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Tag: writer’s block

Writer’s Block Sucks

Man, I haven’t been this blocked in years. Usually, it’s when I’ve taken a bad turn in the plot somewhere, and I need to start over from that point and figure out what happened and how to fix it. Usually, I’ll use a few different methods such as Tarot cards, freewriting, brainstorming, and even playing various writerly “games” to get at my subconscious and the answer—or, at least the beginning of the answer and over the hump so I can start writing again and in the right direction. (The writerly “games” are courtesy of Holly Lisle’s Create a Plot Clinic – an amazing book that I highly recommend — and I do not make any money from this; I am just a huge fan of her fiction and nonfiction). However, I’ve had a fair amount of upheaval in the past few years. We’ve got the pandemic, of course. My ongoing sleep issues, which are getting better, but aren’t perfect yet. We’ve got my usual chronic illness stuff. My business, which is thriving, but also takes a lot of time and energy. I’m still working on that part. I think a lot of this is effecting my creativity. I wrote 6,000 words in 2021. Abysmal, but things were crap that year. Last year was much better at 20,000 words. Yay! I’d said at least double 6,000, and I’d made that and a bit more. This year? I’m at about 2,000. Granted, we’re only into April, so there’s time. And I’ve been…

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The Anti-Blog Post

It’s finally happened, friends. It’s been so long since I’ve written any fiction, or even poetry, that I’ve also forgotten how to blog. Not that there’s nothing in my brain. Oh no, it’s full of all sorts of things — my ever-growing to-do list at the day job, whether my broken sandal can be fixed, when it will feel safe to fly cross-country to visit my family again, how to rescue my tomato plants from the various ailments they’re suffering from this year, the various comfort viewing and comfort reading I’m doing, whether my bathroom ceiling fan is on the verge of breaking down or just needs a good cleaning, various appointments I’m putting off making because they’re not urgent, just how perfect the weather has to be before I’ll go for a long walk, whether any of my fall/winter clothes still fit and how much I should buy to replace them if my size is still changing, what we should name KD’s upcoming spooky book. The problem is that there’s no narrative. No cohesive whole. Just a set of ping-pong balls ricocheting around and failing to get into phase. Maybe it’s because of the elephant in the room that we’re all trying not to think about too hard: nothing will ever be quite the same as it was before, but when will normal things feel safe again? Will they ever? Maybe it’s because existential anxiety on top of everyday busyness is not conducive to creativity, even though we’re all…

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Bringing the Fun Back

So I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and stumbled across this: Sweet-Ass Affirmations 2 / A Card Deck for Creative Maniacs . Of course I was intrigued. I followed the link, and discovered something truly awesome. It’s an affirmation deck, which is cool. Now I don’t currently own any, nor have I really delved into them before, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. But what got my muse all a-flutter was the idea of fun and play and creative and mania and bringing out the joy in life – because, c’mon now, we all need that, but for me, I’ve been thinking about this VERY THING. It’s like the Universe is giving me a gentle nudge. Synchronicity. Because I was just thinking that I needed to make my writing fun again. I’ve been struggling for weeks on my novella. I’m in the process of loosely plotting it, building a bit of a roadmap to follow, as is my process, and I’ve found myself horribly stuck. The idea was exciting and interesting and fun months ago when I thought of it. Now? It just feels like work. It could be that everything these days feels like work. Work’s been crazy, my sleep is still not right, I haven’t been feeling good about anything, the pandemic has been getting me down (we’re still not out of the woods, but that’s another post), and I just feel very….hopeless? Pointless? Crappy? Right now. I can’t even put my finger on it,…

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Writing Again!

So a few days ago, I started writing again for the first time in SIX MONTHS. Yes, my friends, six months. It’s the longest time I ever went without writing since 2003, I estimate, because that’s when I started writing every day. I’ve had pockets of time where I stopped, or had to stop, like when I finished the revision of Fey Touched in 2012 and was brain dead for two months, or when the trigeminal neuralgia flared for the first time in my left eye and I quit the computer for three months, thinking it was my heavy computer usage (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). But never, ever have I went six months without a word of fiction. I have written poems here and there, so words were written — just not fiction words. Why on earth would I do such a thing, you ask? Why put myself through such torture? And yes, it was absolute torture. I don’t recommend it at all. There were a few things going on. One, I simply didn’t have the time. Sounds lame, because who doesn’t have time to write, but it’s absolutely true. With my health being sucky and my energy being low, and every minute I felt okay devoted to work, there just wasn’t any leftover spoons for writing — except poetry. I was battling a sleep disorder and head pain as well, so those things just made it worse. I was still stressed from the pandemic. Things are getting better overall,…

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Outwitting the Inner Critic

If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll know that the Inner Critic is my worst enemy as a writer. That’s the little voice in your head that says “This story is so derivative, the dialogue is wooden, your characters have no personality, and you don’t write enough to be a Real Writer anyway.” (Your mileage may vary.) Periodically I find a way to fight it. Then I forget what I did that worked. So here’s my latest attempt to write down what worked in hopes of cementing it into my brain (or at least referring to it next time I need it). And if it helps you too, so much the better… Some context: Last month, I went off on a week-long writing retreat and took some short stories that I wanted to revise. Normally, for me, revising is a great way to get the Inner Critic to come out and play, I mean stomp all over me. (Ironic for someone whose day job is actually editing, but there you go.) I can write first drafts (sometimes) and I can tinker with line edits (usually). But if a story needs anything bigger, I just…freeze up and have no idea where to start, or else write endless brainstorming notes and never get any closer to having a reshaped story that I’m happy with. This time, neither of those things happened. Here’s what I did. Start sessions with handwriting. I brought along a book of writing exercises/prompts and had them…

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Thank God for Physical Therapy

Well, of course it’s a Godsend after having foot surgery. I’m getting my mobility back, one step at time. But did you know that PT is really good for writerly brainstorming? We do mostly the same things every time—strength building, weight bearing, massage. At the end, I get “stim and cold pack” which just means using a TENS unit to give me electrical pulses and putting an ice pack on my foot. So there’s about fifteen minutes where I’m literally doing nothing but thinking. Or resting. Or zoning. Sleeping, no. Not yet, anyway. <grin> So I hit a wall in The Vanishing, my work in progress. Reaper Girl #3. Due in August. (No pressure.) I couldn’t figure out how to get from one place in the plot to another. Everything I thought about felt lame and too easy and contrived. I’d last left Leliel and Rick at their favorite diner, sharing breakfast and discussing the <something spoilery> they found. They needed to discover the next plotty bit. I was tired of not writing (Sunday doesn’t count because Game of Thrones finale) or writing just a few hundred words (deadline) so I started poking my muse and asking her questions. And while I am still a bit shaky on the what, I do have a bonus why. I figured out quite a lot in that short fifteen-minute period. I have literally had no other time to really dig into it. I was planning on doing a freewrite—which I still might do—but…

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When Writing Isn’t Fun Anymore

As a writer, I periodically hit this point. My Serious Novel work-in-progress feels too hard. (It may or may not have anything to do with where I am in the novel. Some parts of writing a novel just suck–even Neil Gaiman says so. But sometimes that’s not the problem.) Editing one of the short story drafts I have floating around feels too daunting. And starting a new novel? Forget it. I can drift along for months without writing anything. A couple of years ago, I even announced that I was quitting altogether. (It…didn’t stick.) Sooner or later I give myself a shake and go looking for the fun parts of writing–the parts I used to know about when I was a teenager, but somehow get harder and harder to find the more I learn. One year, I got out of this slump by writing Firefly fanfiction. Another year, I started plotting a contra dance–themed cozy mystery. Two years ago, I challenged myself to write the smallest possible thing every day–it led to a lot of haikus and then, eventually, flash fiction. (Which led to me placing third in a flash fiction contest and then getting to help judge it last year, as well as making my first pro-rate sale. But that’s not the point of the story.) Why yes, this does happen regularly. It’s a cycle. I know this. Doesn’t make it any easier to avoid falling in…but at least I’m getting practice climbing out of it? The current strategy?…

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Beating Writer’s Block…Again

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m prone to long periods of not writing fiction. These tend to be accompanied by self-flagellation and an existential crisis: if I’m not writing, who am I? Then comes depression (or sometimes that happens first), which makes it even harder to write, and round and round I go. The only way to break the cycle is to start putting down some words. This, obviously, is easier said than done. It’s intimidating, especially if you’ve been away from the blank page for a while. In the past I’ve tried fanfiction, though it’s not normally my thing, or played around with a completely different genre–not to try selling, just to play with. This time, since the beginning of the year, I’ve gone through several different stages. It’s working, so I thought I’d share… 1. First I resurrected my own blog. It’s not fiction, and doesn’t completely fill a need for me in the way writing fiction does. But I do blog with an audience in mind, and putting together coherent opinion pieces or travel posts is good practice in writing down the words, finishing a piece, and shipping. 2. Then I branched out from non-fiction and started writing the smallest possible thing every day. On some days, they were fragments of stories that didn’t and probably won’t go any further, but mostly they were haikus. I’m not trying to become a published poet, so I was writing just for me.…

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