All I can do is read a book to stay awake. And it rips my life away, but it’s a great escape. — Blind Melon, No Rain.
By PJ Parrish
There’s a drought here in Tallahassee. My lawn is yellow. My herb garden is shriveled. The fire ants mounds are two feet high. Inside my house, the lights in my bathroom suddenly died. I can’t get the microwave to stop blinking ERROR. And my laptop mouse is acting like hamster on meth.
And my brain has stopped working. I can’t get my new short story moving again. And I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write about here today either. My husband sidled in and I whined, “I’ve got nothing to write about.”
“Well, write about that,” he said.
So here we are. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe in the demon laziness. But after I read Kay’s post here from last Monday on gratitude, I knew I had to stop carping and do something. So I went for a walk. Walking is my mental Senakot. When I got home, I was able to at least face my short story again. Which led me to re-realize — you forget the really simple stuff at times — that I had to go back before I could go forward. So I opened up the file and look a cold hard look at what I had written.
Which brings me back to today’s post. I know we’ve covered this a lot, but I’d like to offer up, yet again, some good ways to get yourself out of a slump:
Take a hike. Get outside and get moving. Even if it’s just 30 minutes. Which is how long it took me to go to ABC Liquor yesterday and get some Hendrick’s Floradora gin.
Write something else. I don’t have any other WIPs right now. But I have you guys. And just the process of writing this blog got my wheels unstuck from the mud. If you have other projects — a story, an free-lance article, a journal entry — switch over for a while. Fingers moving on a keyboard is a good warm-up.
Read something. For inspiration, I chose one of my favorite books, Joyce Carol Oates’ Because it Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart. Check out this opening paragraph:
Little Red Garlick, sixteen years old, skull smashed soft as a rotted pumpkin and body dumped into the Cassadaga River, must not have sunk as he’d been intended to sink, or floated as far. As the morning mist begins to lift from the river a solitary fisherman sights him, or the body he has become, trapped and bobbing frantically in the pilings about thirty feet offshore. It’s the buglelike cries of gulls that alert the fishman — gulls with wide gunmetal-gray wings, dazzling snowy heads and tail feathers, dangling pink legs like something incompletely hatched. The kind you think might be a beautiful bird until you get up close.
Watch Something. I get juiced by watching great movies because I learn from screenplays, specifically about how dialogue illuminates character. One of my favorites is Fargo because Marge Gunderson is such a pip. One favorite line:
Say, Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn’t afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404?
Take a step back. It’s vital to keep your shark-novel moving forward, lest it die. But it doesn’t hurt, when you’re stuck, to go back and re-read and maybe even re-write a little. When I faced my short story again, I realized I had veered off into a bad description ditch. I cut about 250 really lovely words. (There’s a reason they call it a short story) Pruning is vital for gardens and fiction. If you’re surrounded by briar, you can’t see the path.
Come up with an idea then do the opposite. Few of us are brilliantly original on first attempts. To get moving, we resort to stock characters, lazy description, confusing action and the obvious. If your setting is Paris, don’t authomatically plunk the hero down in the Louvre; set your scene in La Goute d’Or, the muslim enclave. Don’t make your sidekick a wizened old cop with a whiskey bottle in his desk; make her the brave tomboy George at Nancy Drew’s side. If you need a plot twist, don’t settle for smelly red herrings or cheap ticks. Oh my god, nobody shot J.R. It was all a dream! What, you mean Bruce Willis is really dead but only the kid can see him?
Phone a friend. I am lucky in that I can call my co-author sister Kelly and together we can always find a solution. Maybe your friend is a critique group pal, someone with a cold eye who wants you to suceed. If you don’t have anyone, make someone up. Picture in your head a discerning reader; would that person let you get away with cardboard characters or a cliched plot? Talk to yourself. Out loud. It’s a conversation with someone who understands you.
And finally…
Keep your butt in the chair. I am really bad at this. I will abandon my post at the first muted trumpet call of the mundane. Laundry needs folding! Dog smells, must bathe! Lights have died in the bathroom so gotta go to get a new dimmer switch! No…stay put. If you shoulder-push on that rock long enough, it will eventually start moving downhill.
Remember, no one ever finished their book while roaming the lighting aisle at Home Depot.
Dance us out, Bee Girl!
I have a critique partner/writing buddy on Google Chat and we support each other that way. I prefer spending too much time in my chair, but it’s making sure I’m not getting sidetracked on ‘other stuff’ instead of working on the wip. My word count goal helps. Right now, I’m in the final pre-publication stage and listening to my narrator’s rendition of the book, chapter by chapter, which is good because I don’t hate the book yet, but still tedious.
My bigger problem is starting a new project, not finishing the one I’m working on.
Pruning is vital for gardens and fiction.
And…
Remember, no one ever finished their book while roaming the lighting aisle at Home Depot.
Keepers for sure. 🙂 Sometimes I create my own distractions. That’s really sad. 🙁
I do have a friend, a lady a little older than me, who harps at me about my WIP. She kinda reminds of my mother when she used to say, “Haven’t you cleaned your room yet, Deb?” My friend asks me weekly what is happening with my characters. I’m honest with her. She can spot it if I’m not. So sometimes my answer has to be, “Who?” Oy! The look on her face is priceless.
Thanks for this post, Kris. The whole thing’s a keeper.
Have a great Thanksgiving.
Also in a drought of the weather kind, my first thought was don’t burn anything. It’s also a good idea for creative drought.
Bad or annoying things cluster. Everything in the general vicinity of my computer that’s expensive has croaked off in the last two weeks. This too shall pass for both of us.
(Lucky me, I’m in Paris right now. It’s la Goutte d’Or, a primarily North African and sub-Saharan neighborhood in the 18th arrondissment, it’s not “Muslim” per se. But apart from that, your point stands!)
Good one, Kris. I’m feeling really unmotivated today. I’m reading my editor’s edits for my new book. Back to pruning.
Have a good Thanksgiving.
This post hits home for me, Kris. After shelving my previous novel in mid-revision, I’ve been spending some time journaling, reading fiction, watching programs, and revisiting Chuck Wendig’s “Gentle Art of Writing Advice,” which I inhaled in just a couple of days when it was first published in mid-2023. I’ve been working on opening up my creative process, which had become very crabbed and controlling, and putting writing first, and publishing concerns second.
Now the pull of a new project is beginning to assert itself.
I hope your own drought ends soon!
For someone like me, chronically ill and slow as the speed of continental drift (stolen from a friend – we can’t use glacially slow any more!), staying on task forever, even though most days don’t allow writing, is the ONLY way to leave anything behind.
I get there, word by patient word by bloody word.
Then they go through a vetting process that squeezes everything non-essential out (I write blockbusters – they do NOT need to be any longer).
Any sidetrack simply means it will take me longer to get to the end of LIMBO, and finish my Pride’s Children mainstream trilogy. I can’t afford them: If I’m well enough to do something fun, I use it to write.
I STILL may not finish in my lifetime, but it means too much to me to take that chance (and I have plenty of distractions, including a new and only granddaughter I can’t afford the energy to go visit, but whose parents supply lots of photos of to the digital frame). We do an annual family vacation – it takes months of energy to plan, and I do it for us…
I HAVE to write. It is no longer optional.