Writer’s block is… fun. It’s a kind of compiling problem, too, when you naturally expect yourself to be productive as ever. There are timetables and schedules and end dates, even if they are assigned by yourself. Where self-accountability is right and just, the results when it actually comes time for that responsibility vary immensely. Now, even while being “on schedule,” I feel myself slipping behind. As if there isn’t enough time to get everything I want done and as thought the things I have gotten done are fading quickly in some vague measurement of their achievement.
So we get a little behind, we get a little stuck, and then we feel overwhelmed.
Enter writer’s block.
I read once that writer’s block is best described as when your imaginary friends stop talking to you. I like that, it’s cute, but it’s not quite that’s happened this time around. Whatever creative impulses drive me are not gone. Some are louder than ever. I’ve worked on the foundations of two new projects, written some poems, and here I am blogging instead of working on edits for Telgora or rewrites for Madelen.
There’s a new story whose working title is just “Madelen.” The main character’s name is Madelen. She came about over the summer but really became a thing during NaNoWriMo. That story wasn’t hers, but I started writing hers anyway. It felt good, different from a lot of my former writing. I had waited to write it until I felt I was “good enough” to write it, whatever that means. I also started in on her waiting for another project to get off the ground of its next phase, but there were delays there, too. Madelen had her spotlight, and we were forty-five thousand words in two weeks when, snag.
The plot broke.
The story crashed like a train, aflame and in relative ashes.
Madelen thought it was fun, anyway.
So now there are rewrites, and those have been grindingly slow. Characters who I was once thought were relevant have to be reworked and minimized, more effort put into the ones left, and the actual plot and tension reworked entirely. What that means for what’s written is a lot of it’s getting thrown out, too. It’s not new territory for me, or anyone who writes. Whole plot lines got sliced out of Telgora, but those were cut in editing. This “early” into a story hitting a wall like that feels bleh.
That’s a technical term by the way, look it up.
Maybe this is just a giant complaining blog post. But I don’t know. So much of this all and social media and everything discusses the wins, the progress, the march of time and victories. A lot of that’s my language, sure, but I think the points are there. Hell, I’ve written about my struggles both here and in poetry about the darker patches. In terms of darker patches, what, it’s not like there’s anything great and horrifying going on in the world that could offer a grim distraction from the day to day, right?
Oh. Right.
I think some of why I’m beating myself up more about this than usual is that it feels kind of trivial, and it hasn’t always.
I think I just called my writing trivial. Imposter syndrome, how dare you?
But there is some comfort in these feelings, especially imposter syndrome, because I know they’re shared by a lot of creative people. That’s assuming I can count myself among them, but see below the quote about creative suffering felt by Monet about a similar experience he felt for painting. It served as part of the inspiration to this blog post and as a measure that things can be okay. It’s similar to that overwhelming vibe in Dorothy Parker opining about not being someone who does things but kind of in reverse? I put a lot of weight into what I write and I love the things that I write and the little bit that’s out there floating in the ether, but there’s always that nagging sense of whether or not it really amounts to anything. Writer’s block comes from there, too.
Why would I sit at my desk for the scheduled hour or two every morning after breakfast and clack away at these keys writing stories about princesses who throttle their enemies with crowns of thorns, people coming of age in a time and place confusing as our own and clinging to the fragments of comfort they recall from younger days, witches burning lemon tarts, and soldiers carrying the ashes of their comrades across distant battlefields instead of like… I don’t know… actually going to the gym again? In that sense hoping for readership or publication or even just that sense of being able to touch someone with the things I’m writing feels as much like delusions of grandeur as they are actual goals.
When one story lags, it can make everything else feel shaky, too. Not just Madelen, either. Madelen herself only came about to fill a void brought on by other projects dragging its feet. In that regard, too, one can see the temptation to just give them up entirely. I’ve done that before, when I’m unhappy with the progress of certain stories. Hell, there’s a whole murder mystery I wrote, decided wasn’t good, and left for dead. You think you guys see all the poetry I write? Please.
There’s an existential struggle there too, under the stress and hand-wringing over inspiration and blocks. Part of what’s playing out is the knowledge that there are only so many hours in a day and so much time to allot to this and that project. Choosing to work on Madelen means the others don’t get as much time of day, means that this is the story I’m deciding to pin the next few years of my life on. She’s worth it, I think. I’m excited to keep going with her. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t wonder about the might haves, or the stories waiting in the wings.
I think that’s what I like about NaNo the most. I’ve taken to using NaNoWriMo as a way to experiment with new stories, genres, or ideas as a break from both Telgora and now from Madelen. I’m already looking forward to this year, to the story yet to come. There’s been work and plotting and (yes) worldbuilding there too. Hopefully it pays off.
But then I think that I started actually writing Madelen during another new NaNo story. Maybe there’s hope there, too. If I get a burst of inspiration or something new, it’s just a matter of working it into the schedule. August or July, with their long days and shifts of work balanced with lazy days lakeside or walking around sunny, tree-lined cemeteries would be perfect months to try and challenge myself to write a story aside the work I’m doing. Another Time, Part II is due to release in June, so why not treat myself?
Treat myself to more work, that is.
Clearly I’ve got this thing figured out and healthy.
Maybe there’s something of a solution there, I don’t know. Or else maybe this really was complaining. If it’s the latter, to whoever is reading this, know that none of us are perfect all the time and we all need breaks and moments to pause and reflect. That’s what this year was supposed to be about, and in a lot of ways it is. Consolidation, a grounding force.
And, hey, look!
I just wrote a little over twelve-hundred words.
