Oh man, have I been struggling! Writing, especially first draft writing or even just free-writing, used to be so easy for me. I didn’t think it was easy when I was doing it of course, but looking back now I’m stunned by how fluidly things would come to me and come together. Now though…now I’m stuck staring at blank pages and hating every line that comes out of my brain.
I know the way to break it. It’s always the same. Write through it.
Problem is, that sucks and is super hard.
I’ve started so many projects the past month or so and just hated everything about the words on the page. (Okay, that’s dramatic. I only hated most of it.) I really need to just let the draft be bad. It’s okay if there’s a huge character info dump in the beginning because I am still just figuring out who the characters even are! If they want to tell me everything all at once in a big block of text…well that’s just how it’s going to be.
The other thing I’m trying is just to give myself a break. Write when I want to, fill my well with creative works, and just generally remind myself that I’ve already gone through this whole bad draft thing at least three times (more if you count the finished projects I’ve never shown the world). I just need to chill.
So here I am…not chilling at all.
I’m going to try to heal up my creative self a bit. I’ve talked about the Artist’s Way in other posts. I’m not sure if I’ll try that next month or sometime soon, but it’s 12 weeks of catering to your creative self, which sounds delightful. We’ll see if I actually do that or just write my way through the block.
Any other suggestions, let me know!
Happy Writing!
Rachel
Subtle Stories 
If you see your past struggles as an “easy time” writing, then it stands to reason that the next time you hit a block like this, you’ll look back on this time in a similar vein. I say this as someone who 100% has a tendency to catastrophize everything myself.
I think your idea to cater to your creative self sounds like the best solution. I might also suggest (since it sounds like you might have some new characters kicking about) looking online to find little questionnaires to help you get to know your new characters better. I did that quite a bit at the beginning of The Behemoth. Was a great way to not only get to know them better, but get more inspiration for their world as they revealed things to me.
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Yeah, I’m experimenting with that currently. I’ve got a big “braindump” document where I put anything and everything that comes into my head about a particular story. I got a little flash of what it wants to look like structurewise which was exciting. The characters are still pretty loose beyond screaming their traumas at me 😛
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