I’ve been in work-avoidance mode the last few days. A day of this I don’t mind. That’s a mini-vacation. When these modes have me (and it’s definitely them having me rather than vice versa) for half a week … ugh.<\/p>\n
You know how it is, especially if you’re a creative problem solver. <\/p>\n
Those of you who are just super-efficient all the damn time, I salute you. And I hate you. <\/p>\n
But for the rest of us … there’s the long slide into self doubt. You’re no good. You can’t do this. You’re just a lazy b*tch.<\/em> Fantasies of quitting the biz and making my living as a non-religious hermit nun waft through my head. I attempt to force myself to write, which is what all those how-toing writers tell us all to do; but anything I produce that way is crap and the production is agonizing. Never do I break through using “apply pants to seat and write” methodology.<\/p>\n I know intellectually that these dreadful doldrums have a purpose. I know they are times when the hindbrain is working on something and hasn’t let the forebrain know yet.<\/p>\n But they do only happen when I walk away from the computer. <\/p>\n An hour ago it was washing dishes. I’d been struggling with the promised RebelFire story, stumbling over tricky technical details (on which I have help from a generous expert who also consulted back when on the RF book) and stumbling over plot pits (on which no one in the world can help). I’d written a couple of dialogs. But dialog is easy. It’s what I do best and occasionally starting a dialog passage leads to action. Most of the time it dead-ends.<\/p>\n So with the hot water running over my hands and looking out the window at the rain, I realized I needed to drop my characters right in the thick of things, and (as many a writer has done before) see where the characters lead me. Lead, literally, in this case, because they’re going somewhere. And the somewhere is full of dangers.<\/p>\n It’s too early to know whether this will work, but after a page and a half of longhand writing (always better for the brain than keyboarding), I blocked out solutions to the main plot points in that section of the story.<\/p>\n Now, if there were only some easier way to get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been in work-avoidance mode the last few days. A day of this I don’t mind. That’s a mini-vacation. When these modes have me (and it’s definitely them having me rather than vice versa) for half a week … ugh. You know how it is, especially if you’re a creative problem solver. Those of you who are just super-efficient all the damn time, I salute you. And I hate you. But for the rest of us … there’s the long slide into self doubt. You’re no good. You can’t do this. You’re just a lazy b*tch. Fantasies of quitting the…<\/p>\n