How did I break the writer’s block? I hear you ask. Ok, so that is a white lie. I have cunningly employed a subtle device to steer the conversation onto what I want to talk about. What do you mean that is neither cunning nor subtle? How very dare you. Ok, I’ll start again.
So, I thought I’d tell you how I finally managed to break out of my writer’s funk, in case it’s a useful hint for any fellow writers out there in a similar situation. As you know (because I’ve moaned about it many times), I’ve found these last few months difficult for writing. A little disillusioned by the falloff in sales and the constant need for promotion to get any traction, the idea of the whole new novel has been quite daunting. Not the writing itself, but the knowledge that the many weeks and months necessary to redraft, edit, launch and market might not translate into reads, reviews or sales. As my novels so far have been standalone and quite different tonally so far I’ve found repeat sales more difficult than a genre series. If you’ve followed my posts you’ll know I’ve considered this before, looking at fantasy, historical and detective and on occasion getting quite enthused. I’ve done research, plotted, made notes and even started some of these, but the realisation soon hit that, at the moment anyway, I’m not sufficiently excited or committed about any of these ideas to spend the next six to twelve months working on them. Which is a shame as I had some great ideas, but I need to be realistic.
Given my lack of ‘oompf’ for a novel, my next thought was to return to my short stories. I have several completed, and numerous more at various stages of completion, including a rather stylish (if slightly depressing) novella. I encountered a similar block though. Creating these is an enjoyable task, but placing a short story means querying, magazines and competitions, and to be honest, I haven’t the heart for that at the moment. I already have numerous stories written, and have failed to place them, so I’d just be adding to the pile of the unread.
My next approach was the brute force one, and to make myself write 1000 words a night, whether I wanted to or not (or 7000 per week, allowing some flexibility). It worked for a little while, but the shadow of placing the work again hung over me. My favourite work in progress is a pre-Arthurian history, which I really enjoyed researching, but I got slightly stuck trying to decide whether to try for a ‘straight’ historical, which had been my original intention, or to amend it to a fantasy setting, ala Joe Abercromby which would allow me to stray from reality a bit more and throw in a bit of magic. Both would be potential genre works, and mapping them out there could be several volumes. I do want to do this, but about 5000 words in I realised that to avoid significant re-writes I needed to pick the genre before proceeding. And I really couldn’t decide, with neither giving me the real mojo feeling to commit more to.
And then I came across another old favourite for writers – writing to a brief. Quite by chance I came across a competition that didn’t require money to enter, and with a fairly detailed set of criteria to map to. While I’m not a natural plotter (more of a pantser when it comes to creating) I am a fan of internal logic, being able to adapt, and having some of the decisions taken away from me. In my day job I help people write to set formats and restrictions, and it turned out this was just what I needed. I found I was happy to develop and rewrite extracts and a synopsis to fit the brief, an expanded first draft story of around 8000 words and a tightening up edit to almost half the wordcount. And I found my mojo!
Since starting that I’ve created half a dozen more synopses, and am happily re-writing. I don’t expect to win the competition, but realised there is a franchise opportunity from the characters I have created, so may have found my new project. I’ve always liked approaches like Conan-Doyle, Christie or G.K.Chesterton, with multiple stories of the same cast, and I can see how I could do this, while experimenting with different writing formats. If I have my characters and scenarios then I can likewise challenge myself to adapt to drama or audio, with fresh opportunities offered every way.
So that is how I’ve got my mojo back. You can tell as I’ve lumbered back into some social media posting and the guilt of not updating the blog for a while led me to quite enjoy writing this. I can’t promise I’ll get back to weekly blogs anytime soon, but I’ll certainly update you more regularly on how things are going, and hopefully, how this new phase progresses.
Stay safe,
Kit xx