Apr 6, 2022
The final part of our Writer's Block series. What to do when you encounter writer's block because of your mood and the circumstances of your life.
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:
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The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.
So we've talked about writer's block for a couple weeks. Now this is week number three. We talked about the structure of the outline itself. We talked about the story arc, but what if it is simply you getting in your own way? We've all been there too, my friends. So let's talk about your inner environment and how that can lead to writer's block today on Writing in the Tiny House.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Writing in the [00:01:00] Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in the tiny house in Northern Utah. And I write things and I tell you about the process so that you can write things. The whole point of this podcast is to give you the tools and the knowledge necessary for you to do your own creative writing so that you can crank out a short story in three months or crank out a novel in 18 months and still have the wisdom and the foresight to adjust that timeline if you feel you need to.
Most things aren't done that fast, but it's good to know that they can be. So today we are on part three of our little mini series on writer's block. And today we are talking about the inner conflict that each of us has with our work in progress.
So regardless, especially if you are writing a long thing, if you are writing a thing that is not going to be over [00:02:00] and done with in like one day, you are bound to have days where you hate what you've written. And you hate your work in progress. You hate your computer. You hate the place where you write, you hate your desk.
You hate your chair. I don't have a chair. I hate my floor. I hate my standing desk. There are days where you will have a really bad attitude and there are days where t he energy of your work in progress doesn't match what you are going through. Sometimes this can be a really big thing. Most of the time it will be kind of a smaller thing that you can figure out and push through or figure out and resolve, and then get back to work on your work in progress.
And other times it might require something else. So with your work in progress, if you are a person who has been pushing and pushing to get your word count in, and you have developed this cool writing routine, you have developed [00:03:00] this wonderful routine of writing every day, you have a nice lofty word count, and you have been achieving that word count all the time, but sometimes you feel like you're still spinning your wheels just because the work in progress can be a pretty complicated and a pretty long thing.
It is completely normal to set out and think that your short story is going to be 9,000 words and it ends up being 20 or that your novel is going to be 95,000 words. And it ends up being like 125,000 words. That happened with my first book. I wasn't expecting it to be as long as it was. So anyway, word counts can surprise us.
And sometimes even though we're writing a ton of words and we are being these good disciplined writers, sometimes some times writer's block can happen just when you need an emotional break. [00:04:00] Sometimes you need a break. Sometimes the very best thing to do is to put some distance between you and your work in progress and let that work in progress cool off. And when we say that work in progress cool off what we actually mean is you get to cool off.
All of these attitudes, all of this despair, all of this, you know, grumpiness or whatever. All of the negativity associated with your work in progress. If you take a second, you save your work, you close it out and you let it sit there for an amount of time. If you have wrapped up a novel and you're at the end of your novel, it is good to let it sit there for at least two weeks and let it cool down.
If you are struggling through a work in progress, sometimes, give it a day, give it two days, give it a weekend. If you are going on vacation, maybe you can write up until the day before you go on vacation and then like go on vacation and make sure that your vacation is [00:05:00] a way from all the things. And perhaps it needs to include your work in progress.
And then when you get back, you can pick it up again and you'll be in a better place. Sometimes it can be just letting it go for the night. So that you can go outside, you can breathe some fresh air, you can get some exercise, you can play with your kids. You can play with your dog. You can go see a movie.
You can go do all of these other things that perhaps you have not done as much of, because you have been focusing more on being your version of this studious dedicated writer. And taking a break from your work in progress can be enough to simply let your brain calm down, let the negativity that has been building up, disperse, disappear, go away so that after your break and I don't mean forever.
I mean sometimes, I mean, forever in a second, I'm [00:06:00] going to mean forever, but let your break be a simple way to recharge your batteries in whichever way charges your batteries best so that you don't develop a negative relationship with your work in progress. Just because if you have. A story or a novel or whatever that you're working on and you absolutely hate it.
It will show in your writing. And if you are, writing as a way to beat yourself up, because you have something to prove or because if you don't write every day, then you're not a good writer, which is not right. Then developing a negative relationship with writing will eventually wear down your desire to write, and it will wear that away.
And so I personally don't ever want to get into the spot where I hate writing period, the end. I instead find ways to give myself space and find ways to take care of myself so that [00:07:00] I can pick it up at a later date. Even if I don't know when the later date is going to be.
So let's talk about a time where maybe you get to step away for forever and all ways. This shouldn't happen to you a lot. There are plenty of writers in this world who have written a lot more than they have shared. I am one of those people. So to just be cranking out creative content is certainly a possible thing too.
it's a thing that we can do. It's a thing that I've done, but sometimes a person's published list is not an accurate reflection of all of the writing they've actually done. Back in November, if you have been following this podcast you are aware that we have been on the air, so to speak for more than a year now.
We are in the sixties with our episodes, which is super cool. And like the downloading numbers for this podcast have been going [00:08:00] up slowly but surely this is pretty niche. I mean, creative writing is pretty niche when it comes to podcast content, but we're doing it. We're growing, we're getting more people involved and things are fun, and it's really fun to see it grow.
But if you were around, back in November, You may remember that I was drafting a short story called auto and auto was something that I was really passionate about at the time. However, the content of the story itself was going to be really heavy. It was going to kind of take on an amount of like the little match girl.
Type of story where there are definitely some glimmers of hope, but the overall story is pretty sad. I mean, with a little match girl, the poor girl dies at the end. It wasn't going to be exactly like that, but it was a thing where everything was just really sad and there's a little. [00:09:00] Of hope at the end, but it's all still really sad.
Now, if you remember back in January 1st, I came out as gay on Facebook and to my friends and family. And there were weeks and weeks of preparing for that. That was a really big courageous, emotional moment for me. And. Back in November is actually when I started doing the mental and emotional work for whatever possibilities would come about from doing that from coming out at age 37 on January 1st there was a lot to worry about.
There was a lot to work through and so dealing with real life back in November. And having such a dark and sad work in progress. I mean, had it been a different time in my life, I would have. Loved to finish drafting auto and I would've made it [00:10:00] the saddest thing in the entire world and it would have been great.
It would have been heavy. It would have been sad. It would have also been great, but because of personal things, there came a moment because of life, because of real life, there came a very big moment in my journey with Otto that I simply could not write more and I wanted to power through it and I wanted to stay.
I wanted to still write, I wanted to finish it. I'm a finisher of things. I start projects and I finish them and finishing things makes me feel like I've accomplished a thing. It's something that I find a lot of value with. Instead, I had another idea for another short story. Tos that I am still working on right now.
I have taken a brief hiatus from writing just because I've decided to start [00:11:00] dating a little bit and so free time. I mean, it's a. But with TIS with tos, it's a story of two dedicated lovers. It's a story that fills me with hope and brought a lot of my beliefs about relationships and about unconditional love and what unconditional love actually means and how it would manifest in the lifetime of, of two partners.
And I was excited to write that. And so. At the time I told myself that I was putting auto on the back burner and I started writing TIS instead. And tos fills me with joy. It fills me with hope. it is a message that I love that I want to run with. Whereas Otto was more of a message about bullying and I wasn't in a good mental space for that.
And so. Sometimes to deal with writer's block, we get to write something else. that [00:12:00] means creating space between yourself and your current work in progress in order to start a different work in progress. And you can always revisit what you are leaving behind, or sometimes you. Bid add you to the things that you are leaving behind, which is what I think is going to happen with auto.
I'm not sure that I'm ever going to pick that up again. Maybe sometime in the future. I mean, I guess never say never, but certainly not today. And probably not tomorrow. So this has been the final episode of our three-part series on writer's block. sometimes you get to pay attention to your internal world and take care of yourself.
As a way to combat writer's block. So thank you so much for joining me. Let me know your thoughts on the past three episodes of writing in the tiny house [00:13:00] and be sure to tune in next week with a new episode of writing in the tiny house. Thank you so much for your time. We will see you there.
Devin Davis:
And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.[00:14:00]