When your writing gets stuck, it’s kind of like being a turtle upended, or like your wood-cutting axe hitting a knot in the wood. Frustrating. But this latest round of being stuck on my in-progress young-adult adventure novel, I wasn’t really frustrated.
It was more like I was distantly and intellectually fascinated as to what would finally lift me out of it.
Locking myself in a room with my keyboard, and commanding myself to write at least a few paragraphs before lunch? That has worked before. Letting myself skip a week and enjoy the sun, family, and casual reading for a break that I seem to need? That has worked before. Extending the latter until I feel boredom and guilt gnawing? That has definitely worked. Or reading one of my favorite books on the craft of writing (Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas, The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias, or books on character development by Victoria Schmidt), to unstick myself on the particular facet that is temporarily problematic (plotting, dialogue, character…)? Yeah, that works for sure, sometimes.
But this time, it was something different. It was the announcement of a friend that she had just finished writing her novel. Hey! Competitive spirit works too, as it turns out. Thanks, Silvana! Back at it…
