Sometimes I know what a book is going to do before I start.
Sometimes I just start a book hoping it will write itself, and often it does.
The book I’m on at the moment I have always vaguely known where it was going, it’s just trying to get the characters there seems to be a hard one. This one grew organically. I started with a specific image in my mind and wrote that down. The characters came easily, and the first part of the story grew without me really trying. Then I got to a point where I figured out where it was going, and what the ending might be. I don’t know how it will actually end, because I have to write that, but I have a good idea.
But then I got stuck in the middle. Not true writer’s block where you can’t write anything, but kind of a writer’s puzzle. Like I was doing a jigsaw, and some of the pieces ended up under the couch, and I couldn’t find them. So I stopped that story and swapped to a different one – it’s my favourite trick. I let one story sit in the drawer or in the back of my mind and tease itself out, while I change my direction and write another book.
Now I’ve come back to the first story. It’s because I now have some time to write. I stopped writing for a while because I had a baby and just didn’t have time. Now, one kid is at daycare and the other is a baby and sleeps a lot, and when I’m not working, I have time to write.
So I thought I’d get back to this story after a few months of not touching it. I can write, I thought, while the baby is going to sleep late at night. I can sit with the laptop on my knee and rock the baby’s crib with my foot. It’ll be great!
Except that this one story just didn’t have the puzzle pieces.
Ah, writer’s block, you say. Just write something. Do a mind-map. Be creative. Do whatever the website blog thing tells you.
Yeah, but… says I. It was hard. I just didn’t know what word to start with, or how to get the characters from point A to point B. But I had all this time to write, and I really didn’t want to waste it. So I wrote a chapter that I hated. It was awful. It was struggling, and stilted, and the characters did stupid things and said awkward dialogue. But I got it done, and then the other chapters started to flow again.
What a relief, I thought! I can always go back and fix the chapter later in draft two. The point is that I got the stupid thing written. I can carry on!
Then my kids got sick, and my idea of time every night to write something went out the window. It’s hard to find time to write when you have to deal with two snotty, screaming kids who just want to sit on your lap and wipe their wet noses on your sleeves.
Never mind, I think to myself. At least I got the flow back and I know where the book is going to head. When the kids are well, I can go back to finding time to sit with the laptop on my knee, rock the baby to sleep, and hash out a few paragraphs here and there.