BREAKING BLOCK
I recently had a frustrating few days. I made phone calls that landed me on hold for ten minutes. I left messages that weren't returned. I couldn't log on to Facebook because I'd accidentally minimized the typeface beyond the ability of my eyes to read and didn't know how to fix it. Sff.net wouldn't let me log on at all. No new ideas for Guest Blogs on the Nebula Awards site presented themselves. Everything I tried to do went wrong, was delayed, or vanished. I guess the universe was trying to tell me something. As in: Write the story, damn it!
Any time I'm asked to contribute a story to an anthology, or anything and anywhere else for that matter, I always says yes. I have my heart attack later. (How on earth am I going to do THAT?) This time, I'd put myself in the hock for two stories to two different anthologies within the space of one week. Sure, they both have fairly distant deadlines, but time has a way of creeping up. I started stewing over the fix I'd landed myself in. No ideas presented themselves - or at least, no workable ones. I had that dreaded disease, writers block.
Then one day last week I dreamed a first line for one of the stories. Great! No second or third lines were forthcoming. Back to depressionville. But last night was different. I dreamed the whole plot - in living color, as they say, dialogue and all. I was excited to walk the dogs and get to the computer to start work. Of course, by the time I came to actually write the story, most of the dream had slipped away. But you know, it was actually comforting to know my subconscious had worked the whole thing out. So even when I stumbled to a halt, I could trust my brain to come up with a way to solve the problem. And it did. Three thousand words in one sitting today. A whole first draft. Not perfect, but a good start - and I *love* to re-write!
Any time I'm asked to contribute a story to an anthology, or anything and anywhere else for that matter, I always says yes. I have my heart attack later. (How on earth am I going to do THAT?) This time, I'd put myself in the hock for two stories to two different anthologies within the space of one week. Sure, they both have fairly distant deadlines, but time has a way of creeping up. I started stewing over the fix I'd landed myself in. No ideas presented themselves - or at least, no workable ones. I had that dreaded disease, writers block.
Then one day last week I dreamed a first line for one of the stories. Great! No second or third lines were forthcoming. Back to depressionville. But last night was different. I dreamed the whole plot - in living color, as they say, dialogue and all. I was excited to walk the dogs and get to the computer to start work. Of course, by the time I came to actually write the story, most of the dream had slipped away. But you know, it was actually comforting to know my subconscious had worked the whole thing out. So even when I stumbled to a halt, I could trust my brain to come up with a way to solve the problem. And it did. Three thousand words in one sitting today. A whole first draft. Not perfect, but a good start - and I *love* to re-write!