How We Write: What does your wall look like?

Every book just flows from my fingers, like a movie playing itself from my imagination into the most beautiful of prose… And THEN, I wake up.

Such is the charmed life of a working fiction writer.

I’m a month away from my next manuscript deadline–the fourth in a year, and each night when I sleep (not that I sleep much), I dream of the book magically being done and the pressure being off and me and my husband and son being on a beach somewhere whiling away simple hours free of the fear that I won’t EVER puzzle this story out.

But that dream doesn’t last long, unfortunately, before a darker one takes over.

I’ve hit a wall, you see, as I do with every story.

I teach others how to do this stuff, so you’d think I’d know better how to handle this place in the process that we all come to. Yet the despair is always here waiting for me. The wall is my darkest creative point–when I must push through doubt and confusion and make story and character make sense NOW, because there’s no more time for them to figure themselves out on their own.

And in my dreams, when they stop being fanciful and take a nightmarish turn toward reality, this is what my wall often looks like.

It has doors and windows, I realize once I calm down. There are openings in the wall I fear blocks my story, doors and windows that I can see through, create through, believe through. THAT’S my job. It’s yours, too, when you write.

I’ve been at this long enough to understand and organize my process. This place I’m in now, and will return to with the next book. is why I push through as much of my rough draft as I can before I go back and rewrite. Rewriting takes me to the wall, and the wall stops me. Before that happens, it’s my job to have drafted as much raw material as possible, to discover as much as I can, until this stopping place takes over. And then it’s my job to stare at the wall for as long as it takes, until I find the right door and window, and I understand how and where to write through them, so I can meet my deadline.

It’s a hard, unforgiving place, this wall. This deadline. This creating on demand, even when I’m feeling more lost than creative.

But it’s my dream, too. Even this part of it. It’s my path to embrace this very low point, and to keep my eyes trained on the beautiful rewrites waiting just on the other side. It’s my dream to kick through the wall, to kick its ass, and to find the freedom that creativity becomes, once it’s best empowered by its best purpose and direction.

I need this low, troublesome place, you see. So do you, my writer friends.

And my reader followers, whatever you want most…I suspect you’ll find your wall there, too, just before you hit your truest stride. It’s fear and doubt and confusion, the bricks you lay into your dream wall. But it’s your chance to find your next victory, too, once you turn the dark thoughts off and make your hopes flow again.

The wall isn’t my problem. It’s not yours. Embracing the low, troublesome places of our journey is how we grow stronger. The wall is where we claim our confidence.  The sprint on the other side of it, toward the finish line, is the best place of all. All we have to do is trust in the path, and find our way to that other side.

What does your wall look like today? Your door and window?

Are you willing to see and fight and create your way through it, to reach the more beautiful dream on the other side?

Interested in more writer-ly crafty angst? Check out the How We Write series.

More publishing-ly, business-y chatter? There’s Publishing Isn’t For Sissies.

More of me, musing about life in general–the parts of life that inspire me to write through that wall? Then The Soul of the Matter is your next destination.

And above all, whatever you’re soul is creating today my friends–Write On!