Hi Everyone,
I have a short story side project that I’ve been trying to put together for months. It’s part of an experiment in story prompts and the prompts I’m working from should be the exact kind of thing that should inspire me. But there’s a problem—for me, it’s a big problem…
I’m stuck facing the blank page. At this point, the blank page seems to be mocking me.
I just don’t know how to get the story started.
My prompts are full of space ships, skeleton crews and a bank robbery—a sentence that seems to promise a great story (to me at least).
I’ve been stuck before. Lunar Escape, which is just a novella, took me over three years to write because I kept getting stuck. I kept plugging away at it and in the end I’m happy with it.
How to get unstuck
What works for me is to put the project away. I try to have multiple projects at different stages so if I get stuck I can just shift to something else.
Every story I’ve ever worked on has cycled through phases. At the beginning everything is always shiny and exciting.
Then I start to draft, resulting in a ‘oh shit this is hard’ and maybe ‘this is never going to work out’ or ‘every bit of this is crap’. I try and push through, but if that doesn’t work (i.e. I get stuck) I put the project away before I absolutely hate it.
Usually, when I come back to it I think it’s okay to pretty good. Ways out of where I’m stuck tend to surface. As I go, my relationship to my project oscillates back and forth. It just seems to be how my brain gets a story down and I do my best to be kind to myself about it. No project is ever smooth, but they tend to work out in the end.
So for now, my potentially fabulous short story is being put away.
For the other writers out there, how do you get unstuck?
How about now we check out something amazing?
This altered book was created by Isobelle Ouzman. This and all of her work is fantastic. I can’t imagine having enough patience to carve and colour something so detailed.
As an aside, my own altered book project is progressing nicely in my style—which I’m happy with.
What I’m reading
I’m deep into Velocity Weapon by Megan O’Keefe. It’s an epic space opera with a grumpy character that I quite like (I seem to be into grumpy characters lately).
For fascinating non-fiction, I’d highly recommend Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them by Dan Saladino - it’s my favourite style of non-fiction combining history, science and an author who goes to the locations he talks about.
As always, please comment and let me know what you’ve been reading and enjoying lately.
Cheers,
Jeannette
If you are looking for some short reads, take a look at this promotion:
My Books:
Hope is the Thing With Feathers - direct or from the shops
Encoded Orbits
Fractured Orbits - direct or from the shops
The Alien Algorithm - direct or from the shops
Settler Chronicles
Day 115 on an Alien World - direct or from the shops
Far Side of the Moon - direct or from the shops
Abandoned Ships, Hijacked Minds - direct or from the shops
The Alien Artifact - direct or from the shops
And if you aren’t already a subscriber, what’s stopping you (especially if you have read this far)?
I hope you are absolutely loving Velocity Weapon!! I absorbed that series last year and wish there was more of it!
In answer to your question about getting unstuck: I am a mix of pantser and plotter--if something isn’t working I tend to first take a break as you say you do, but to get back in I’ll zoom over to a part in the plot that’s compelling and write that bit. Some brilliant writer called it taking your helicopter to another part, and I use that liberally to get me back in character and inspired about the story.
Ooo! What is an “altered book”?
Currently half-way through Samuel R. Delaney’s “Nova”. This is my second Delaney novel, after “Trouble On Triton”. His literary take on sf makes for quite interesting reading.