February already?

It has almost been a month since I have posted. This year is slipping by so fast.

I have been battling against a bit of a block lately. It stemmed from a uni assignment that just didn’t seem to be working in my head and then I couldn’t sit down and do anything.

In the end I forced myself into the chair to work on the story. Even if it was rubbish to start with I had to get some sort of story out. I was also getting dangerously close to the deadline.

It turned out to be the best thing I could have done. Things changed a little once I reworked it but once I got that first draft down the world seemed a lot easier to deal with.

Now it is all done and submitted I have allowed myself the chance to have a think about some of the other projects I’m either working on or working up to. I still have a lot to work with my fantasy novel edit, but I want the chance to do some other things as well. I am looking at spending a little time each week outlining and plotting the trilogy I started thinking about a couple of years ago.

I always come back to my current work being more important and so the trilogy has gone untouched. Images and ideas for it swim into focus occasionally and I write them down but I would like to get the full structure organised. Then once I have finished my current edit I can get straight into it.

In the last couple of weeks I feel like I have gone from zero output and flat to clear focus and regular writing again.

The next time I get stuck I will have to remember to just sit and write. It can be hard but, for me, it seems to be the only way. If only I could remember that earlier in the blocked processes.

Happy Scribbling

From Stuck to Unstuck

I have had a very poor week. I’m stuck. I have found it very difficult to get out of bed of a morning and cringe at the idea of facing the computer. I’m not even sure how it started, but it has lasted all week. I haven’t known where to turn to next and I haven’t written a word, well a creative word, at all.

Today I finally turned to a great book to find some solace and see if I could find something to help. The reference is Chapter after Chapter by Heather Sellers. And she is fantastic. But one of the key points in the chapter I turned to today was that what works for others may not work for you. It is important to find your own strategies for coming unstuck.

Sellers gives a range of options and within those there is room for personalising each strategy. One of the options she suggested struck a chord with me – make a list. I love lists. I find lists calming and helpful.

So where I couldn’t sit at the computer and work through ideas I have been standing at the kitchen door writing out lists of questions. In a way I was writing lists of ideas but I find them more useful when formed as questions.

These questions will then sit in my head, moving around and slowly working their way out to a solution. It all helps in moving from stuck to unstuck. Tomorrow morning when I sit down I will be able to think about one of the ideas that I questioned tonight.  And then I’m sure a scene or idea will start to form itself and the words will flow. And the day after and the day after that.

I’m quite excited now about sitting down in my study tomorrow morning. Now all I need to do is make a note so that the next time I get stuck it doesn’t take me as long to work out how to get unstuck.