Hiding from empty pages
When writers are blocked they sit at their desk gloomily and stare at a blank page, right? That’s what the movies show. It’s how writers are depicted. However, I think it’s nothing more than a myth. Do people really do something as silly as that? Do people really sit and stare at their empty pages without writing anything for hours? No, I don’t think so. It’s certainly not what I do. When I’m blocked, I can’t even sit down and look at a blank page. Instead I read one book after another or watch movie after movie. Or I might even do both. When I was still at uni I started to clean the bathroom to escape all that daunting stuff.
Can I make it? Can I really finish this manuscript? I only wanted to take a few days off. Now it’s a month later and I’m full of doubts. Is it good enough? Do I even have a chance? Do I even want to finish it? It’s strange how a bit of doubt can ruin all of our momentum and throw us back into pitying ourselves. Self-pity also seems to be one of these stereotypical emotions of writers.
The other day I finally got a bit of a break, sat down and wrote something. It wasn’t for my novel, but something that I dreamed up spontaneously. I left Scrivener open and added a few lines every now and then. A bit of a story was coming together after all, but nothing too elaborate. Just what poured out of me in some of these moments when I looked at the chestnut tree in the yard. There it was again, that need to write, but somehow I still didn’t dare to touch the novel. How do I find my way back into that story? How do I manage to get these dialogues to work? That third part of the novel turned out to be like some sort of gloomy grey vampire. It’s sucking all the energy out of me. And that I say without even having given it a try for a month.
Then earlier my computer crashed. Did I save what I wrote these last few days? I was almost a little afraid to open Scrivener again. If I had to write it all again, I would just abandon it and my momentum wouldn’t return. When I finally conjured up the courage to click on the icon, it was all still there.
This morning I came up with another little scene for that new story. It’s actually something I dreamed about last night, a particularly powerful image that stuck in my mind this morning. Difficult to describe the flavour of this new story. I doubt it’s going to be very long. I also doubt that it’s going to be very profound. At least I’m writing though. At least I’m not just hiding from my empty pages. Or is writing something new also just procrastination? I can’t decide.
Keeping it together
Sometimes it’s necessary to take a break and evaluate where you’re going with your writing. That’s what I did over the last few days. I haven’t even looked at my text. I read books that could count as research and had conversations with my brother about the story. I have been having some problems with the third part and I think a bit of time off helped me to get some new leads for it. Generally I think that I will need quite a bit of editing, before I’ll be happy with it. It also seems to me that I have to live up to quite a personality with all of it. The protagonist is quite strongly connected with a real person, even someone I admire, so it’s all very precarious and I want to get it right. To make things worse, there is a 50 / 50 chance that the whole effort will be for nothing. This real person could easily block the novel from ever being published if he doesn’t like the idea. This little problem was easy to ignore while I was nowhere near finishing the first draft, but now I’m actually rather close and it’s becoming more of a real problem. The more I advance on my draft, the closer I get to the problem of approaching this person and asking about his opinion on my work.
And then there was also the problem with the idea for the sequel. The idea actually blocked me somewhat and I couldn’t quite concentrate on getting this current story developed properly. It’s difficult enough to keep the first part coherent, considering that the third part seems so different from the rest. Having another new and different idea in my head makes it even harder to keep it all in order. I will maybe read for a couple more days, but then I should really start to write again.
All in all it’s not exactly smooth sailing these days, but I’m still working on it, even if it’s only progressing in my head.
bearable is barely enough 