Writer’s Block 😭

A writer friend says the way to emerge from a bout of writer’s block is to write about it. I’m not sure about this theory, but I’m willing to give the remedy a try — so here goes.

We call it a case, a bout, a spell — as though the writer suffers from some ailment. I even used the word remedy. All I know is that a lack of motivation, almost an aversion, has for months plagued my desire to write. Oh my, another illness term.

I asked myself questions: Had I pushed too hard and for too long? Had health and emotional challenges caught up with me? Was the heat of an AZ summer becoming too much even though I’ve dealt with the seasonal inferno in the past? Who knows?!

I gave myself a hard time about this. What the hell is your problem anyway? I asked. Get over it! I could hear Matt, my editor, expressing his view that “you just gotta put your butt in the chair and do it!!” Ugh! My problem is not that my expectations are too high. I don’t have a problem with producing a crappy first draft. I no longer give in to early process pickiness. Clean up happens where it should, in subsequent drafts. A brilliant novelist — Hemingway or Steinbeck — someone, anyway — said all first drafts are shit and I believe it.

Last March I finished a “rough” draft of a memoir, my first venture into writing non-fiction. It took a lot out of me to write it and I was glad to finally ask a few trusted readers for feedback. Around the same time I started writing a prequel to my City Streets trilogy. The prequel is written in Leah’s voice. Leah is the troubled teen referred to in the title of the first book, Runaway.

Having written two sequels I can say that a prequel is a whole different thing. It’s like crawling under an existing foundation instead of adding on or building up or out. It’s a challenge. Were the themes of the two projects too much? Possibly. Was working on them at the same time too taxing? Maybe.

Okay. Enough. I’ll leave my effort in therapy for writer’s block right here. Thank you for hanging in there with me. I have put my butt in the chair a bit lately and seen glimpses of recovery. I’ll keep you posted.