Fighting the Block

The past two weeks have been tortuous. I haven’t written a damn word. Instead, I have sat in front of my computer, letting the cursor blink on the screen, and staring until the pixels started to dance. In lieu of writing, I have also watched television, read “junk” books, cooked extravagant meals, played with the cats, visited family, and napped…a lot.

Normally, when I get into one of these ruts, writing just a sentence can help kick me out of it. Even if that sentence is junk. Or sometimes, just thinking deeply about the next scene, or taking long walks, or meditating can help. But these past few weeks, none of these old tricks have worked.

In fact, I've been so caught up on my own life, and my own feelings, that I can’t seem to focus on my characters. Recently, something rather odd happened to me—the details of which I won’t get into. In the moment of that thing happening, I wasn't exactly sure what to do, how to act, what things I should say, or even if I liked what was happening. Even now, I don’t know my feelings on the whole thing. I have played and replayed this event over in my head, trying to determine what I wanted out of the situation, and how I should have responded to the stimuli around me.

I tried to write about it in essay form, but I kept stopping, rewriting, erasing. What I was putting down wasn't helping me to understand the situation, and thus, wasn't helping me to move past it and refocus on my novel.

Today, I got an idea. What if my protagonist had been in my situation? What would he have done, said, felt? Would he have acted braver, weaker, or bolder, than I had? I took to my computer and threw him in. And boy, did he know what he wanted to do.

I still don’t know what I should have done. But I know what my protagonist things about the whole thing, and that’s good enough for me.