Areellan, please call home.
(Okay, let’s blithely gloss over the fact that the curse of the phone --- especially the cellular variety --- is unknown in her particular reality, because it makes for a relatively catchy opening sentence, and most writers are peculiarly smitten with those.)
Maybe she’s taking a much-needed breather, I pensively tell myself. Possibly she’s gone fishing, or taken a long, extended hike through the lushly gorgeous mountainous terrain surrounding where she lives --- breathtaking scenery, to be sure, as she’s told me numerous times, and surely balm for a troubled soul. Or an untroubled one, come to that. Perhaps she’s just gotten (justifiably) tired of both the characters around her and the crap --- Will far more poetically called it the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune --- which I perennially toss her way. Maybe she’s doing… I dunno, whatever she does in her spare time. She hasn’t listed all the ways she likes to relax.
Whatever, it is… she’s stopped talking to me. And I hate it.
Areellan is 19 seasons old, feisty, lithe, very handy with dagger and bow, and totally unafraid to call out people’s shit. I like her a lot, actually… have done since she first showed up in my mind’s eye five or six years ago. (Yikes! Has it really been that long?) She’s also the protagonist in my current story writing. I was going to say the ‘fictional’ protagonist, but I know she’d be mightily annoyed by that adjective, and I don’t want to annoy her, because she wouldn’t be hesitant to voice her displeasure, and to modify the old saying, if Areellan ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
Now, I’ve gone to some lengths to provide you with the facts of what’s actually going on, though non-writerly types will, of course, dismiss it all as nonsense. They’ll even point out that there’s a perfectly good layman’s term for what I’m describing, too. It’s quaintly known as ‘writer’s block,’ they’ll say. Characters just don’t stop talking to their authors, they’ll add with a roll of eyeballs and a demonstrative sigh. It’s the authors who are in control, not the characters, they’ll remonstrate. (To paraphrase Will, methinks the writer doth protest too much.)
Pfft. Shows what they know. (Actually --- incredibly --- there are even some who claim to be writers who will make the same assertions. Pfft. Perhaps they should return to the widget factory they’ve so recently left, because I’d maintain, with tongue firmly in cheek, that they don’t really have the souls of writers.)
Why does it happen? Well, there are lots of reasons, a big one being the intrusion of the Outside World. I think most people will agree with me that the last year in particular has provided some real doozies in terms of unwelcome distractions… although there’s always something going on. As the saying goes, it isn’t merely one damn thing after another; frequently, it’s a bunch of things all happening at once.
Anyway… what’s a poor writer to do when confronted with this silence from their characters? I will say this isn’t the first time this has happened to me, and it probably won’t be the last. So, I think there are about three avenues available to the Afflicted Writer.
First is to surrender to it. Pause writing. Go and do something else, hopefully something not stressful or likely to make the writer’s block worse, not better. This doesn’t work for everyone, of course, and what starts out as a strictly temporary hiatus can stretch out into something much longer… even take on an aura of permanence, which must rank as one of most writers’ ultimate nightmares.
Second is to talk to someone about either the immediate story in question, or the concept of not being able to writer as a whole. This is… well, possible, I suppose… but I’m not sure most writers are either able or willing to discuss their literary children with others, even their nearest and dearest. I know that’s the case for me. Writing for me tends to be a deeply personal and mostly solitary journey.
The third option is the one I try to go with as often as I can: plow ahead anyway. (I won’t use that trite and overused phrase of ‘powering through it,’ because I really don’t see it as that kind of process. It’s more of a grind than an effortless powering.) It’s frequently a slog. But I keep writing. Even if it’s only a little bit in a day. Even if it’s only a few words. Even if it’s only polishing what’s already been written. I take heart from famed science fiction writer Frederik Pohl, who used to maintain that he had to get four pages typed each and every day. He said sometimes it took 45 minutes, sometimes it took 18 hours, and that sometimes he was ‘reasonably satisfied’ with what he had written… and quite a lot of the time he loathed it. I used to say something similar to my students when they were stuck while writing critical essays. Just get something down on the page, I used to tell them. You can hate the words you’re writing, but after a while, something strange will usually happen: those words will start to flow, make some sort of sense, and probably begin to sound not half-bad. In fact, they may sound pretty good --- which is great. And you can always go back to those initial words you hated, and change them once you’ve gotten into your groove.
And maybe… just maybe… (actually, more likely than ‘maybe’) Areellan will eventually pick up her phone, or look at her notifications… and call back.
And then we’re in business again as I hear the words from her: “I have so much to tell you!”
(Okay, let’s blithely gloss over the fact that the curse of the phone --- especially the cellular variety --- is unknown in her particular reality, because it makes for a relatively catchy opening sentence, and most writers are peculiarly smitten with those.)
Maybe she’s taking a much-needed breather, I pensively tell myself. Possibly she’s gone fishing, or taken a long, extended hike through the lushly gorgeous mountainous terrain surrounding where she lives --- breathtaking scenery, to be sure, as she’s told me numerous times, and surely balm for a troubled soul. Or an untroubled one, come to that. Perhaps she’s just gotten (justifiably) tired of both the characters around her and the crap --- Will far more poetically called it the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune --- which I perennially toss her way. Maybe she’s doing… I dunno, whatever she does in her spare time. She hasn’t listed all the ways she likes to relax.
Whatever, it is… she’s stopped talking to me. And I hate it.
Areellan is 19 seasons old, feisty, lithe, very handy with dagger and bow, and totally unafraid to call out people’s shit. I like her a lot, actually… have done since she first showed up in my mind’s eye five or six years ago. (Yikes! Has it really been that long?) She’s also the protagonist in my current story writing. I was going to say the ‘fictional’ protagonist, but I know she’d be mightily annoyed by that adjective, and I don’t want to annoy her, because she wouldn’t be hesitant to voice her displeasure, and to modify the old saying, if Areellan ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
Now, I’ve gone to some lengths to provide you with the facts of what’s actually going on, though non-writerly types will, of course, dismiss it all as nonsense. They’ll even point out that there’s a perfectly good layman’s term for what I’m describing, too. It’s quaintly known as ‘writer’s block,’ they’ll say. Characters just don’t stop talking to their authors, they’ll add with a roll of eyeballs and a demonstrative sigh. It’s the authors who are in control, not the characters, they’ll remonstrate. (To paraphrase Will, methinks the writer doth protest too much.)
Pfft. Shows what they know. (Actually --- incredibly --- there are even some who claim to be writers who will make the same assertions. Pfft. Perhaps they should return to the widget factory they’ve so recently left, because I’d maintain, with tongue firmly in cheek, that they don’t really have the souls of writers.)
Why does it happen? Well, there are lots of reasons, a big one being the intrusion of the Outside World. I think most people will agree with me that the last year in particular has provided some real doozies in terms of unwelcome distractions… although there’s always something going on. As the saying goes, it isn’t merely one damn thing after another; frequently, it’s a bunch of things all happening at once.
Anyway… what’s a poor writer to do when confronted with this silence from their characters? I will say this isn’t the first time this has happened to me, and it probably won’t be the last. So, I think there are about three avenues available to the Afflicted Writer.
First is to surrender to it. Pause writing. Go and do something else, hopefully something not stressful or likely to make the writer’s block worse, not better. This doesn’t work for everyone, of course, and what starts out as a strictly temporary hiatus can stretch out into something much longer… even take on an aura of permanence, which must rank as one of most writers’ ultimate nightmares.
Second is to talk to someone about either the immediate story in question, or the concept of not being able to writer as a whole. This is… well, possible, I suppose… but I’m not sure most writers are either able or willing to discuss their literary children with others, even their nearest and dearest. I know that’s the case for me. Writing for me tends to be a deeply personal and mostly solitary journey.
The third option is the one I try to go with as often as I can: plow ahead anyway. (I won’t use that trite and overused phrase of ‘powering through it,’ because I really don’t see it as that kind of process. It’s more of a grind than an effortless powering.) It’s frequently a slog. But I keep writing. Even if it’s only a little bit in a day. Even if it’s only a few words. Even if it’s only polishing what’s already been written. I take heart from famed science fiction writer Frederik Pohl, who used to maintain that he had to get four pages typed each and every day. He said sometimes it took 45 minutes, sometimes it took 18 hours, and that sometimes he was ‘reasonably satisfied’ with what he had written… and quite a lot of the time he loathed it. I used to say something similar to my students when they were stuck while writing critical essays. Just get something down on the page, I used to tell them. You can hate the words you’re writing, but after a while, something strange will usually happen: those words will start to flow, make some sort of sense, and probably begin to sound not half-bad. In fact, they may sound pretty good --- which is great. And you can always go back to those initial words you hated, and change them once you’ve gotten into your groove.
And maybe… just maybe… (actually, more likely than ‘maybe’) Areellan will eventually pick up her phone, or look at her notifications… and call back.
And then we’re in business again as I hear the words from her: “I have so much to tell you!”
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