You know one thing I love about writing? It never gets old, I could write for hours every day and never get tired of it.
Ha! As if.
I fall into the 'writers who never write' category way more than I'd care to admit. Sometimes I flat out hate my hobby.
And I love to write like most people love to breathe.
So how the heck do we get past the stages where we just. Don't. Wanna?
Guys, I don't claim to have all the answers,
Take Your Time
I put myself on a very tight timeline for my first novel, I wanted to finish it in a year. Now, that may seem like a lot of time to some of you, but for a young teenager who'd never written anything over 9,000 words before it was very challenging.
And I didn't do it.
Nope, I finished in thirteen months. The last 7 or 8k took about five months of that time.
Yup call me crazy. I had most of my novel finished in about seven months, but it took me thirteen months to finish.
That's owing to the fact I had totally burned myself out. I'd lock myself in my room for hours writing that thing, but the last little bit I wasn't really sure where I wanted it to go and I didn't want to get it wrong, so I let it sit. I invested my time into a monstrosity of a novella where I learned a ton about historical fiction and more than one POV and came back.
Writing became fun again in that time, it wasn't work as it was previously. Don't be afraid to take a breather if you need it. Your writing will thank you.
Now, that being said:
Don't be Afraid to Push Yourself
See point one, it took me four months longer than it should've to finish my novel because I let it sit. Now could the ending be stronger because of that? Possibly, but now I'm trying not to do that again.
We need to allow ourselves to do hard things, if we never do anything difficult then we will never get better.
There's a quote from Dan Poynter saying "If you wait for inspiration to write, you aren't a writer. You're a waiter."
Sometimes we've got to muddle through guys. One of my favorite scenes in my novella is from muddling through. That novella would have never been finished if I didn't muddle through. Sometimes all it takes is a sentence to get our writing juices going again, but once the writing juices start flowing we are unstoppable.
Push yourself, try to write. Even if all of it is deleted in rewrites those words helped you get to rewrites. No words in your manuscript are completely useless.
Write Simple
One of my favorite things for me to do with my friends is they give me a topic, normally a romantic one, such as they meet their true love at the ACT, and I'll write a couple hundred words depicting their scenario. None of those fun little stories are going to make it in my novel, most of them shouldn't see the light of day...
But, they help me get ideas, they help me get into my groove, and they give me the feeling of finishing something.
Your novel doesn't have to be War and Peace Y'all, it can start out as a one hundred word snippet of your friend and a guy you made up on the fly. It can be stupid, it just has to be yours.
Write simple, if you can't think of the beautiful word you want to use just put a simple one and move on, it can be fixed. Don't be afraid to write simple.
Simple plots work too here. Subplots can be added later, just worry about getting your character from point a to point b. Your story may be shorter when it's over but the subplots will add the length you need.
Write simple guys, it makes life, well, simpler. (Sorry that was bad.
Hope this helps!
What about you? What do you guys do to get out of the writing slump?
-Libby
"You can make many plans, but the LORD's purpose will prevail." Proverbs 19:21
