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Where the Magic Happens
Bam.
Sometimes I’m writing along, writing along, and then wham. Bam. Wall.
It’s not something you can predict. Writer’s block just happens. I can be on a roll and have a NaNoWriMo-esque month only to find myself scratching my head, wondering what happened. It doesn’t happen to me often, but it happened to me this week.
Whenever I used to get writer’s block, I would stop writing for a few weeks. Or months. It happened when I plowed through the end of my first novel and halfway through the second — and again when I plowed through the end of the second and halfway through the third. The difference between those two moments was that I learned how to deal with it.
Stopping writing? Not the right answer.
If you stop, it’s that much harder to start again. Writing is like working out. Sometimes you have to start with baby steps. Just a few pushups, just a few reps, building up to those long workouts. And if you stop for a while, those muscles atrophy.
What I learned in the three and a half years between finishing my first novel and starting my third was that letting those muscles atrophy stymied both my creativity and put my dreams on hold. Writer’s block is a hurdle to be sure, but it’s one you have to refuse to give in to.
If you get burnt out on the big sprints, go back to the little stuff. Try a short story. Write some non-fiction. Write anything. Poems, articles. Change it up. Each time you thumb your nose at your writer’s block even in a little way, you start boring through that wall. Eventually you come to find that somewhere under all that brick, there’s this:
A spark, lit fuse, holy hand grenade.
You never know what it could be, the thing that blows that wall to smithereens. For me on Tuesday, it was a tweet from a fellow writer recommending the book Save the Cat! If you haven’t heard of that book, it’s a guide for screenwriters about structure. And it wasn’t the book that blew up my block. It was the title.
What had gotten me stuck was trying to take a character who is dealing with something traumatic and huge and paranormal that she doesn’t understand and show how it begins to wear on her life. How her goals begin to crumble around her. How everything she’s been working toward now sits on a ledge, waiting for gravity to shift it over the side.
In this new draft, I gave her a kitty. It’s sheer coincidence that the name of the book is Save the Cat! It just so happened that my protagonist had something I could use with that. If you want to find out what happens to furry little Piggles, well…stay tuned.
The point is that writer’s block is a straitjacket we put on ourselves. When at first we’re stumped, we have a choice. We can throw up our hands and go play Fruit Ninja, or we can put fingers to keyboard or pen and paper and keep writing. Keep pushing. Keep tunneling for that spark that will blow the block to hell and back — that’s where the magic happens.
Because I think we all know that blowing things up is fun.
When was your last experience with writer’s block? If you’re not a writer, what’s stymied you lately? It could be a project or fitness or even a phone call to family.
I haven’t had to say it yet, but apparently it does need to be said after Tuesday’s post — keep all comments civil and respectful. I encourage discussion and disagreement, but if it’s not respectful, it’s not welcome. This should be a positive environment, and if my family members can get along when they have different religions and political views, we can discuss other things without being rude to one another.
Related articles
- The Right Way to Beat Your Writer’s Block (boldstate.com)
- Is it Writer’s Block if it’s Just Bad? (kellielarsenmurphy.com)
- Writer’s Block Doomage (writersblockofdoom.wordpress.com)
- Of Hiatuses and Writer’s Block… (anounceofeternity.wordpress.com)
- Brain freeze, writer’s block or just no ideas??? (ronlane.wordpress.com)
Like this:
Birthing the Baby Elephant
Baby Elephant, Take One.
(That reference will come clear a bit later.)
(I just erased about 150 words.)
I has a lot of thoughts, but the words escape me. This picture from Cheezburger.com helps!
I woke up this morning knowing that I wanted to write about a certain quote, which I will share in a bit. And when I sat down to do it, my brain very helpfully turned into a humming blank.
I started writing a little about how people don’t necessarily accept the creative fields as legitimate unless we make millions doing it. Then I decided that came off as more ranty than I meant to be. Then my husband brought me a video from Conan of two people getting married who had never kissed before — and we both had a laugh at the extreme awkward. (You can see that rather sad moment here and have a laugh and a shudder for yourself. I am personally very glad my husband and I knew how to kiss on our wedding day.)
So here I am, almost two hundred words in, and I haven’t said anything at all. Shame on me.
I’m here though, writing. Why on earth am I here writing when I don’t know what to write about? (Woohoo! I found my nugget!) I’ll tell you.
It’s because that’s what I do. Even though I have very little time to do much of anything outside of work, I realized yesterday that if I were to stop updating this blog every day, I would be quite sad.
Me. If I abandoned all of you gentle viewers. Image via pavley.com
Something happens to me when I don’t write. It’s like the thriving, glowy bit that exists somewhere in my core begins to shrivel up like when you put an aluminum can in a fire. At first you can’t see the difference, but after a bit, the outside starts crumpling inward. The bright colors fade into ashen grays, and the metal begins to collapse in on itself until it’s nothing but an empty, thin shell of rubbish.
This is not to say that my writing all comes from a shiny soda can in my heart, but I believe you get the point.
The part that holds the words reacts in a sort of inverse relationship to that crinkling can. If I don’t write, all those words pour into an inner page. They get jammed on top of one another. They jostle each other. They press down too hard and pebble the backside of the page. Over and over it happens while my can is wrinkling and I’m going about “normal” life. Those word pile up until they cannot be contained anymore. It’s like the more of them that fill that page, the more they transmogrify it into a pulsing, breathing being that flexes its muscles as the millions of built up words in varying degrees of pen and pencil scroll across its skin — until it erupts out of me.
I’m supposed to write every day, you see. I could show you a shelf of journals I kept over the years. It was long ago I realized that I had to write. I needed to write. Those words needed to come out before I collapsed in on myself or exploded or did both at once.
That’s where Mr. David Eddings comes in. Because he said it so well, I’m not going to paraphrase his perfect words. I’m going to offer them to you with a scarlet ribbon trailing down the side of a white package, a package that holds a slight shimmer when you turn it this way or that. It’s for you to tug on that ribbon and peel back that gold-kissed paper and see what he has to say. So here it is. Go ahead. Take it.
This is what I was talking about earlier when I suggested most aspiring fantasists will lose heart fairly early on. I was in my mid-teens when I discovered that I was a writer. Notice that I didn’t say “wanted to be a writer.” “Want” has almost nothing to do with it. It’s either there or it isn’t. If you happen to be one, you’re stuck with it. You’ll write whether you get paid for it or not. You won’t be able to help yourself. When it’s going well, it’s like reaching up into heaven and pulling down fire. It’s better than any dope you can buy. When it’s not going well, it’s much like giving birth to a baby elephant.
That’s why it doesn’t matter if people think we have zero chances of success in these fields. It doesn’t matter if today was me spending an hour in labor to birth this baby elephant instead of pulling down fire from the sky. The fire will come back another time.
Until then, gentle viewers, be writers.
I of course couldn't end this without a picture of a baby elephant. See how adorable! Image via Wikipedia
Like this:
Inspiration and Getting Flashy
I’ve always been an avid daydreamer. I’d even go as far to say that I live in my own world most of the time. Daydreaming has often been scorned as being unproductive and useless, but it’s always been the source of many ideas for me. Ideas, clarification of stories, a way to listen to my muse. When I daydream, I get to sit down that granny with her thick glasses and listen to what she has to say over tea and ginger biscuits.
I was very happy to see this in The 25 for that reason:
11. Inspiration
In my writing classes, I devote a session to daydreams, which are spontaneous messages from our subconscious. After one of my presentations, a puzzled member of the audience raised his hand and asked what a daydream was. Others were surprised, but I wasn’t. Not everyone has a daydream-friendly mind. In fact, some people have been taught to repress daydreams as mere distractions.As writers, however, we should not only welcome daydreams, but train ourselves to be aware of them. In fact, the cores of most of my novels have come from daydreams. Daydreams are our primal storyteller at work, sending us scenes and topics that our imagination or subconscious wants us to investigate. Each day, we should devote time (I usually do this before sleeping) to reviewing our daydreams and determining which of them insists on being turned into a story. Don’t push away those daydreams that make you uncomfortable: The more shocking the daydream, the more truthful about us it is. Embrace that truth.
—Morrell
Daydreams are a source of strength for writers. Take some time today to just let your mind wander. Give yourself up to that big Great Dane of a muse and let him drag you wherever he wants. It might open you up to possibilities you didn’t think of before or shine some light on an issue you’ve been having.
I decided to take a brief detour from my novel for a couple days and have been working on my first ever piece of flash fiction. I’m actually pretty excited about it. It’s a little over a thousand words, but I can definitely cut it. It’s nice and Halloween-y. I think it’s rather fun. I might enter it in a contest or submit it to a magazine. We shall see. I’ve never been much for short stories because I prefer having a few hundred pages to devote to characterization, but I’m really happy with how this turned out.
And now, gentle viewers, it’s time for me to head to work. Days like this I wish I had sick days — I actually am sick. Wish me luck not snotting on the customers.
Like this:
Blueberry Pancake Afternoon
Well, gentle viewers, life finally caught up to me. I’ve managed to post every day for several weeks now, but this week some things stuck out their feet and tripped me up.
Wedding. One week away. Suddenly less time than I have stuff to do. Work. Always that. And most importantly, though not a happy thing, I lost a family member this week. I won’t speak much about that, because this isn’t the venue, but I will say he was loved and will be remembered by all of us. Suffice it to say that my reasons for not posting are simply that I hadn’t much to say I cared to share with the world.
My writing work has dwindled to the side for the past few days, trailed off listlessly like I ran out of fuel. Which it feels like I did. So today I am back to the blog, trying to get the tank filled again. I started today with copious amounts of blueberry pancakes after getting up at 1 PM — haven’t been sleeping well due to an intrepid little unidentified critter who lives on my roof and spends his time scritching about above my head as I try to sleep.
There are a great many things happening at the moment in my little life, and while they’re not going anywhere in the immediate future, I am going to get back to work. I’m almost to the end of draft two. I’ve been reading a couple of my favorite authors lately and picking apart their work — and have been surprised to find a lot of the same little foibles I tend toward. Namely, a lot of adverbs and passive voice. I find that I can write effective work just like they can — assuming my readers aren’t lying to me — so that gives me some hope. Until tomorrow, gentle viewers. Please do forgive the scattered nature of this post and the brain that formed it. Please refrain from eating brains, unless you are a zombie.
To Write More, Write More
*Crickets*
Ahem. Is this thing on? *Blows dust off neglected WordPress*
Long time, my friends. Long time indeed. I don’t have a good excuse. I have a few reasons, but none of them really constitute an actual excuse for my lack of writing. I’m broke. I’ve just changed jobs and now have two. I’m financially skint. I’m a lazy arse. I’m unmotivated and ever-so-slightly depressed about my writing. Pick one. Or pick them all. Regardless, life seems to have gotten in my way yet again. As I move into my 27th year on this planet, I seem to be running into the whole money dilemma more and more. Primarily that there never seems to be enough of it in my bank account in order to satisfy silly little things like rent and credit card bills, of which there are too many. And so in a great effort to get my life on track, I’ve decided to work two jobs. If only finishing the next draft of my novel would be a guarantee of financial de-stressing.
In spite of the nail-biting and hand-wringing that occupies my brain most days, I’m making a couple of small goals that I see as sort of…future investments. While my writing may never pay off monetarily, it is something I have to try and therefore worth doing. So I’ve decided to go with the little goal of blogging at least once a week.
I have indeed been doing some revision and rewriting of Primeval. I like (and I mean really like) the couple big changes I’ve gone for off the bat. There is a lot of work to do and seemingly less time to do it in than I would like, but it is happening. Slowly. It’s even formatted nicely the way many agents like — Courier is my new friend.
So there you have it. Wish me luck and lots of motivation. In fact, feel free to plant your foot in my behind if you feel it’s not in gear.
See you next week! (Hopefully sooner.)
Goal Fail
I haven’t been keeping up with my end of the bargain and writing 1000 words per day the last few days. Beginning Saturday, I think. So that puts me about 3,000 behind. Bugger.
I have been feeling a bit under the weather, partly due to my neck injury, but if I can manage to watch half a season of X-Files, surely I can manage to pitter-pat my fingers on a keyboard, no? I’ve been a wee bit blocked. Partly because I am overwhelmed with excitement of going back to Scotland at long last. Also because I was waiting for a couple more things with my plot to click into place, which as of now I think they have. One of my character’s motivations were a little fuzzy, but she ended up doing something that completely clears up that mess and provides a nice background for one of her future exploits — one, I might add, that I really wish she’d reconsider, even though I know she won’t.
Writing strong characters is an interesting thing. The best characters to me are the ones who bulldoze me into telling their stories, which is exactly what happened with many of the ones in this trilogy. It’s like I’m minding my own business, walking down the street one day, and suddenly I get a 2×4 to the head. I don’t really mind in all the concussion; they make my job a bit easier when I just feverishly jot down everything they say and do. They don’t even care if we get published. As long as I tell their stories, they’re more or less content.
I think every writer is just an eensy bit schizophrenic. Maybe that’s why I’m an introvert — I have enough people in my head trying to get me to write them down to deal with the rest of the world all the time.
Hush, don’t worry. I’m kidding.
Sort of.
But mostly kidding.
long time coming
it’s as if winter gelled my motivations around me until i was slogging through stickiness. unable to write. unable to create, only to relate what went on in my mind and my thoughts. distractions. apathy.
and not a little bit of discouragement. i’m not sure what it was exactly, and i didn’t recognize it for what it was until only a few days ago. suffice it to say that i think i’m back. or at least i’m nearing the part where i will be back, and able to write again. anna’s story still needs telling. there is a lot to be said. she’s starting to whisper to me again, and that’s always a good sign. when she starts yelling, i won’t be able to pry my fingers off the keyboard.
so, don’t worry. i will be back. and soon. till then, adieu.
