The television stood cold, lifeless, as I sat at my writing desk, gnashing my teeth, watching my characters meander through meaningless dialogue. A thousand words written ... a thousand words deleted.
Some writers never experience this excruciating experience of what I lovingly call a hurdle. Thankfully, I've never had true writer's block. This isn't a "I've-run-out-of-creative-juices" type of ennui, this is a how-in-the-heck-do-I-get-to-the-next-big-chunk-of-the-story-smoothly kind of angst.
And so as I sat here last night, enveloped in darkness, dogs forever at my feet, storm rumbling outside, I felt the sting of frustration, the bite of defeat, and yet I wrote on. I let the characters fumble, stumbling through an entire day in Kailmeyra, knowing that these words wouldn't make it past the first edits.
I went to bed dejected, frustrated, and more than a little willing to punish the characters by leaving the laptop off all day. Show them who's boss. And then I realized I sounded like a complete lunatic. No wonder writers have the reputation of being insane.
So in the interest of keeping some semblance of normalcy, I cracked open the WIP first thing this morning and read through the first ten chapters, tweaking what I've already got.
Maybe I'll invent a transition button for the keyboard ... yeah, that's what I'll do. Until then, I'll continue ramble until something sparks someone somewhere. I have faith that Elias will take charge soon, but until then I'm using it as practice on defining the characters' voice.
Always the optimist, right?
How do you get over a writing hurdle?
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