On Dealing With Writer’s Block (Novel Writing: Month 7, Chapter 7)

July was a harder month to write in than I expected. I don’t know if the process is just getting stagnant and monotonous or if I was simply busier this month and therefore couldn’t devote as much time to writing. I did finish the chapter though! Even if for a little while I thought I would have to cut the chapter short in order to reach my goal, but then I realized, is that even reaching my goal? Doing sloppy work to get things done on time rather than taking the time and giving the effort to create a quality product is lazy! And I’m not lazy. So even though by the middle of July I had only about three pages written, I put my thinking cap on and pushed hard until the end of the month.

This chapter was challenging in part because it’s getting past my original brainstorm session from December when I first decided to embark on this novel writing journey. I had ideas for the beginning and ideas for a couple chapters after the one I wrote in July, but there is a lull in the plot for me around chapter seven. Thing have to happen in order for the more exciting things to happen, but that means I need to spend an equal amount of time thinking about those less interesting things in order to write them. It’s like surviving Tuesday through Thursday just so you can party on Friday.

Since I was having some motivation issues and writer’s block, I decided to go back to my original story written from eight grade through my freshmen year in college for some inspiration. I had this grand planning of re-reading all 364 pages, but then I realized that if I was going to get this chapter written and read all of the chapters in my previous novel I needed to borrow Hermione’s Time Turner.

So I’m going to have to save the old novel reading for later, but I did pinpoint a section of my story that sets up some very important information in regards to prophecy and history that I actually used almost verbatim which helped a lot. I had to change some of the original history in order to make the character dynamics and story I’ve been writing this year make sense, but rather than starting from scratch or trying to vaguely recall the historical record I had created, I simply used the original.

Interestingly, using ideas that I had come up with years ago actually made me more excited about the story. Recently, I’ve been feeling like the story is getting out of hand in a way because it’s deviating so much from my original eighth grade ideas. When you tell the same story to yourself over and over again but then go to actually write it down and it starts spiraling out of control in it’s own direction, it can become disheartening. But being able to go back to my original story, pick out my favorite parts and reutilize them in this new story has helped me connect the two distinct stories in my mind.

I’m excited for month eight/chapter eight, and I plan on perusing the original hand-written story for some of my favorite scenes and inventing a way to include them. Despite my young age when writing the original story, there really are some poetic pieces that are worth editing and including in my latest version of the story. They are what I remember most fondly about the story so it wouldn’t be right not to include them!