Could you describe your writing process? (Or perhaps direct me to a link to the answer to this question if you've answered it before.) I have a terrible time overcoming writing blocks, and would greatly appreciate a bit of guidance from someone who has acc
Of course!
In my experience, it is SO SO helpful to use a framework for my story. It helps keep me on track and lets me avoid pitfalls like plot cul-de-sacs, getting lost, repeating myself, or forgetting to hint at major plot points.
If you are having a difficult time overcoming a writers block, try analyzing why it exists in the first place. Do you feel that what you’re writing isn’t good enough for anyone to see, especially you?
After college, I was convinced that I couldn’t write anything. I was so mono-focused on thinking about crafting The Great American Novel that I forgot that the purpose of telling a story is just that— to tell a story. My education, though incredibly valuable, had frozen my creativity, making me afraid to write anything. It didn’t help that one of my main points of focus in college was poetry, and I completely suck at writing poetry.
I had my self-esteem and my confidence in my ability to create anything worthwhile destroyed after college (a story for another day) and spent a long time just simply not writing anything. The play I had co-written in high school that won awards from the University of Southern California and PBS was in my rear view mirror, and the first novel I ever wrote was lost in a computer crash. I had deadened myself to creative impulse for a while with a cocktail of alcohol and drugs that I thought would make me more creative or at least loosen me up so I could relax and write, but they ended up doing just the opposite.
When I finally sorted my life out and landed on my feet, I wanted to write, but was still afraid of what I should write. So I decided to write the one thing I’d been told never to write, the thing that scholarly opinion dictated was taboo for “good writers”: smut. Pure, unadulterated erotica.
It was then that I remembered an essay I read in college by Anne Lamott called “Shitty First Drafts“ and resolved to do what she suggested. Fuck it, I thought. I want to write. If it’s shit, then it will be judged as shit, but let it at least see the light of day first.
I used erotica as my writing exercises. I didn’t want to lift the full weight of a novel without exercise, and I wanted to at least get words on paper and start flexing my muscles. And then I got the brilliant idea to publish my work for all to see. I figured that if it was truly shit, someone anonymous would tell me so and I would have my excuse to give this whole thing up and go back to business as usual confident in the fact that I was a terrible writer.
What was going to become my excuse to quit eventually became my impetus to continue. when one of those writing exercises turned into a story that got a fair amount of acclaim on one website, top of its category for months, and tied with another story for Story of the Month on that site. It wasn’t my best work, still isn’t, but is a fairly solid novella. I got emails. I got devoted fans. Those fans then requested more of what I’d written. Asked me to write sequels and continue the stories of the characters I’d written.
I’d had the idea for doing a story about Hades and Persephone kicking around in my head for a while, and two years went by with me trying to muster the plot for a sequel to the novella, and a sequel to another short story, neither of which felt like they were any good. Meanwhile, the Hades and Persephone story was rapping at the back of my consciousness, wanting to get out. So after two years of not writing anything, I finally just surrendered and started writing what would eventually become Receiver of Many.
About two months into writing I discovered that my story was going to be twice as long as I had planned, and I needed to get a framework for it. I wrote a synopsis which I stuck to for the most part, but also gave it the flexibility to change as more elements were introduced into the story.
I researched. I have spent a least a couple hundred dollars so far on academic texts, novels within and without the genre for critical analysis of what works and what doesn’t, I went deep into the culture, I went deep into the religions, archaeology, languages, tools, weapons… I had instances where a paragraph or two that took minutes to read was built upon hours of research. Something that most readers would just bypass or would fold into the story without mention but which needed to be of the time period and extraordinarily believable.
I set HARD deadlines for myself. Publish weekly. No matter what. It FORCED ME to stop obsessing about my Shitty First Draft. All of it would become a cohesive novel later. Just get it out there. Give it life. Get it out there. I was going to give it life come hell or high water or my great double-headed nemesis, procrastination and perfectionism.
The reason why I went into exhaustive detail on my process was to illustrate what my circumstances were and what worked for me. They may not me your circumstances, your hang ups and your sources of writers block, but then again, I’ve talked with many writers who suffer the same analysis paralysis from which I suffer. It’s possible to overcome that. When it comes down to it, my core advice is this:
Write. Just write.
Write shit if you have to, no one has to see it, you can figuratively or literally burn it when it’s written, but for gods sake, just WRITE.
