Tag: writer’s block

Too Much Think

Pavowski2 Comments

There comes a point all things significant in my life wherein I find myself thinking way too much. I thought too much about marrying my wife, about buying our first house, about having kids… and I am definitely thinking too much about the edit of my novel.

I started out, if anything, not thinking enough. Not really wanting to tackle the tough choices, not really wanting to rejigger the narrative, not really willing to tear out the skeleton of the thing to make the changes that are necessary. But it grew on me, and I started to realize that not only are there tough choices to make, but that I often needed to take the harder of the two paths for fixing the problems in the story. And I started hunting down the problems in the narrative like  Indiana Jones seeking golden idols in the depths of Mayan temples. Each new problem solved gave rise to another, bigger conflict I could fix. Each prospective fix, not necessarily right for this situation, took on new significance, grew wings and started looking for problems to apply itself to. And then, a little stymied after a hectic work week, I threw myself at the edit again yesterday and spotted a white whale just lazing about below the surface of the waves on the horizon. A prize so massive, catching her and bringing her in could alter the trajectory of the narrative like a moonshot. It was a job too big for a single day, so I put it on the EPOS and marinated on it overnight.

And I realized something. Drafts of a story are like prototypes before a product launch. None of them is perfect, but each one gets polished to a point where it at least looks and functions more or less as intended. There may still be bugs on the inside, but to an outside observer, it looks like a complete thing. And my edit of this story resembles not so much a prototype as a cluttered workshop after a hurricane and a flash flood. The narrative is in pieces. Loose ends like frayed wires are protruding out of the armholes, eye sockets, fingertips. Entire limbs of the story are disjointedly stuck on with duct tape while other vestigial bits are still cluttering the margins like piles of unswept sawdust.

I’ve been so focused on fixing every little problem along the way that I never bothered to stop, clean up, and see if the thing as a whole is still working as intended. There’s been so much thought about making this little thing fit into its niche that I’m not paying attention to the fact that I’ve stitched an alligator arm onto a panda bear torso. I fear that there’s been so little big picture focus that I’ve created a Frankenstein’s Monster doomed to self-destruct in a boiling froth of unresolved plots and half-baked new characters. In short: I fear that I’ve somehow managed to make this second draft worse than the first.

But you know what? Maybe it is, and maybe that’s okay. If nothing else, it’s time to stop making huge conceptual changes, clean up the dust and debris, and see if this thing can even stand on its own two feet. The first draft did. It was shaky, but it stood up. This second draft? I honestly have no idea. I think it will, but I haven’t tested it properly with a read-through to see.

So it’s time to stop thinking so much. Time to stop trying to fix everything and start making sure that the fixes I’ve made already actually work. Which means no more breaking the story into pieces. No more new characters. No DELETING existing characters. No more rearranging story elements. I need less chainsaw, more chisel. Less dynamite, more sander. Time to sweep up the workshop, put the tools away, and just sit and have another good look at this thing I’ve built. Get a second opinion. Take a bird’s-eye view of the whole scenario.

And then, you know, with fresh perspective, maybe it’ll be time to lop its arms off.

Nothing a Little Run Can’t Fix

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Once more onto the beach, or however that saying goes.

I dutifully took my two weeks(ish?) off from SERIOUS writing to let the mind decompress and drift back into its natural jellylike state after four months of grind, but today is the day I pick it up again and continue whipping my word-vomit into something approaching Prose Worth Reading.

As with virtually every writing or otherwise creative project I have ever undertaken, the choosing was the hardest part.  For better or worse, choose I have, and now I press on with the goal of expanding one of my recent Flash Fictions into a fuller, more developed short story.  I’m aiming for about ten thousand words, just as a ballpark sort of area I’d like to land in, but if it runs long or short that won’t upset me terribly.  I’m not sure what the real goal will be as far as what I’d like to do with this one when it’s written, but I want to try out a length in between these little lightning strikes I’m spitting out every week and another full-length heartstomper like the novel has been.  Ten thousand words seems a nice happy medium, and when I’m finished with that, it will perhaps be time to start back in on editing Accidentally Inspired.

If you’re curious (why wouldn’t you be?!) I’m going to be expanding my entry from a couple of weeks ago, Powdered Chaos.  I feel like I scratched the surface of something really interesting with that one and I think it’s worth the time to delve into that particular cave and see what squishy bits of sweetmeats I can deliver back to the colony.  What’s that?  “Sweetmeats” aren’t what I think they are?

Hold on.

Okay, a sweetmeat is, of all things, a pastry.  The word I was thinking of was “sweetbread”, which for some reason is the name for pancreas.  English is a whimsical old thing, innit?

Anyway, I’ll be delving that particular cave over the next several weeks, with a much more reasonable goal of 600 words daily.  900 was a great goal for the novel, and I may use that as a benchmark in future times of novel writing dementia, but there were more than a few days when I started wanting to chop down trees with my keyboard after word 600.  Keyboards not being a particularly effective cutting implement, that’s the kind of impulse I’d like to, y’know, steer away from.  So.  600 words, five days a week, that’s about four weeks to turn Powdered Chaos into something that’s… well, something.  This is all experimental; don’t look at me if a zombie goliath of stitched-together story bits and half-formed ideas begins roaming the countryside and devouring your livestock and KILL IT WITH FIRE.

First day (night actually) of working on this one went swimmingly.  I chalk it up to my run this morning.  No, seriously.

I decided this was the project I wanted on Thursday but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to go about expanding it.  Start farther out front?  Deal with multiple characters and their interaction with the thing?  Maybe continue on past the one outlined in the story?  It was a problem and I was blocked.

As I’ve mentioned before, Past Me would hit a roadblock when writing and park the car, slash the tires and hitchhike back to town, abandoning the vehicle to looters and hobos.  New Me has no truck with blocks; he drives right at them with the brights on and the horn sounding its dopplerized war cry, and if the block is still there when I get around to my writing that day, well then WE’RE BOTH GOING DOWN.  Writing tonight was a given.  The how and the what and the whatever would come to me.  So I laced up.  (Actually I strapped up because my Vibrams don’t have laces, but… yeah, “strapped up” sounds a little bit like… okay let’s just move on.)

It was a rainy morning, so I left the sprout at home.  Also because of the raininess of the morning I didn’t take my headphones with me (they are a bright shiny BIRTHDAY GIFT and I am not ready to ruin them yet even though they are life-altering and awesome and give me wings).  Imagine!  Running completely unfettered by forty pounds of toddler + stroller and undistracted by mindless thumping dubstep!  I’ve not had such a run in months and I desperately miss it.

Running without distractions is something I always say I’m going to do more often and never actually get around to doing much at all, but I maintain that the experience is peerless when it comes to solving problems personal and mental.  So I’m hoofing it and enjoying the quickest pace I’ve had on a run in a while and delighting in the mist on my face and now and then pondering the question of what I’m going to do when I come up against this roadblock in actually starting the thing and then I get this idea, like a midget was following right on my heels and hopped up on my back and whispered in my ear so softly I could barely hear it, “point of view.”

And I cocked my head and pondered on that, because it’s not a complete sentence after all, but when ideas drift into my head on a run they usually do it for some sort of reason and I always at least try poking at them to see if they bite back.  “Point of view?” I pondered.  No answer.  The various Me’s bouncing around in my head only answer when they feel like it, or when I’ve had a few adult beverages.  And I run and I ponder, run, ponder.  It hits me that the point of view in that story is wrong.  Not wrong like five is not the answer to two plus two, but wrong like whitewall tires on a tractor.  The thing still runs, but it ain’t optimal.

So, change it.  But to what?

Well, I won’t spoil it yet, but needless to say, the point of view has been changed, and in a way that I hope will be both surprising and satisfying.  And I got a cool 750 words in tonight without breaking a sweat, but of course that should be tempered immediately because the honeymoon is just getting started with this thing.

At any rate, lesson learned.  There has not yet been a day when I’ve had a run and not felt better about my writing at the end of it.  It’s a lesson I keep learning and somehow keep forgetting, so THIS POST should serve as a reminder to any and all Future Me’s: Next time you get blocked, or think you might get blocked, or even think you might think about the possibility that in some future eventuality you could possibly get blocked, just lace up.  (Or strap up.  No, just lace up and adjust for your needs.)  The road and your feet and the void will go to work on the problem and before you know it, you’re home and ready for a shower and a good write.

Today’s Writing Session Sponsored by The Beast, Apparently

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More on that title at the end of the post.

The writing had me in a weird place yesterday.  I was stressed about where my story had ended up and where it was headed, and I felt the significant gravity of self-doubt and intimidation about the task of writing a novel weighing heavy on my shoulders.  It was one of those days when I really think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, when I wonder if this whole thing was really such a good idea and whether I’d be better off using my spare time to play video games or read or watch TV or otherwise waste my time.  Of course, you have those thoughts, and then you remember the old adage about how nobody on their deathbed says they wished they’d watched more TV.  No, Writing this novel is one of those — I won’t say Bucket List items, because that’s a term that gets tossed around too whimsically for my tastes — but it’s one of those Things I Wanted To Accomplish.  And, like with so many other things in life, I’ve found, the day-to-day struggles become easier to bear if you keep your eye on the prize, so that’s what I try to do.Read More »

The Id-Writer (There Are No Space Unicorns Here… or Are There?)

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I know, I know.  Last time I promised Space Unicorns, and here you are, end of a long day perhaps, or settling in for the start of another one, or perhaps sat on the toilet for a bit of reading, looking for the Space Unicorns.

But I just couldn’t.  I wanted to.  I thought about it.  I muddled and marinated for a couple of days, but Space just wouldn’t give me Unicorns.  Today presented me with the first day yet, in almost two full months (is it that long now?  Jesus) when I wasn’t going to make my writing goal.

Wrote about 400 words.  Not feeling the flow.  Squeezed out 100 more like an old man at a urinal.  Painful.  Forced.  Scratched and clawed for 100 more, a dessicated husk of a man dragging himself on his stomach across scorching sands toward a fanciful oasis shimmering in the impossible distance.  Some days, 900 words isn’t nearly enough for me to write what wants to be written.  Today, it was Everest.  So I gave up.

I was kind to myself.  I reminded myself that I’ve been writing extra above and beyond my goal consistently on an almost daily basis, and that I’ve therefore banked enough words to have a day off and still be plenty ahead of schedule.  I let myself remember that it’s been another rough week of testing at school and I’m thoroughly mentally fried to excuse an off day.  I told myself it wouldn’t be that big a deal.  I fooled myself into feeling almost pleased at letting myself off the hook.

But the Id-Writer was not satisfied.Read More »

Zen and the Art of Shut Up and Write

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Gawd, it’s been a rough week for my writing. Hard to find the time, hard to find the motivation, hard to even read what I’ve written.

The Howler Monkey of Doubt was exceptionally loud in my ears this morning, and I think he must have eaten a ton of garlic bread last night, because his breath was AWFUL, and he was not in the least apologetic about it. At any rate, during my tuning-up phase this morning, I went back and re-read the last few pages, as is my wont, and realized that there is a problem. It’s not going anywhere.
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