Switching creative gears (and grinding them all the way)

[rj_anderson]

I've been trying to work on Touching Indigo all day, but my brain refuses to connect with it. I thought that giving myself a week off after finishing my revisions on Knife would help me switch gears -- especially since I took part of that time to re-read the first seven chapters of Indigo and think about where I wanted to go next. But no...

I don't know what to do about this except to keep plugging away out of sheer bloodymindedness, and if that means sitting down every afternoon and evening for a week and typing random nonsense for an hour, so be it. Eventually, I know -- I hope -- I'll break through this fuzzy mental state and get excited about the book again. It will start haunting my dreams and pestering me with ideas at inconvenient times and places. I'll have a hard time getting to sleep because I'll be plotting out the next scene in my head. If it happened to me with Knife after mumbletyseven revisions, it can surely happen with this book that I haven't even finished yet.

It's frustrating, though, waiting for that to happen. Right now writing feels like staring at a plate full of my least favorite vegetables.

What do all of you do to kickstart yourselves when you're feeling creatively blank?

Comments

[thefish30.livejournal.com]

Though my original fiction is an on again, off again hobby at this point, I've noticed discovering a new fandom usually gives me plot bunnies, which kicks off another bout of writing. It has to be a lengthy series I can get immersed in for a while, not a single novel or trilogy. Examples being Cowboy Bebop, Miles Vorkosigan, and New Who.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Curiously, I watched half of the first episode of Cowboy Bebop last night. It's so stylish and noir I don't understand half of what's going on, so I think I might do better going back and catching up on Avatar: The Last Airbender instead. (As of now I have seen maybe five very widely spaced episodes of the whole series, but still -- Zuko/Katara OTP!!!)