#i don't have the capacity to at the moment but sooooon

[spacebuck]

Yo I've got three braincells and you've been writing for a while and I assume you have at least Four Braincells and could maybe help me? What do you do when you get stuck with a story? I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of and that, unfortunately, seems to be the only way my thought process works through plots? Any ideas or other things I could try?? What is your process like????? Thank you!!

sorry i’m later than expected! roommate cooked dinner while I was on my way home so had to eat my one true meal of the day fghjk

okay so I have a few main things I do if I can’t plot-jam with a trusted person:

1. work on something else. i usually have two or three Main fics that I work on at any given time - if I get stuck on one, i’ll move to the next. it keeps things fresh, and gives me a chance to stew on what’s happening in the other one. it doesn’t work for everyone, to be fair, but I find it does work for me - and when I go back to the one I was stuck on, often even if I haven’t consciously worked out what to do, I can write myself out of the pickle i put myself in.

2. move on to a new scene. this one I feel can be ~controversial~ in the writing community mostly because there are many people who simply can’t just move on - I usually can’t either, but what I have figured out works for me is:

a. bullet point the rest of the scene i’m stuck on (if possible)m so I know where I want to go

b. move on to the very next scene

that way I get the beats of the scene i’m skipping, so I can trick my brain into thinking I wrote it, enabling me to move onto something that lets me reset my brain a bit.

3. take a step back and review the scene. if you’re struggling with it, or getting bored with it, it may be that it’s because it doesn’t actually need to be there, or it needs to be rejigged to work better with where you want the story to go. if you find that’s the case, don’t delete it - just start rewriting the scene again under it as you may even find you can reuse some stuff, or merge the two to get what you want out of it.

4. push through it. another potentially controversial one, but i’m of the mind that one bad sentence is better than no sentences at all, even if it takes you half an hour to get it out. you can edit a bad sentence, you can’t edit a blank page. sit down, set yourself a small goal (like one sentence or one paragraph)and just write it. if you find that things start to flow, then awesome, write more. If not, yay you got a sentence or a paragraph down, move on to #5.

5. go for a walk or drive or bike ride or run (if possible). getting outside, in the (hopefully) fresh air, and getting some exercise can let your brain have a chance to catch up, and you may start spinning ideas while you do it. if not, you got out of the house for a bit and that’s honestly far better for you than people realise. for reference, when I was writing howitzer and got stuck I would grab my skates and head down to the local rink, and remind myself why I loved the sport (and get some exercise in to get the body moving). i know it’s pandemic-times, so please only do this if it’s safe, and wear a mask.

5. go do something else completely. seems counter-intuitive right? but honestly, we’re living in unprecedented times, to use the overused phrase. we as a society are undergoing so much trauma day in and day out with no let-up, and even if we weren’t, it’s okay to rest. it’s okay to give your brain time to catch up and process things. sometimes we get writer’s block for a reason. if nothing else is working, it may be time to rotate your mental crop fields and leave the writing one fallow for a bit - unused, given a chance to recover - while you go work on a different field. that field could be anything - crafting, baking, playing a video-game, watching that tv show you’ve been meaning to, pick up that book, vacuum that couch. you could even literally do nothing at all, anything as long as it’s not writing! letting your brain rest is a huge part of the creative process, and when you’re ready to give things another go, go back to step 4 - set a little goal, see how you go.

i spent most of last year in spot number 5 - I had a lot going on irl, and needed to give myself space to deal with that. i only really started to come out of that at the end of October (which is why nanowrimo went okay) and then got slammed with renovations so I haven’t got much to show for it, but the majority of the words i’ve written this year are from November - and that’s okay!! sometimes that rest is a few hours, sometimes a few days, sometimes several months. it’s okay to need time!! if you feel like you need permission to rest, this is it - you’re allowed to!

this is longer than i’d planned (story of my life lmao) so i’m going to stop here, but I hope that’s of some use to you?? good luck finding the errant braincells!