How I Left My Novel Writing Doldrums
I’m sitting on a partly finished novel. I had written scenes for it last year. The year before, I had outlined and began another more difficult-to-write novel about a happy and peaceful resolution to Israel-Palestine. Then I went onto the Internet to learn more about the Israel-Palestine dynamic, and then I ended up with an Israel-Palestine peace forum called Unity is Strength on my hands. And then Unity is Strength got popular, and then it got a grant and joined the United Religions Initiative as a Cooperation Circle. I wrote the applications for all these things.
Meanwhile, no novel.
That would have been my first novel, and quite a difficult one. I decided to write another novel to warm up, one I thought would be easier and still think is easier. This novel is not about Israel-Palestine politics but is about the politics of a group of hyenas. There are two lineages of hyenas, fighting for control of their clan’s lands. Hopefully, it’s going to end up kind of like Watership Down by Richard Adams, a really good book if you haven’t read it already. And hopefully, it’s not going to make a statement about the Israel-Palestine dynamic, even if I am definitely thinking a lot about it while I am writing.
Meanwhile, no novel. I made it farther, though, reaching about 20,000 words. Then I stalled.
Some people think I’m very determined, seeing what I’ve done on my peace forum. But I definitely do not have my act together about writing either novel.
Scenes of the hyena novel keep coming back to me, in my head. But never for long.
I’ve written the outline down. I know many of my characters. I’ve pored through Medium, looking for advice about novel writing. I’m not the only person to have encountered the doldrums. Zach J. Payne wrote all about it.
When I felt uninspired, which was most of the time, I tried to read at least one Medium piece about novel writing at least three times a week.
I entered NaNoWriMo for the third year in a row. That does not even work for me, but I did it anyway. Writing in such large chunks is so intimidating, and is not my style. For the third time in a row, I failed grandly, each time coming up shorter than the last. This year, my word count was a big round Zero.
Finally, after several months of perusing Medium, I encountered this piece by Karen Worsfold.
Try and write every day, even if it's just one sentence. One is better than none. I often found that once I had written one sentence, then a second came shortly after.
In-between checking e-mail, checking Quora, checking Medium, writing a comment, thinking about my novel, feeling guilty it was not getting done…I could write a sentence.
I wrote a sentence. Then I wrote another.
I can do this every day.
Checking Medium again, checking LinkedIn, checking Quora…
Writing a sentence. Another sentence. Another.
More tomorrow. But this can continue. This will flow.
And by the way, dear reader, what works for you?