The Middle of the Morass: Or, Truepenny Bitches about her Writing Some More

[truepenny]

Okay, why am I not writing?

Honestly, I'm puzzled. I've got stuff to have happen, nobody's behaving out of character, and yet I open the file and stare at it and feel like I'm floundering around in a fog. This is what it feels like when I've taken a wrong turn, but there's no wrong turn here for me to take. I'm usually pretty good with the chapters that have checklists [e.g., TO DO IN CHAPTER 25: Emily and Paulina quarrel over their manuscript; Marianne makes an alliance with Charles to contest Sir Mortimer Woolridge's will; Gerard declares his true feelings for Lionel (QUERY: kiss?); Cynthia discovers the map to the hedge maze in the first Lady Woolridge's dressing table], but this time there's something wrong. As Dorothy Sayers puts it in my favorite chapter heading in Have His Carcase: "Evidence of Trouble Somewhere."

I feel like I'm staring at the ground and there's something heavy on my neck and shoulders that's preventing me from raising my head to see the landscape. But I can't turn my head to identify this black dog, either, which means I can't figure out what to do about it.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Oh I hate that. That's my least favourite form of stuck, even worse than brain not in gear. I call it "needing a moth" because once it was a moth I didn't know I needed.

I find doing something wordless can help, arranging rocks or finding the right bit on the necklace or going to look at nature, in climates that permit of such.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, at least it's not just me. It helps with my mental state--if not with the stuckness--to know that other people can get into this same state of irritated bafflement.

Not, sadly, a suitable day for taking a walk--(*looks out window*) good Christ it's snowing AGAIN. At the moment, am printing out 2 stories to send out this afternoon on Epic Journey to Post Office; perhaps after this is done, I'll go do some stretching exercises. That will be good for me, even if it doesn't solve my novelistic problems.

[pameladean]

Oh, ugh, been there, can't find the T-shirt to burn it.

I never found anybody else's helpful suggestions on the matter anything but massively irritating, so you needn't read the next paragraph.

When I got out of it by action rather than by waiting, I did so by writing something from the wrong viewpoint.

Pamela

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

The great thing about having a taciturn and inarticulate protagonist is that if I don't know what he should say, odds are very good he doesn't know either, which means he can say nothing, and we can let the other (extremely articulate and loquacious) protagonist do all the talking. Remembering that got me out of the immediate logjam; after I've eaten lunch, I'm going to go back and see if that lets me raise my head a little higher.

[pameladean]

It would be a real stretch for me to write an inarticulate protagonist. But not right now.

Best of luck with the talking of the other ones.

Pamela

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I really like your sample "what has to be in chapter 25" summary.

I hope it works out soon. I can't in all honesty say I know this exact feeling myself; I do far too many things at once, and I've yet to find myself stuck such that I can no longer proceed with the primary project or noodle about on any of the other projects that are still active. In some ways it's not dissimilar to my day job, where there are inordinate numbers of different things needing doing by yesterday, and it's always been possible so far to procrastinate from one by doing another and tricking myself into productivity.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I really like your sample "what has to be in chapter 25" summary.

Thanks! It was fun to invent.

I used to be like what you describe, with projects I could flick through like channel-surfing. But The Project has gotten so huge and demanding (kind of like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, actually) that I generally only have one or two other things going (aside from the dissertation, about which the less said the better). And at the moment, my other thing is also stuck, because I had enough inspiration to get my poor hapless protagonist into his current dire situation, but not enough to get him out. So that one's still got some pondering coming to it.

Dogged persistence can sometimes work wonders.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I used to be like what you describe, with projects I could flick through like channel-surfing.

I wouldn't go that far; there's very definitely one set of people standing at the front, and various other groups milling around more or less comfortable with waiting their turns - insofar as I have a visual image for this, it's of the big central hall in the Adelphi in Liverpool [ for those who've not been there the one where the ballroom scenes in Titanic were shot, as it was a White Star Line hotel and is exactly the same ].

But The Project has gotten so huge and demanding (kind of like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, actually) that I generally only have one or two other things going

I have a magnum opus that would be like that if I let it, the project from which Rose and Rysmiel both come; there's currently almost exactly 400kwords of the thing, and it is sitting there somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters done, basically being quiet save for the occasional taunting wave at the things I know happen in the end but have not clue one how to get to from here. I try not to think about it; fixing and finishing it is at very best two year's work, and I could do a lot of other things with that time.

And at the moment, my other thing is also stuck, because I had enough inspiration to get my poor hapless protagonist into his current dire situation, but not enough to get him out. So that one's still got some pondering coming to it.

The closest I have to an actual secondary project is waiting for me to read all the Musketeers books through, which is a long-term goal but at least a finitely doable one. [ The first chapter is D'Artagnan and the Great Detective on Mars. Then it gets weird. ]

Dogged persistence can sometimes work wonders.

If you bang your head long enough on anything, the blood dripping from your forehead will make pretty patterns on the paper ?