Some days it feels as if I have a set amount of words in me. Once I hit that random number, a great wall descends and nothing can pass through. I’m done. I’m all out. Utterly blocked.
Image via Nat Geo Australia
That was the case last night. I had a lovely dinner with the young gentleman (fresh-caught local flathead, crumbed with chips and salad), headed home, cracked my knuckles and sat down to write…
And nothing happened. No matter how long I stared at that blinking fucking cursor, nothing came. “Nine days, you only have nine days to get this all done, you have to hurry! Write, damn you,” my brain screamed, which just made things worse.
In the end I sad-ate a crapload of vanilla gelato and collapsed into bed at around eleven, furious and exhausted.
I ate one of the little tubs. Then another one of the little tubs. It helped.
(Image via Gelativo)
But…
This morning when I woke up, I had a new idea where to take the story.
So maybe that giant wall that barricaded all my words in was for a purpose. Maybe I had something shifting around in the convoluted tangles of my brain that needed a bit of time to wriggle free of all the junk in there. And to save me heading off in the wrong direction, my subconscious said, ‘No more. Binge on Italian ice-cream. Watch Elementary in bed while snuggling the cat. Sleep. I got this.’
Image via Rivercityrevolution
By morning, I’d broken through and things were flowing again. I guess sometimes, you just need to stop fighting and go with it.
Ever had a bad block resolve itself like this? Tell me all about it below.
It happens to me all the time. I’ll do a lot of writing and then hit a wall, just when I want to get more writing done. Nothing is more frustrating. But every morning when I wake up, it’s a whole new day filled with thoughts, ideas, and inspiration. I’m having this block this evening. Great post, it reminded me of the good that’s coming tomorrow morning
That’s a great way to look at it. It’s better to not fight it – when you do the words are always wrong and stale and you may as well have not bothered writing them at all. A good nights sleep fixes so many things. Thanks for stopping by!
I often become uninspired once I have been writing a scene for a while: sometimes the path becomes clear if I put it down and come back; other times I need to work on a different section of the work for a while. So I usually end up writing stories in the wrong order and fitting them together in editing.
I get the same thing – if I write a scene for too long I start to get totally muddled. I think it’s always better to work on another part until you have some more clarity.
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