Labor of Love on Labor Day (Progress report for September 2, 2019)

Only 325 words so far today, but the day is young. 109,139 total for the manuscript — or about 3,000 words short of where I *want* to be today. Ai, ai, ai.

But about 11,000 words since last Sunday. So there is that!

The most important thing to know about writer’s block

is what causes it. My understanding of writer’s block has evolved a lot over the course of writing and publishing ten novels and two novellas. I used to locate the problem of writer’s block mainly in my laziness, self-doubt, fear, depression, and distraction. Those things still matter, but I think that — at least for me — the primary cause of writer’s block is simpler than all that: I think writer’s block comes from not knowing what’s happening next in your story. The blank page, in other words, is only intimidating if you don’t know what comes next.

This is one of the reasons I’ve transitioned to being more of a plotter than a pantser… but I still have a lot of pantsing in me. I suspect I always will. And because of that, the current of my story sometimes enters a little eddying side pocket, where it swirls and bubbles and doesn’t know where to go next.

Right now, for example, Tasia finds herself up in a random little town in the northern part of the Capital Lands, only she doesn’t know exactly why she’s there, and I’m not entirely sure *I* know why she’s there, either.

Hence the block.

Still, creativity *does* depend on more than just a good plotting tool.

Later today, I will need to revisit my outline and to trace where I’m going wrong and what I need to do to write my way out of it. That should go a long way towards removing my block and pulling my word count up for today.

But you know those other things I mentioned about writer’s block? The laziness, self-doubt, fear, depression, and distraction? Those things do still matter. It’s hard to work out what the problems are in an outline and decide where the story should go next when you’re preoccupied with other (life) concerns, as I have been all day.

Frustration plays into it, too — the frustration of knowing I need to get as much homework done today as possible, for instance, and that doing homework means I probably won’t get as many words written as I’d really like to. The (life) preoccupation and (school) frustration conspire together to drive me into bad habits born of laziness and distraction, and the sum of all that gums up the creative gears from working properly….. aaaaaaand writer’s block takes hold.

Maybe the second most important thing to know about writer’s block

is that there is never a perfect solution to it. It makes me think of the calculus problems I used to do in high school, the limit problems where x approaches a number, usually infinity or zero, yet never reaches it. Remember those?

Just as x –> 0 never actually reaches 0, I think the struggle to move writer’s block to 0 never actually happens, either. It’s more a matter of managing it than eliminating it.

Anyway.

Enough from me today. Back to homework… and writing, if I’m lucky.