Let’s Talk Process: You’re Stuck. It Happens.
I refuse to use the term “writer’s block” for this phenomenon. Why? Good question. There are many writers out there who don’t believe there’s such thing. I’m not sure which side of the fence I come down on, to be honest, and damn, this barbed wire is getting sharp, but the term is so powerful I think it has the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophesy rather than a useful identifier. So I chose to pretend the words themselves don’t exist as a linked pair. I cannot, however, ignore the phenomenon of being stuck.
(image via gettyimages.com)
(But Hemmingway did it with coffee and scotch, didn’t he? DIDN’T HE????)
I’m a reason sort of a gal. I like to have definitive answers. That’s great for my nursing career. There’s generally a right way to do things and a wrong way, evidence to back both up. Things change from time to time as medicine and biology advance and that’s fine; new evidence equals new reasoning equals new rules. Dust your hands off and get on with your day.
Being stuck in my writing is very different from being stuck on a scene or a project. When I’m stuck on a project, I skip that part and go on or work on something else. Maybe I work on a craft project or cook a little more elaborate meal. I come back to it. I savor my writing time, even if large parts of it are spent staring at a screen. I take a reading break to clear my head, get an answer to a style problem or a plot know by learning from others.
Being stuck in writing means I have ideas. Ideas ready to burst out of my head and on to the page or screen. The urge to sit and write, the nerd rage directed at the universe when I don’t have a chance. I make plans to do just that, actually write it on the calendar, make dates with my writer buddies. Get materials and research in order.
Get ready to go.
And then don’t.
Mired.
It’s a lot like a toddler learning to crawl. She makes it to her hands and knees, finally, tastes freedom. Rocks back and forth, back and forth, trying to get enough momentum to propel.
Achieves it.
Plots a course.
Falls flat on her face.
The last six weeks or so have been that exact pattern for me. Why? There are reasons, I suppose, but as so many writers I like are fond of saying, it’s up to you (me) whether you (me) write or not. We all have excuses. We can all rationalize. We do it for other people (characters) all the time. And that’s to say the reasons for not writing are fake or dramatic or not legit. Often, they are all of those things. But not writing is still a choice.
And, something I have a very hard time accepting, at least where I myself am concerned, is that it’s an okay decision to make. Yes, you have to write to be a writer. Yes, I really do want to do this for a living someday and if I do, there will be deadlines and more deadlines and more deadlines. It won’t be as much of a choice anymore. And what I would give to have that little choice. But even then, there will (hopefully someday) be days I don’t feel like writing. And it will be up to me whether I give in to that option or not.
You get stuck. You choose not to write. For an hour, a day, a week, a month. Maybe years.
It’s okay.
But you have to acknowledge it’s your choice.
Sometimes doing that gets you moving again. When you realize you have the freedom not to write, the flip side focuses. If you have the freedom not to write, you also have the freedom to write. Maybe not as much as you’d like or as often, but some. And minute by minute, hour by hour, realizing it’s your call makes it come a little more easily. A little more smoothly. A little more pleasurably. Writing is work, of course it is, it always is, no matter how much fun you have doing it. But it is work you (I) choose to do. Which makes it important. Worthwhile.
And downright. Kick. Ass.
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