Tag Archives: writer’s block

Stuck on your manuscript? Bring on the villain

Bring on a villain, like this one, when manuscript is stuckDelightful chap, isn’t he, our villain? I particularly admire those enormous teeth. And that improbable moustache.

I’ve blogged about villains before — including charismatic villains played by Alan Rickman (yes!) and Richard Armitage — but today’s blog isn’t about individual villains. It’s about what villains can bring to our manuscripts, especially when we’re stuck.

I was stuck on my current wip. It was moving at the rate of a glacier before we had climate change.
In other words, it was going nowhere very slowly.

Crit partners : support when stuck

Continue reading →

Lonely, struggling writer in garret? Not necessarily

frustrated writer alone in garret

Joanna struggling in her garret?

The poor, lonely writer in her dark and dingy garret, struggling with her words…
Olaf the troll, and garret companionMakes you want to weep in sympathy, doesn’t it?

Except that I have to admit that my garret…er…isn’t. Continue reading →

Beating Writer’s Block 1: Perfectionist

frustration of writer's block

 

I qualify to write this because I’ve wrestled with writer’s block all my life, long before my first book was published. Yet I have finished innumerable writing projects — reports, articles, blogs, non-fiction — and published them. My 50th novel is hovering in the wings.

 

Shapeshifter Block

When I hit a writer’s block, therefore, you’d expect me to say, “Uh oh, been here before, I know I can beat this.”

And sometimes I do.

shapeshifting in the mist

 

But the trouble is the demon block changes shape from book to book. Hell, sometimes it changes from chapter to chapter.

Perfectionising

For me, the perfectionist aspect of block is one of the worst. And part of the problem is that a secret, shameful bit of me quite likes the idea of being a perfectionist. It sounds superior. Rigorous, even. It says I’m a Writer With Standards. Continue reading →