Writer's Block Isn't Always What It Seems

Even going through a recent dry period, where daily writing turned out such horrible drivel that it put me in a tailspin - something else was going on. After a few months of absolutely dreadful writing, I realized that I needed to either take a break, or give up on it completely. Yes, first drafts are supposed to need repair, but this was to the extreme.

So I took a break, and just went to work and organized drawers and did laundry. But here's what happened: During that break time, stuff kept coming to me. Good stuff. I had to carry a notebook and pen with me at all times, including in the car, near the shower, in bed with me at night and to the supermarket. Because the stuff that was coming to me was rich and authentic. Whether or not it ended up in the novel, I had to capture it.

This notebook has filled up and amazingly, I'm now ready to go back to the writing. I don't have to force it now because I loosened my grip on the process.

Upon re-reading what I wrote before this break, I see that it was flippant.It wasn't grounded.

After taking this break, the whole novel has changed. The plot, characters, and setting are the same - but the voice has matured. And the narrative has deepened. The pacing of the book has evened out.

I have something to go on. I kind of know what I'm going to do now.

Yes, most of the time writer's block needs to be dealt with by simply not allowing it to exist. But sometimes, you have to know when to break the rules. And letting myself leave the keyboard for a few months, writing down dreams and fragments as they occurred, has healed this novel.

Suzann Kale

I Love My Apps

Especially Goodreads and of course Blogger. Also my weather app.

Just doing it.

...no matter what. That's the only way this novel is going to get done. There's no waiting for inspiration, no waiting to be in a creative mood. And for me right now, no waiting to devise a better plot!

A lot of this first draft writing is just doing it. For having been working on this book for over a year now so far, surely I have enough backstory. Yes of course there's a plot, but it's thin. I have faith that day by day, page by page, chapter by chapter, it will develop the way it should. And then I can go back and edit.

The predicament of journaling

I kept journals for most of my life, and then at one point I threw them all out. Hundreds of hand-written and typed journals. I had already mined them for material - mostly scenes, places, descriptions, bits of dialogue, ideas, and one-liners - for my novel Midnight Tequila. The novel was what I needed to say, to remember. Yes the novel is fiction, and it's totally not autobiographical - but that's what I need to keep. Not the journals. 

I kept a voice and music journal, too, for many years. Separate from the other journals. That was more technical, so after mining that for ideas for my singing technique book, Vocal Vibrance, I did keep them. Although I don't see why I'd ever need them.

For A Gypsy on Tenth Avenue, my notebooks were specific: research on Romany history, a huge section on the language, all kinds of reviews and references to sociology books. That I'm keeping.

But now I'm working on a new novel, and the whole thing has taken on a different twist. It seems that now it's either the novel OR a journal. Time is precious. What do I want to do? So I'm keeping a journal, but it's completely made up of ideas for the novel. Overheard dialog that had to be preserved. The way a small town feels at 5 am in November in the Emergency Room parking lot. Stuff I think of while driving (I pull over all the time to write notes and journal entries.). 

Sometimes I feel the loss of my regular, personal, day to day journal. But I plan to channel that energy into the book. 

Suzann Kale