Done is Better Than Perfect

This month has been a real struggle.

My Dad's health is failing, and although I am not close enough to take part in any of the care and attention he needs at the moment, the worry has sapped my energy. The visit which should have been a chance to spend time with him was quickly cut short when he was admitted to hospital. We had to come home without seeing him again, leaving my poor step-mum to organise care and equipment when he was finally discharged.

My inconvenient muse has deserted me, presumably for warmer climes, and I don't quite know the path to take to get my characters where I want them to be. My story has entered a fog that I can't quite seem to navigate my way out of.

And then I caught a cold. Not covid, thankfully, but a really heavy head cold that left me sneezing and coughing, disrupting my sleep and unable to function normally. Even my voice left me in disgust!

It will be no surprise to hear that I have, therefore, made very little progress on my latest manuscript. It is tempting at times like these to close the book, shut down the computer, and sit in a funk watching cheesy movies and bemoaning my lot. I admit that I did do some of that. But I also picked up my pen and stared at a blank page, occasionally scribbling down some lame dialogue, and scene descriptions that were sketchy at best. I gradually limped to the end of the chapter I was working on and finally turned the page.

It is pretty dreadful, of course, and I will need to do a huge amount of revision when I start to type it up, but my characters are now where I need them to be. I can start to move on.

There are days, I hope many of them, when the words flow like a torrent and my pen starts to smoke with the effort of getting it all down. Then there are the low times, the dry deserts that seem to stretch endlessly before you, telling you to give up and clean the bathroom instead. It's a bad day indeed when housework seems more appealing than writing.

The only thing you can do when faced with such blockages is take one small step at a time. Write one word, then another. Eventually, you will have written a sentence. Maybe even a paragraph. Do it day after day, ignoring the fact that it is terrible or doesn't do the picture in your head justice. It doesn't matter. One day the clouds will lift, the oasis will beckon, and the road will become clear. Until then, you just need to keep plodding.

I'm a linear writer, so I can't jump from scene to scene or start writing a new chapter entirely without completing what I am already working on. If you can work that way, however, start writing something else and come back to the difficult passage late when you feel more focused. Perhaps do something completely different instead. There are some great tools out there to prompt your creativity and wake your muse from her Caribbean slumber.

Perversely it seems, the best cure for writer's block is to write.