I have been quiet. This blog post comes months after the last I created. What's worse is my keyboard as a whole has been quiet.
To be honest I do not know when it started. The second book in The Abaddon series flew from my fingertips. I could not get my fingers to dance across the keyboard fast enough. Then I began book three.
The difference between then was astounding. Where my fingers once had a mind of their own
were still. I was still however, slowly making progress. Though I emphasize the word slowly. In almost the same amount of time I finished book 2 I had only written a third of book three. Then my fingers stopped completely.
At first I would sit at the keyboard and wait for something, anything to come to my mind. Something that would move the story forward. No matter how long I sat staring at the blank page
before me my mind came up blank.
So I utilized a tip I had gotten from an author friend of mine to just write. Write something you may not end up using. It could be total garbage and erased later. I tried and I wrote and wrote and wrote. And it was truly terrible. The plot seemed forced and some of the actions did not fit my characters at all. I scraped everything I wrote. And in the end still had nothing.
So here I am three months later having nothing yet added to my third book. I sometimes fear I burnt myself out with the flurry of writing book 2. But then it hit me, out of nowhere I had an idea. The very idea I had been trying to squeeze from my brain for so long. The plot point the story was missing. The very think book 3 needed.
I am slowing starting to realize something about myself, and maybe it is true for you. When I was forced to write anything in school I would fail. I would be given all the things it needed to include but I could never piece it together right. My brain isn't wired that way.
My mind thinks best when not shoved in a box with expected expectations. I had been racking myself so hard to keep the story going I lost my creative flow. What I needed to give myself was the time to relax my thoughts. Not focus harder trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
Now I am not saying it will work for you. But maybe if you are struggling as I was to get your story going, a break is what you need. Do something else for a little while and let the ideas come to you naturally. Hopefully by doing this, you can avoid a many month long bout of writers block too.
-C.E.Keefer
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