Slog.
The last few weeks, maybe months, I’ve been up against some internal resistance in my fiction writing. I once described this experience not as writer’s block, but as writer’s weight, and I seem to be suffering from a heavy dose recently.
I don’t know exactly why, I wish I did, so I could fix it. As with so many other issues, it’s probably a combination of factors, fatigue being no small component. IN fact, what little fiction writing I have done lately, happened a few days ago, as I am in the midst of a week long “staycation” from my part-time job-a job for which I must get up way earlier in the morning than I am built for. Gaining traction on some of the lost sleep probably opened up a brief window to write a few hundred words earlier this week.
Still, I won’t put it all on being tired. I’ve worked on my fiction when tired before. The Beacons I See was written mostly while I had the same part time job, with the same lousy sleep patterns, and yet I still completed it.
As with so many of the ups, downs and neutrals of writing, it’s mental for the most part. I just haven’t “been there” as it were. I don’t mean inspiration, because I’ve known for a long time that a writer cannot wait for that to strike every time. Besides, I already know the stories I want to be working on; the inspiration for them came to me some time ago. Motivated may be a better term, but it still doesn’t quite fit how I am not feeling, as it were.
There may be a touch of thinking I am a fraud creeping in here and there. If so, I should probably be concerned with that less than any of the other likely reasons I am not writing much, for just about every writer that ever lived will feel as though they are a fake at some point. Possibly at multiple times throughout their life, and in some cases their entire life. If fear of being a fraud of contributing to my current lack of production, I’d at least be in good company.
Fear not, I haven’t set aside writing totally. I in fact writer in a private journal a bit just about every day. It’s less structured than writing intended for public consumption, and of course isn’t the same as writing fiction, but I’ve not gone numb on all wordsmithing, and that has to be a plus, right?
I’m still reading as well, fiction and non-fiction.
I imagine it will pass, or thaw, or, move on, or whatever the appropriate verb is for my situation. I suspect I won’t make my stated 2017 fiction writing goals now, (though one never knows.) But the self-appointed deadlines are just that-self appointed. If a draft gets done after that deadline, nothing bad happens because of that, other than disappointment in myself. But being too hard on oneself never helps either.
In the meantime, between now, and feeling a full normal flow of productivity, I stay open to answers, and willing to accept the slog I’m in for the time being.
Have you ever felt like this?
Ty Unglebower 