The first thing that comes to my mind is…I don’t know how to do this. The only time my overreactive mind is quiet is the one time it is asked not to be! Usually there are a million and one thoughts racing around in my head but in that moment just then, the only thing I could think was…I don’t know how to do this.
What does that mean? How can I not have a thought that pops into my head? It reminds me of the times I have been to the US and have been asked to ‘say something’ in my British accent. It always makes me smile because it’s such a huge compliment but, naturally, my mind goes completely blank. I have no idea what to say. And that is, invariably, what I end up saying. I figure it’s at least something said in my accent. But now I think about my thought process, I’m not entirely sure my mind went completely blank when faced with the question, it certainly kept repeating the question over and again in my head. I just think I was trying to think of something profound to say. And that’s not easy!
Though I did think…well, I’m stuck on my book. I did have a thought, it just wasn’t the one I necessarily wanted to have. Hence ‘I don’t know how to do this’. Because that is what I am grappling with at the moment, the fact that I have felt stuck on the last book in my trilogy, about 50% of the way through. I tried writing for a little while this morning and I managed to finish a chapter I have been struggling over for literally a month or so now. But then, when I had finished that, I didn’t know what the new chapter was. So, I wrote some very unsatisfactory words which I have attempted to continue with tonight…and I know I am forcing it. Which usually means I will get so far and then scrap the whole lot. I have been postponing doing any writing on this book for that month or so because of that sense of being stuck and, in the process, I have lost the ‘feel’ for the characters. It’s frustrating but it happens sometimes, it has happened in both the previous two. But that’s because I am approaching them and their writing from my egoic mind which doesn’t have the grasp of the story as much as my soul has. I know how the story ends, I’m just unsure of the bit in the middle. And that’s the problem.
How do I resolve it? Well, one of my solutions is always to walk away from the laptop and occupy my mind doing something very banal. I sometimes call it stress hoovering because quite often I will get the hoover out at times like this and start hoovering the house. I have often had the most interesting thoughts whilst hoovering, I don’t know why. When I was at university and stuck on an essay, or even my dissertation, some of my best ideas came either in the shower or when brushing my teeth and they still do now at times. I’ve learned that I need to write them down immediately because they do disappear as quickly as they came. I remember one time, grappling with an essay about the English Civil War I thought about an amazing (as I thought) idea in the middle of the night. I assumed that, because it was so amazing, I would remember it in the morning so went back to sleep without making a note of it. Very bad idea, as I couldn’t remember it hardly at all the next day except a very nebulous thought that I couldn’t quite bring to the forefront of my mind. After that, I slept with a pad and pen by the side of my bed while studying and always told myself I was never too tired to jot down brilliant insights. Which, interestingly, was how I came up with a completely different outcome for the trilogy, an idea in the middle of the night. I made notes on that on my phone so I didn’t forget it. Unfortunately, the idea didn’t come with the middle part.
This evening I started to cook dinner, a banal exercise that I hoped would trigger an idea and I think I might have the kernel of one forming. But then I got distracted by writing this, and doing this isn’t banal enough (believe it or not!) to trigger any profound ideas. I will go to bed tonight with a pen and pad just in case something comes to me suddenly as my typing efforts on my phone in the night aren’t my best. Failing that, I will get up a bit earlier tomorrow to do a hopefully intense and insightful meditation to overcome the block. That is another fallback and failsafe option I have as it has dug me out of a hole before. In the first book I was getting concerned that my main male character was, frankly, coming across as a bit wet. So, I meditated on the question and came up with the solution that toughened him up a bit, a way of writing him that showed he wasn’t wet, he was empathetic and fundamentally very kind but he that he had a real backbone as well.
Writing a book isn’t for the faint hearted I have discovered. I realised this morning that I have been writing this trilogy, on and off, for the past two years. I am so pleased with my dedication to it, greatly helped by the fact that I have self-published the first two so feel duty bound to complete the series. Actually, I am incredibly pleased that I finished the first book and published it, that took 18 months, let alone finished the second book and published that which took less than a year (there was overlap with 1 and 2). A friend of mine from school is now an author and he advised me that if I was going to write a series I should prepare for the fact that people won’t invest in it until all the books are completed and self-published. As I am a debut author, he said, readers were aware of other writers who had not their series. And there really is nothing worse than being kept dangling I know. I have been guilty of holding off buying a series until it has been completed so I can binge the books in one go. Instant gratification. But my book also has a message, so it is important for that overall message for the trilogy to be completed.
I have no real writing process if I am honest. I have studied creative writing, I have also written all my life and I usually find that writing flows. I am a hybrid between being a planner and winger. I create a mind map of my idea, I make copious notes about the characters and the story arc but from there, I wing it. I get lost in their world and often speak the dialogue out loud as I write it, with all the inflections and emotions within it. I think of scenes with them as though they are happening and I can see the environment they are in, the scenery that surrounds them as I am typing them. I become completely immersed in the process, and I love it. That is why a sporadic hour here and there for writing is, for me, so unsatisfactory. Either I have gotten immersed and need to drag myself out of it when my time is up, or I am too aware of the time limits and I can’t quite get into it. Hence my dream being to be able to write full-time. I have even had to squeeze writing this into bits and pieces of time and I need to schedule its posting for tomorrow because of how life tends to take over.
So, in this monologue basically, I have gone from not thinking I had a thought when I did (I’m stuck on my book), but I wanted it to be something more profound, more meaningful so I disregarded the thought. Like I come up with profound thoughts regularly (eye roll here). What I have been able to do, however, is jump out of writing this and free write some notes on book 3 that look as though they have legs. I am going to try and put them down over the weekend and I can flesh them out in my mind tomorrow, probably as I work.
It is interesting, though, that my ego mind was leading my immediate thought process ‘make it profound’ as though it was instructing my soul to come up with something. And it did, but it wasn’t profound. It was a cry for help ‘I’m stuck on my book’. I do think that it can be easy to mistake our initial reaction to something as our soul speaking. I did read once that the first thought that pops into your mind is your soul reaction because it takes time for your conscious mind to muster something up. I’m not sure that’s true. I think, for me at least, my soul sits back and waits for my ego mind to release its rubbish before it then steps in with something. Something that is meaningful in some way, because ‘I’m stuck on my book’ is profound to me personally. It’s something I have been refusing to face up to for far too long because I wasn’t sure how to get unstuck. So, this prompt has been a godsend for me because it eventually gave me the idea to do some quick free writing of the answer having prompted the initial ‘I’m stuck’ thought.
Maybe this was very banal after all! But I am truly grateful for it, thank you.
Louisa Simpson 