Overcoming Writing Blocks: Tips to Reignite Your Muse

I’ve hit a little block on my two works-in-progress. Neither is fully blocked, in so far that I know where I want the story to go, but both are feeling more like work to write at the moment. Since the first 25k words in each came almost effortlessly, it gives a pause when it starts to feel like a slog.

How do I battle this stall in my writing?

First, as mentioned in a prior post, I’ve been listening to some podcasts and letting the skills and tools of writing inspire me. I’d give this about a 25%-50% chance of re-energizing my muse.

The other thing I’ve been considering is a re-write of “A New Past” to make it more mainstream by editing out or modifying the erotic elements of the story. I spend several hours migrating the content of Book One into my current writing tool (Ulysses) which allows me to break up the chapters into individual scenes. I’ve then gone through each scene and flagged if it contains explicit content or not.

Book One of A New Past weighs in at 186,492 words, not counting the timeline in the appendix. This breaks down into 19 chapters, and 165 scenes or sections across the book. Of those, 24 (14.5%) of the scenes have some level of explicit content. 

Re-writing 24 scenes to remove the explicit descriptions or acts does not seem too daunting. However, I’m trying to decide if it is worth it. It likely is, from a sales and revenue perspective, since it would enable me to advertise the book more effectively. 

The challenge of rewriting these chunks of the story will be making certain the rest of the tale isn’t affected. I try to make the explicit scenes part of the characters, and some aspects actually drive significant story arcs, so they can’t just be cut. 

What’s interesting, to me at least, is that performing the mundane tasks of importing the novel and breaking it into scenes and reviewing the content has given me some ideas on my works-in-progress as well.

Drop me a comment here, and let me know if you think creating a “PG-13” version of “A New Past” is a worthwhile effort. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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