"When I’m feeling blocked, what I find to be helpful is the freedom that moving around offers...."

“When I’m feeling blocked, what I find to be helpful is the freedom that moving around offers. Disabuse yourself of the idea that a novel must be written chronologically. I write my books in pieces, as the scenes emerge for me naturally. If I’m feeling stuck on the denouement, I can hop to a background-building scene in the first act to get my wheels tuning again. If I can’t seem to pinpoint the moment that the protagonist should choose to accept the challenge that the second act brings, I can try writing the ending. When you follow your inspiration instead of your outline, it can open up all sorts of possibilities.”

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Leah Johnson is a writer, editor and eternal Midwesterner, currently moonlighting as a New Yorker. She is a 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow whose work has been published in BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, Catapult, and Electric Literature, among others. Her bestselling debut YA novel, You Should See Me in a Crown, was named one of Cosmo‘s 15 Best Young Adult Books of 2020, and was an Indies Introduce and Junior Library Guild selection. Her sophomore novel, Rise to the Sun, is forthcoming from Scholastic in 2021.

Do you write straight through from start to finish, or do you skip around? Let Leah know, and/or thank her for her #CampCarePackage!

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