oh my god. I am sitting here laughing, because writer’s block is actually THE HISTORY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. Where is Ben? I am sorry to say that Ben could probably write a book on my writer’s block. His job for the entire duration of me writing Left was to talk me down when I was panicking and stuck and couldn’t write.
So when I get stuck writing a scene I often… don’t handle it well. Here is what I do:
1. Find a friend and whine about it privately.
2. Go into a chat room and whine about it publicly.
3. Whine on tumblr.
4. Procrastinate on the internet indefinitely.
5. Fume at myself for not being able to write. Do so until I am seething in unproductive anger.
6. Go back to 1. Repeat.
Finally, when I am simply too exhausted to go through these steps again, I take a look at the scene and do a thing where I somehow give up and keep going at the same time. When I get to this point, here are the things that have worked for me. I got all of these tips from friends while I was whining at them, so that does have an upside.
– Identify the point in my fic where everything was going well, and see if I can tell where I veered off course. If so, back up to the good place, throw subsequent bad things out, and retry in a different direction.
– Put Mycroft in the scene. (I’m not kidding.)
– Brainstorm either out loud or to a friend and identify the part of the plot I haven’t worked out. I usually get stuck when there’s something I haven’t mentally thought through, and the trick is, identifying what it is. Sometimes this thing is strangely not obvious.
I could probably go on, but maybe I’ll just sit back and watch Ben’s reaction to the “does Mars ever get stuck” question 😀
Generally, you have to prod Mars with the following questions:
- What does POV character want?
- What does non-POV character want?
- What are the emotional responses going on here?
Things to say to Mars when she is stuck:
- The only way out is through.
- Keep writing, dammit.
- You’re at [insert benchmark here] freakout, aren’t you? That’s normal.
I’m so glad it’s not just me. I mean I KNOW it’s not just me, but material evidence is nice anyway. I just feel like such a jerk when I’m stuck or feeling lousy about my writing and incapable of doing anything but whine at people. XD And yet it never seems burdensome to listen to somebody else when they take their turn.