In May I shared the beginning of my writing process for 'Willow: A Story' - the first flashes of inspiration, and how I outlined. You can read that post here. Today, I'm going to share about the first hurdle in my journey to finishing this book, the infamous writer's block!
Writer's block is different for everyone. For some inspiration slowly fizzles out, and they find themselves writing less and less every day until one day they sit down and no words come. For others, in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, or at the start of a new chapter they suddenly can't find words.
It can be really hard to get out of a rut like this. There are several steps you need to take before you start trying to find a solution. First, you need to identify why you're in a rut and see if there are any plot changes you need to make. If there are some discrepancies they might not seem obvious at first, but they can quickly get you stuck.
'Willow: A Story' was my first "big" project. I'd written a novella before, only 20k words, but it was very loosely outlined and written quite quickly. I wasn't used to such a big and time-consuming project, and at the time my head was filled with so many other ideas. Half-way through, I lost steam, and the story seemed to feel like a cage holding me back from writing anything else. I knew the ending, I knew what each chapter was going to be about, and in my mind, it felt like the story was already over and written.
I decided to take a step back for a little while and work on something else. I started a story for which I only came up with a few characters and a small idea. No outline. Obviously, it would need a lot of editing and revising to be a good story. As of now it is filled with plot holes and is incomplete, as there are so many ends that I need to untangle before tying up. With each chapter, I wrote whatever came to my head. Every plot point came to be as it unfolded. It was a lot of fun to write.
It sounds crazy but it helped, it helped so much. Without that book, I may have abandoned 'Willow: A Story' forever. It helped not only to get ideas out of my head but also gave me practice writing dialogue and description. After a couple weeks break, I worked on both stories simultaneously.
There are many different ways that people overcome writer's block. This is what worked for me, and it might be helpful for you too! Experiment and find out what inspires and motivates you. Sometimes you might need to go back and change a plot point. Sometimes you might need to step back for a while, or try something new. Or, sometimes you might have to give up on a story, and that's okay.
