so tired when I finish work, so I want to do something mindless after work instead of concentrating on reading and writing. I think some of it is a lack of motivation due to the bad weather we’ve had. The forecast is promising to get warmer and warmer as we go throughout February though, so I am looking forward to an improvement on that front.

I think some of the lack of motivation of particularly writing on my fiction project is that I’m still getting rejections on Hurricane Baby with pretty consistent regularity. I went back and checked on a lot of my submissions from September, and many of those are rejections (I think) because I never heard any response back. Many of them say no response after three months is a negative response. :(. So.

That makes 20 rejections thus far.

I’ve not given up hope on Hurricane Baby–I have yet another email ready to go out on February 15 to yet another press. I still have 14 total I plan to send to. But a lack of response to it has dampened my enthusiasm to work on another manuscript.

But (and this is a mindset I am learning to embrace) the sunset of tomorrow is not the end of the world–it’s barely the beginning.

What do I mean by that?

My youngest daughter leaves home for college in August of this year. I have resolved to wait until then to get back into the fiction writing. She will have moved on to her new life at college, and I will have more time during the week to devote to writing, what with the end of going to her school activities and such. And I may need to immerse myself into something new to take my focus off of missing her.

I do plan to continue the blog with updates on Hurricane Baby (especially the play coming up this spring!) and my querying journey. I also plan to write a few craft essays to post here as well. So I’m going to still be writing here, on my other blog projects, etc. I’ve been at this too long to give up altogether.

But the time just may not be right at this particular second. That’s okay. Later is fine. Totally fine. I will keep reading, living, experiencing. That can only enrich my fiction–when the time is right for me to take it back up.

I hope you can stick with me on the journey. Thanks to all who read and write and encourage us writers in our dreams.

Fear Redux

I am trying to finish the last two stories in my manuscript this weekend and have been panicking every time I open the document. Thinking that I’m an idiot for believing I can finish a big fiction project like this again. Thinking that no one will ever bother to read it and care about the people I’m writing out or about the story I’m trying to tell.

I am just going to treat my self-imposed deadline as a hard one and pretend it’s going to be published do-or-die the day I finish it. We will see how well I can hoodwink myself into believing that. Fear is strong. Fear has bedeviled me my whole life. But I am going to be strong, and I am going to defeat the fear. No matter what.