Howdy!

News:

I DID IT! Remember that annoying problem that blocked me hard last week? I finally finished justifying my cool rooftop fight scene and the following sequence as well, and now it’s all written! Barrier broken! Monster mashed! Next level unlocked!

This is an example of what I talked about in a previous post, how by putting in the time you can force inspiration to come. This problem stopped me cold for 5 days, but because I spent that time trying different methods to think my way around the problem, at the end of those five days I have a scene which fits with both my outline and the logic of that universe.

How I did it

I tried brainstorming and made some progress, but there were still lots of unanswered questions. I tried to make the best possible plans for the good guys and bad guys, and then determined how those plans would change based on events as they unfolded. When the “logical choices” seemed to be taking me further from where I needed the plot to go, I brainstormed ways to justify why they might do what I wanted even if it wasn’t the best choice. Once I had that, I did more brainstorming to iron out logistics. When that was all done, I outlined the scene and wrote it. Done!

Yes, there was a lot of just staring at the keyboard willing the ideas to come. Yes, it was long and annoying and frustrating. And yes, there was a lot of complaining to my wonderful wife and talking it out with her and others.

But in the end, it worked! I overcame writer’s block!

I did it, and you can, too!

I’m back to chugging through this draft, compiling all the bits and pieces into one big document and editing thing as I go! I just added chapter 31, and I’ll bet I can make it several more chapters by the end of next week! I didn’t finish the draft by the end of August, but September is looking quite promising.

Speaking of which, I achieved my goal of finishing the annoying scene and editing 7 other ones! Success! My goal for next week is to make it through chapter 43. Wish me luck!

Writing Advice:

Keep all your drafts! You never know when a bit of description you wrote forever ago or a cool idea you had will become useful in a future project! And there’s always the chance that you might discover that your most recent edit just made things worse! At the very least it can be fun to look back and see who you’ve grown and hopefully improved as a writer, or at least changed.

The process of writing and editing a book is full of twists and turns, and while you might be convinced that this bold new change you’re making will fix everything and land your book on the lists of “best story ever told,” it’s entirely possible that a few weeks or months later you might realize that you actually liked the older version better, and with only a few tweaks you can create the book you wanted to make all along. Editing something you’ve already written tends to be much easier than creating it from scratch.

Have a great week, and don’t forget to smile!

Timothy Kuhn