SquarePeg Books

June 1 question – When the going gets tough writing the story, how do you keep yourself writing to the end? If have not started the writing yet, why do you think that is and what do you think could help you find your groove and start?

Ahhhh…. Always fun to visit my excuses and attempts to get going again.

It actually depends on why the writing has gotten tough in the story.

This may come as a shock to my dedicated audience, but I’m a dyed in the wool, 100% home-grown pantser. My butt has burned though asbestos spun fibers more times than I can remember.

For one book, when I reached a difficult spot, I had to take a nap for 30 minutes. I guess I had to dream up the next bit. For 3 months I had to lay down at least once a day.

For another, I absolutely had to have a raspberry chocolate mocha every single time I hit a difficult spot. I have no idea why, but I craved it, I absolutely had to have it, and my writing was shot without it.

Interestingly enough, that book had absolutely no coffee mentioned. Not even once. It was a fantasy novel. And while I was known to have the very occasional mocha before that, I’ve now become almost ritually dependent on it to start my mornings. Which is funny because I don’t like coffee, but now hot chocolate is too sweet without it, but I’m too cheap to go to a cafe regularly, so I mix something up in the kitchen that is more like coffee and hot chocolate’s illicit love child had an affair with an Eldridge horror and the shambling abomination of that union pretends to be a mocha, but everyone knows it isn’t, but it’s a nice kid and it means well even if it does the job poorly.

For my current difficult child, I’ve dissected it, examined it in all the ways a plot could be examined and analyzed, researched war obsessively, dissected it again, got lost, asked for directions from a very nice man selling gyros out of a cart, watched a crap-ton of documentaries, taken a hiatus, meditated, took the dogs for a walk, gone on walks by myself, read How To Be A Villain (excellent book, by the way), tried writing scenes out by hand, went out for Chinese food, somehow ended up getting foot surgery while buying a bonsai from the back of a van and….

So on.

Flogging myself to write is apparently not something that works for me.

I’m hoping that having my own shed now-with electricity!– will help. I just have to set everything up — move furniture, set shelving, unpack all my boxes, make certain the feng is absolutely shui.

It sounds weird, I know. But having my own space is a big deal for me. I haven’t had my own space in nigh on 30 years. The free desk I scored to use as my writing desk is one of those made in the 1960’s metal jobs—the kind that you can hide under during a major earthquake or a nuclear strike and survive unscathed.

So once I get past my foot surgery, physical therapy, set up the shed blahblahexcusesblah…

Maybe that will be enough to get me out of this current tough spot.