I don't know about this whole "Writer's Block" thing. In school, when I had a deadline, I used to procrastinate, feel like I couldn't do it, and finally, with the dreaded deadline looming, produce something. It might not have been my best work ever. I might not have felt jazzed about it. But it was something.
Well, on April 1, I started my 60k in 60Days project (60,000 word novel entirely conceived, created, edited, and self-published in 2 months--see http://www.pushingthepen.com/ for more info). I was so optimistic.
Let me start off by describing my process (a rather high-faluting way of saying what's worked for me so far--and by worked, I mean what's gotten me to the end of a novel that I felt I could pitch to agents or enter into contests). I start off with a premise (and sometimes not even that), panzer my way through the first draft (i.e. write to find out what happens and how my characters get from point a to point b--very sloppy, very messy, very fast), and usually outline somewhere in the middle of my first draft once secondary characters and sub-plots have developed so that I don't forget anything.
Before I write my second draft, I create a pitch (to focus me), a synopsis, a detailed outline, and a story bible with maps, pictures of my characters, detailed bios of my characters, notes about my world, etc. Finally, I create a second draft. I still don't worry about grammar and mechanics. I worry more about character arcs and plotting.
Finally, in the third draft (which takes forever!), I edit for grammar and style and try to use sensory descriptions and make my sentences pretty and have proper grammar. My weakness is the third draft, I think, mainly because my self-editing isn't spectacular. Even when I was an English Major, my advisor said to me, "I gave you an "A" because the writing was good but the grammar--not so much." And the irony is that I don't even see those small details--I really don't.
Anyway, so I broke with my own process for 60k in 60 Days. I felt the pressure of a deadline, and I tried to draft an outline after a small amount of brainstorming. To make a long story short, 15,000 words later, I ended up with about five different versions of the same story that just...weren't...working (insert sound of teeth grinding here). Could I have forged ahead with those earlier stories? Yeah, probably. Would they have been--I hesitate to say "bad"--not good? Yeah, probably.
So after much hand-wringing and self-defeating cognitions, I finally figured out a premise. I brought all the activities of my world to a screeching halt (aside from feeding my animals who don't care whether I'm writing or not), and I pounded out another 11,000 words on a novel I'm feeling pretty good about. Not great, mind you. I'm too supersticious to say great. I have to finish first. It has to be 60,000 words. I have to feel good about it (after the third draft).
In the end, I wrote 26,000 words in 3 days, but I was only able to keep 11,000. I never considered giving up, but I did start to sense this terrible, unscalable psychic wall. The wall has become small, more manageable, but it will stay there until the first draft is done, until I don't have a blank page and endless possibilities to deal with anymore.
Now, I have to join the real world today--run errands, pay bills, etc. But tonight...tonight, I'm going to keep working on scaling that wall.
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