I’ve started writing bits and pieces for S.I. again, but not nearly at the rate I was writing before my hiatus.
I’m beginning to wonder if I should cheat a bit, and deliberately leave some of the details I’m having trouble getting myself to write about vague, and explain it away with some memory problems of Bunny-the-narrator for that period. Goodness knows there are plenty of ways Bunny’s brain has been fiddled with so far, so it’s not without precedent; and if it gets me over the hump and into full-scale writing again, it might be worth including the trope for that reason alone, let alone adding another mental issue to play with narratively.
That seems to be the default that I’m settling on. I’m jotting down the plot points I want to happen in such sections, marking them so I know that I have to go back to that, and working on whatever I /can/ get myself to work on in the meantime.
From the way things seem given your recent posts about struggling with getting words onto the page, I would suggest doing anything that actually gets you moving in that direction. If you are stuck on one particular bit, by all means skip it for now. Whether that means incorporating this into the narrative, or coming back later for clean-up, depends on the product itself (I haven’t read the work you are talking about).
A more general aside: I’ve found myself in a very similar position, finding it incredibly hard to put words on the page yet needing to do so more and more urgently. I’ve seen a few comments you made before about preparing optimal writing situations and planning for them—I did exactly the same and in retrospect it seems this was a bad strategy for me. Mainly because such preparations got me thinking more and more about providing an optimal situation for written productivity: in essence setting up small “writing retreats” now and again. This became a self-perpetuating loop of non-writing, because doing so provided perfect excuses for NOT writing at any other time.
A friend who is a (now retired) writer suggested that instead, I work on writing despite distractions, rather than constraining my writing effort to those situations where all distractions are minimised. In alternating weeks I tried the different techniques (A,B,B,A, where A=my old approach of writing in optimal situations and B=explicit attempt to write in distracting environments I wouldn’t consider suitable for “A”). It turned out that B>A both in minutes spent writing (+125%) and in wordcount (+160%). Quality of work under “B” might have been lower but I don’t seem to have a block in editing and revising, only in first drafting.
Seeking writing advice: Tropes vs writing block?
I’ve started writing bits and pieces for S.I. again, but not nearly at the rate I was writing before my hiatus.
I’m beginning to wonder if I should cheat a bit, and deliberately leave some of the details I’m having trouble getting myself to write about vague, and explain it away with some memory problems of Bunny-the-narrator for that period. Goodness knows there are plenty of ways Bunny’s brain has been fiddled with so far, so it’s not without precedent; and if it gets me over the hump and into full-scale writing again, it might be worth including the trope for that reason alone, let alone adding another mental issue to play with narratively.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Would it maybe help, if you left some of the details vague at first, to get back into writing, and go back later to rewrite those parts?
That seems to be the default that I’m settling on. I’m jotting down the plot points I want to happen in such sections, marking them so I know that I have to go back to that, and working on whatever I /can/ get myself to work on in the meantime.
From the way things seem given your recent posts about struggling with getting words onto the page, I would suggest doing anything that actually gets you moving in that direction. If you are stuck on one particular bit, by all means skip it for now. Whether that means incorporating this into the narrative, or coming back later for clean-up, depends on the product itself (I haven’t read the work you are talking about).
A more general aside: I’ve found myself in a very similar position, finding it incredibly hard to put words on the page yet needing to do so more and more urgently. I’ve seen a few comments you made before about preparing optimal writing situations and planning for them—I did exactly the same and in retrospect it seems this was a bad strategy for me. Mainly because such preparations got me thinking more and more about providing an optimal situation for written productivity: in essence setting up small “writing retreats” now and again. This became a self-perpetuating loop of non-writing, because doing so provided perfect excuses for NOT writing at any other time.
A friend who is a (now retired) writer suggested that instead, I work on writing despite distractions, rather than constraining my writing effort to those situations where all distractions are minimised. In alternating weeks I tried the different techniques (A,B,B,A, where A=my old approach of writing in optimal situations and B=explicit attempt to write in distracting environments I wouldn’t consider suitable for “A”). It turned out that B>A both in minutes spent writing (+125%) and in wordcount (+160%). Quality of work under “B” might have been lower but I don’t seem to have a block in editing and revising, only in first drafting.