Man, I am having such issues with the Changeling story. It’s like pulling teeth, and I can’t figure out why. Yes, it has problems. Lord, does it have problems. Is it more problems than usual? Bigger problems than usual?
Maybe? Not sure. Middles are often difficult but they don’t normally drag on like this one is.
It’s especially frustrating because I should just be able to push through to the end. It’s close. We should be downhill from here. But it’s not going. It’s trickling along frustratingly slowly.
I’ve been trying some tricks to see if that helps. Yesterday I loaded up my dictation program because sometimes switching how you write frees up any mental blocks that may be happening.
However, all that happened is that I discovered that my version of dictation program does not work with my version of Microsoft Word. Good times. I did try it out on a short story I’m doing in Google Drive, which worked, but it turns out I haven’t quite figured out the flow for dictation anyway.
I suppose I could try handwriting. That’s helped me out of a weird spot before.
But part of me is starting to wonder why this is going so poorly. Perhaps the story is irredeemable. Perhaps my time would be better served working on something else.
And, then, you know how your brain gets. Or how creative types’ brains get. You’re working on something, yet over here is something else shiny, something more exciting, and it’s always very tempting to switch, especially when things aren’t going well on what you are working on.
So MY brain immediately supplies me with something else to work on, providing all sorts of useful information that I will no doubt forget before I actually switch projects, even if I try to write it down.
Or…should I switch now? I don’t want to–I’d really like to have a first draft done on Changeling before November–but maybe everything is tell me I should.
Or maybe, you know, the world is falling apart and I’m not going to be able to focus on anything. Maybe I should just give up, focus on getting things ready for Nano (working on the assumption that I will be doing Nano, after last year’s success), and come back to things later.
I dunno. I feel a little untethered, like there’s so many possibilities and yet nothing concrete to do.
How are you feeling, squiders? Mentally and emotionally? Anything you’ve found helps lately?
